Prose Epic Research Articles

: The Evolution of an American Prose Epic: A Study in Comparative Literature . Paul Radin.

American AnthropologistVolume 59, Issue 6 p. 1135-1136 Free Access MYTHOLOGY AND FOLKLORE: The Evolution of an American Prose Epic: A Study in Comparative Literature. Paul Radin Stanley S. Newman, Stanley S. Newman University of New MexicoSearch for more papers by this author Stanley S. Newman, Stanley S. Newman University of New MexicoSearch for more papers by this author First published: December 1957 https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1957.59.6.02a00600AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume59, Issue6December 1957Pages 1135-1136 RelatedInformation

: The Evolution of an American Indian Prose Epic: A Study in Comparative Literature, Part 1 . Paul Radin.

American AnthropologistVolume 58, Issue 6 p. 1160-1161 Free Access FOLKLORE AND MUSIC: The Evolution of an American Indian Prose Epic: A Study in Comparative Literature, Part 1. Paul Radin Martin Gusinde, Martin Gusinde Catholic UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Martin Gusinde, Martin Gusinde Catholic UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: December 1956 https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1956.58.6.02a00300AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume58, Issue6December 1956Pages 1160-1161 RelatedInformation

On Classical and English Poetry

T HE problem of comparing classical and modern poetry could be approached in various ways, and two approaches are obvious. One is through the classical tradition, the study of sources, of actual strands of influence running from ancient to modern poets. Such a study is altogether fascinating, much dealt with but never to be drained dry, and it both deepens and illuminates our perception of the qualities of literature at any particular given period. But it is not our approach here, because it is not the direct approach to our problem. Our problem, as I put it to myself, is to answer a fragment of the question: what is modern poetry like, and what is ancient poetry like, and what qualities have they in common? It is not the question: how far has modern poetry derived its qualities from ancient poetry, and where, and how? The questions are completely different. Where it is discernible that a modern poet has been influenced by an ancient one, that fact immediately emphasizes a difference between the two. That Gray set out to imitate Pindar makes Gray in just that degree alien to Pindar, because Pindar did not set up any model in the same way. If the fact creates a bond, it is a bond between Gray and Bacchylides. Similarly, if we are looking for sound analogies to the Homeric poems, we are more likely to find them in epics uninfluenced by Homer (Beowulf, Roland, or the prose epic of Malory) than in those which, directly or indirectly, trace back to him (the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost). The former are, like Homer, founded in folk memory and tradition, not in literature and learning. Like Homer, they have no Homer to throw back to. Matthew Arnold is classically influenced but not classical in quality, and Wyatt, rather than Landor, holds a position in English Poetry analogous to Sappho's in Greek. I do not, however, mean that, because a modern poet has been influenced by the classics, there can be no common ground between them; only, that

Henry Fielding and the Writers of Heroic Romance

When Fielding advanced his theory of the comic prose epic, he took particular occasion to denounce “those voluminous works, commonly called romances, namely Clelia, Cleopatra, Astrea, Cassandra, the Grand Cyrus, and innumerable others, which contain, as I apprehend, very little instruction or entertainment.”1 He was quite explicit in drawing a sharp distinction between such narratives and his own works. Yet, although he frequently referred to the heroic romances, he made no mention whatsoever of the rather elaborate theory of prose fiction which the writers of these romances had set forth during the preceding century. This omission is somewhat surprising, not only because the principles of the heroic romance constituted the most detailed theory of prose fiction prior to his own day, but also because those principles were in many instances strikingly similar to the theories which Fielding himself advanced. In view of the tremendous difference between Clelia and Tom Jones, one would hardly expect to find much resemblance between the critical theories upon which the two works were based; yet as a matter of fact, the two theories had quite a number of points in common; and it is rather strange that neither Fielding nor his modern critics should have noted the fact.2

Mansfield and Blackstone's Commentaries

N THE eighteenth century, a period when prose came to a higher excellence than it had yet attained in England, Blackstone, who lived from I723 to 1780, rendered an unparalleled service for jurisprudence' in writing Commentaries, the prose epic of common law.2 It has been said of this work, published from 1765 to 1769 and based on lectures at Oxford from 1753 to I766,3 that Continent derived. its knowledge of English chiefly from it, that on it study of in England was based, and that in America work was regarded as repository of common law.4 Of Mansfield, who lived from 1705 to 1793, it has been said that was not only greatest common judge but greatest judge in Anglo-American legal history.5 An eminent American legal scholar said of him that he broke down narrow barrier of common law and redeemed it from feudal selfishness and barbarity, that he was one of those great men raised up by Providence, at a fortunate moment, to effect a salutary revolution in world, and that he became, what intended, jurist of commercial world.... .6 What were relations in eighteenth century London between these two, scholarly Blackstone,7 first university lecturer on laws of

How the Greeks and Romans Regarded History

Greek history began with the epic and genealogical writers like Homer and Hesiod; Herodotus followed with his prose epic of the Persian Wars. Greek history became scientific and critical with Thucydides but did not remain so after him: from Xenophon onwards it lapsed into rhetoric and romance. Roman historians followed Greek principles and methods, and the earliest wrote in Greek. Polybius alone cared much for scientific criticism in his work; the rest held, with Cicero, that history is a branch of the art of rhetoric. Livy and Tacitus produced works of great literary merit at the expense of historical accuracy. Julius Caesar's account of his conquest of Gaul was the military report of a general written to the people who had given him his commission, to justify his unconstitutional action in conquering Gaul without instructions. These are only the foremost names, but of all Greek and Roman historians only Thucydides and Polybius used in writing the scientific and critical standards of modern historians. The others wrote to please the public taste for rhetoric, to grind some axe, to edify their readers, to relate anecdotes, to praise or blame, to express personal opinions, to display their literary powers, to make digressions, and not many were saved by literary skill from the mediocrity to which their critical weakness doomed them.

Henry Fielding's Theory of the Comic Prose Epic

Henry Fielding's Theory of the Comic Prose Epic

Contributions to the History of Southern Aeolis

Asia Minor, interposed like a bridge between Europe and Asia, has been from time immemorial a battlefield between the Eastern and Western races. Across this bridge the arts, civilisation, and religion of the East had passed into Greece; and back over the same bridge they strove to pass beautified and elevated from Greece into Asia. The progress of the world has had its centre and motive power in the never-ceasing collision of Eastern and Western thought, which was thus produced in Asia Minor. One episode in the long conflict has been chosen by Herodotus as the subject of his prose epic: but the struggle did not stop at the point he thought. It has not yet ended, though it has long ceased to be of central importance in the world's history. For centuries after he wrote Greek influence continued to spread, unhindered, further and further into Asia: but as the Roman empire decayed, the East again became the stronger, and Asia Minor has continued under its undisputed influence almost up to the present day. Now the tide has again turned, and one can trace along the western coast the gradual extinction of the Oriental element. It does not retreat, it is not driven back by war: it simply dies out by a slow yet sure decay. It is the aim of this set of papers to throw some light on one stage in this contest, a stage probably the least known of all, the first attempts of the Greek element to establish itself in the country round the Hermus. Tradition has preserved to us little information about the first Greek settlements. The customary division into Aeolic, Ionic, and Doric colonists is not a sufficient one. Strabo clearly implies that there was a double Aeolic immigration when he says (p. 622) that Cyme founded thirty cities, and that it was not the first Aeolic settlement; in another passage (p. 582) he makes the northern colonists proceed by land through Thrace, the southern direct by sea to Cyme. I hope by an examination of the country and the situations, never as yet determined, of the minor towns, to add a little to the history of this Southern Aeolic immigration, in its first burst of prosperity, through the time when it was almost overwhelmed in the Lydian and Persian empires and was barely maintained by the strength of the Athenian confederacy, till it was finally merged in the stronger tide of Greek influence that set in with the victory of Alexander. More is known of Myrina, and still more of Cyme, than of any of the other towns: but both are omitted here, because it may be expected that considerable light will be thrown on the history of both by the excavations conducted on their sites by the French School of Athens. Till their results are published, it would be a waste of time to write of either city.