English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Reactions Of Critics To Modern Historical Plays, Helen Maier

Bachelors’ Theses

Within the last half dozen years there has been a revival in the writing and production of historical plays. The purpose of this thesis is to show how theatre-critics react to the outstanding plays of this type which, incidentally, nearly monopolized the boards for this period. This reaction is gauged by a study of criticisms published in a New York newspaper, two professional theatrical magazines, two non-professional magazines, and a religious magazine. The opinions studied are those of Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times, John Hutchins and Edith J. R. Isaacs of Theatre Arts Monthly, Thomas Craven, …

On The Dating Of The English And Scottish Ballads, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

HE practice has established itself among literary historians and anthologists of associating the English and Scottish ballads primarily with the fifteenth century, sometimes with the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. One of the best and most popular of the histories of English literature now used in schools and colleges states in its revised editions: "These ballads appear to have flourished luxuriantly among the folk in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, after which their composition ceased. Over three hundred of them, in 1,300 versions, have survived, and have been collected and printed."' The now widely used History of English Literature by M. …

Extensions Of Usage Of A Pronoun, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

[This article treats briefly, in the chronology of their appearance, the substantive uses of the pronoun of the third person neuter: the English and American game usage, two American colloquial or dialectal usages, and the newest usage, emerging from Hollywood, with its adjectival and nominal derivatives.]

The English pronoun of the third person neuter, it, has established itself as a substantive in various meanings, some of which are so widely current as to augur for them considerable vitality. An enumeration of these substantive uses in American English yields the following-- approximately, I think, in the order of their appearance.

Jeanne D'Arc In Modern Drama, Mary Cordea Woelfel

Bachelors’ Theses

The Jeanne d'Arc literature provides a delightful as well as scholarly excursion that may keep the mind entranced for days, months, nay even for years. But we shall confine ourselves to a short and pointed description. We shall follow Jeanne of Domremy through five centuries of stormy upheavals, religious as well as political. We shall meet her entrancing figure, exalted and deified, maligned and reviled, in history and otherwise, in medieval and modern versions of drama and poetry. But everywhere we shall greet her as a perennial yet youthful charming figure, in American, German, and English literature, and naturally in …

The Cat Who Went To Heaven, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Lynd Ward

Zea E-Books in American Studies

Winner of the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1931, this novel is the story of a struggling Japanese artist and his housekeeper who adopt a three-colored cat and how that affects their lives and fortunes. Commissioned to make a painting of the death of Buddha to be hung in the village temple, the artist imagines the various animals whose forms had been taken in the Buddha’s past lives and the generous deeds they had done, as the cat—auspiciously named “Good Fortune”—looks on with hopes to be included. Could a cat, from a species usually so proud …

The Rise Of The Short Story In American Letters, Mary M. Barra

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Like all other nations America too has had her birth in the literally world. Her beginning has not been less forceful than other nations. We find that English literature, undivided in the past, at the end of the nineteenth century has four divisions: British, American, Canadian, and Australian. The British is still the most important since it has the greatest literary background. But the steadily growing American literature ranks second to it. We glory in this heritage as much as the British because we feel that it belongs to us as well, and prize this tremendous possession

A Recent Theory Of Ballad-Making, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Professor Gordon Hall Gerould's article entitled "The Making of Ballads"' is an attractive essay, written in the fluent and polished manner that we are accustomed to expect from this scholar. It has charm of style, and its positions, taken as a whole, may be termed accepted positions. Because of its literary quality, because it brings together in one paper what has hithert been stressed in scattered places, and because of its appreciation of the poetical quality of those English and Scottish ballads sough out by the notable collectors of the earlier nineteenth century and made available in the volumes of …

The Rise Of The Short Story In American Letters, Mary M. Barra

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Etymology Of An English Expletive, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Professor G. P. Krapp makes an attractive case for his derivation of darn, darned in the brief essay on this word in his recent The English Language in America. He discards the usual explanation that darn is a variant or minced form of damn, and believes that, although it now stands in intimate relation to damn, it had an independent origin. He takes as his starting point the Old English adjective dierne, 'secret,' Middle English derne, Elizabethan dern, and assumes a transition from a descriptive adjective or adverb to an imprecation. The adjective took …

The Value Of English Linguistics To The Teacher, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

WHAT is included in the usual course in the history of the English language? Presumably some teachers emphasize the translation of older monuments, some emphasize training in etymologies, some phonetic changes, and some changes in language structure and forms. Some offer courses in the hope of fostering a more accurate use of language, some because of the discipline ~o be gained from the study of language ID the abstract, and some in order to afford the necessary preparation for the scholar. All have in mind the development, on the part of the student, of a scientific attitude toward language. Any …

The Kraze For "K", Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

As illustrated by the Klassy Klown and the Kute Kid, the present slump toward alliteration is mostly confined to the letter "k," and the hunting of it appears most prominently in the language of advertising. For "k" in poetry there was Coleridge's (one is tempted to write Koleridge's) "Kubla Khan," and one recalls Walt Whitman's picturesque respellings "Kanada" and "Kanadian." But love of "k" plays little part in comtemporary verse, although it appears abundantly elsewhere. Its rise in favor seems to be bound up with the late agitation for simplified spelling, or the oncoming tide of interest in phonetics. Simplified …

Xx. The Term "Communal", Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

I. The Doctrine of Communal Origins

The period following the French Revolution was deeply interested in "the people" as a mass conception, in all that belonged to them and all that they created. It was in this period that theorists on the origin of law, customs, religion, language, literature--particularly the folk-song and the folk-tale--liked to advocate the doctrine of spontaneous, unconscious growth "from the heart of the people," as the phrase went. Such conceptions of origin had their critics from the first; but they remained more or less orthodox throughout the nineteenth century, and they still have foothold in both …

The "Uniformity" Of The Ballad Style, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

" It is a significant fact," says a well-known writer on ballads,' "that wherever found, the ballad style and manner are essentially the same." Many make the same generalization. But this is true only in the most general sense. It presupposes too great fixity ill the ballad style. The ballad is a lyric type exhibiting epic, dramatic, and choral elements; but within the type there is as great variation as within other lyric types. The ballad style is hardly more" essentially the same" than the song style in general, or the sonnet style, or the ode style. There is no …

The English Ballads And The Church, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Many origins have been suggested for the type of narrative song appearing in the English and Scottish traditional ballads: minstrel genesis, origin in the dance, improvisations of media3val peasant communes, or descent from the dance songs of primitive peoples. The hypothesis of minstrel origin was that first to be advanced and it has always retained supporters. There remains a possibility not yet brought forward which deserves to be presented for what it is worth, since the problem, though it may be insoluble, has its attraction for critic and student. We have but meager knowledge of the ballad melodies of pre-Elizabethan …

King Cnut's Song And Ballad Origins, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

King Cnut's song, according to Professor Gummere gives us our “first example of actual ballad structure and the ballad's metrical form, which is to be met in English records." He quotes the account from the Historia Eliensis of 1166. Cnut, with his queen Emma and divers of the great nobles, was coming by boat to Ely, and, as they neared land, the King stood up, and told his men to row slowly while he looked at the great church and listened to the song of the monks which came sweetly over the water. "Then he called all who were with …

Xvii. The Ballad And The Dance, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

It is the purpose of the following paper to examine the relationship of the mediceval ballad to the dance, in origin and in traditional usage. Particular reference is had to the English and Scottish ballad tvpe. In various preceding papers I have considered the theory currently accepted in America of the inseparableness of primitive dance, music, and song and have shown that primitive song is not narrative in character. I have also questioned the assumption that the ballad is the archetypal poetic form--this position should be assigned to the song, not the ballad--and the assumption of " communal " as …

The Beginnings Of Poetry, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

The songs of primitive peoples have received much attention in recent years, especially the songs of the American Indians. An immense amount of material has been collected and made available; and this has been done in a scientific way, with the help of countless phonographic and -other records. Instead of having to rely on the stray testimonies of travellers, explorers, historians, and essayists, the student of primitive poetry has now at his disposal an amount of data unavailable to his predecessors. He need not linger among the fascinating mysteries of roman- tic hypotheses, but can supply himself with the carefully …

Intrusive Nasals In English, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

A few years ago the present writer directed attention to some instances of intrusive nasals in contemporary speech, American and English, and suggested that in the greater part of these instances associative interference was responsible for the added consonants. The bearing of the material presented on the much discussed topic of Middle English added n, for which many varying explanations have been offered, was also treated. Some further instances, heterogeneous in character, of infixed n, noted since the article cited was printed but reinforcing, it is believed, the position taken there, are these:

The Southwestern Cowboy Songs And The English And Scottish Popular Ballads, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Several writers recently have found analogy between the conditions attending the growth of cowboy songs in isolated communities in the Southwest, and the conditions under which arose the English and Scottish popular ballads—those problematic pieces which form so special a chapter in the history of English poetry. Mr. Lomax, the chief collector of southwestern folk songs, notes, when speaking of western communities, how "illiterate people and people cut off from newspapers and books, isolated and lonely—thrown back on primal resources for entertainment and for the expression of emotion—utter themselves through somewhat the same character of songs as did their forefathers …

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 …

Phantastes Chapter 9: Dejection: An Ode, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

German Romantic and Other Influences

From Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode" (lines 47-49 and 53-58). Coleridge published the poem in 1802.