Studies in English and Comparative Literature Book

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 Excerpt: ...succeeded in giving some conception of the nature of the allegorical debate as we find it in the classics. I should particularly wish to oppose the usual theory that such debates were produced almost entirely during the revival of rhetoric in the second century of our era. My examples have shown that at least tendencies toward the debate can be traced to a much earlier period. And this is but natural. For essential to the development of such contests is, first of all, the personification of the characters inyolved. Whether these characters are animate or inanimate, they are not human beings; or, if they are, they are not individuals, but types. The second important element is the 'Aydov. Now the agonistic element lay at the core of Hellenic life. The very earliest Greek literature is full of the love of argument and antithesis. Personification, too, is surely characteristic of a primitive stage of thought. It goes back to "the childlike consciousness of an inner spiritual kinship between man and beast."3 And nowhere in ancient or modern life can we find a people more prone than the Hellenes to feel that kinship and to perpetuate it in art and literature. 1 So Professor Smyth deems the lack of adequate adversative particles an objection to Professor Gildersleeve's solution. 2 Cf. Pyth., Jin.; Isth., 6. 3 O. Keller, "Gesch. der griech. Fabel," p. 315, in Fleckeisen, Jahrb.fiir Class. Phil., 1862, Suppl. IV, 307-418. THE ALLITERATIVE POEM: DEATH AND LIFE By Edith Scamman Death and Life a Middle English alliierative poem, is found in Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript,2 now preserved in the British Museum. The date of this manuscript has been put by Dr. Furnivall3 at slightly earlier than 1650; but since it is a heterogeneous collection of poem...