Comparative Literature Commons^™

Arnold's Sources For Schrab And Rustum, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

It is generally assumed, either explicitly or by inference that Matthew Arnold's Schrab and Rustum (1853) is based on the story as told in the abridgment of the Sháhnáma of Firdawsí by the Rev. J. A. Atkinson (1832), which gives in an appendix a complete rendering of the Schrab and Rustum episode in heroic couplets ; or on Sir John Malcolm's History of Persia (1815); but no one has investigated the relative use made of the two, or the exact debt of the poet to either.

Notes On Tennyson's Lancelot And Elaine, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

The chief sources of Tennyson's Idylls are, as so well known, Malory's Morte Darthur and the Mabinogion. Secondary sources are the chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth, from whom the poet derived a few name-forms like Igerne and Gorlois, and stray touches in the handling, and the anonymous history, ascribed to Nennius, from which (Lancelot and Elaine, ll. 284-315) he derived his account of Arthur's twelve battles. In 1889, Dr. Walther Wüllenweber pointed out that Tennyson seems also to have drawn upon Ellis' Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, for a few proper names, like Bellicent and Anguisant, not found elsewhere. …

Another Version Of The Ballad Of Lord Randal, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

THE following version of the familiar ballad known variously as "Lord Randal," "Lord Ronald," and so on, was discovered by Mr. H. C. House, of Kingfisher College, Oklahoma, sung in a railroad camp at Geary, Colorado. It should be added to the fifteen or so versions, some of them American, of which Prof. Child makes an exhaustive study, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, I, 151 ff. The identity of the ballad is unmistakable. All the conventional features, the poison, the legacy, the iteration, and the dialogue are present. modified to suit altered local conditions.

The Romaunt Of The Rose: Additional Evidence That It Is Chaucer's, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

THERE are five poems included in modern editions of Chaucer's works that are now generally recognized as not his. These are The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, The Complaint of a Lover's Life, The Flower and the Leaf, The Court of Love, and Chaucer's Dream. One other long work, the Englislh version of the famous French poem of the thirteenth century, Le Roman de la Rose, which has come down to us as translated by Chaucer, is now the subject of much dispute.

In conclusion, it would seem that henceforward it is for those who pronounce the translation spurious to …