Bradley, ed: The Letters of John Ruskin to Lord and Lady Mount-Temple

The Letters of John Ruskin to Lord and Lady Mount-Temple

Edited and with an Introduction by John Lewis Bradley

The frantic, indeed psychotic obsession of John Ruskin for a young girl named Rose La Touche constitutes probably the most terrible (and, unfortunately, protracted, and, in the end, tragic) period in the life of that Victorian genius.

In recent years, the publication of previously suppressed documents relating to the affair, which ended with Rose’s death in a kind of religious insanity and which contributed decisively to the madness in which Ruskin spent his last dozen or more years, has inevitably made the story one of the central points in Ruskin biography, not only because it has a quite horrid fascination of its own, but also because it throws much light on Ruskin’s complex and desperately unhappy personality.

These letters are documents of unusual value for the fresh light they shed on a crucial phase of Ruskin’s life and for the incidental illustrations they offer of the breadth of his intellectual interests and the virtually obsessive nature of his work in many fields. Furthermore, unlike many similar collections, this one constitutes a connected drama and a coherent psychological narrative.

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Moore: The Legend of Romeo and Juliet

The Legend of Romeo and Juliet

Olin H. Moore

“The long and complicated history of the plot of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has fascinated numerous scholars. . . . After more than a century of progress, some of our leading investigators seem convinced that the end of the road has been reached. . . . I shall try to show that present studies of the sources of Romeo and Juliet require revision all along the line, but especially in the final and decisive stage—the transition from Brooke to Shakespeare. Indicative of the amount of work which remains to be done at this point is the frequency with which scholars, in need of an x to solve baffling problems, fall back upon the lost play mentioned by Brooke. We have also much to learn yet regarding the origins of the Montecchi (Montagues), the sources of Masuccio and even of Luigi da Porto, and the relations between Clizia and Bandello, not to mention certain curious features of Lope de Vega’s version of the legend.

“The general plan followed is chronological, and only summary notice is taken of the numerous and oft-cited legends vaguely resembling the Romeo and Juliet plot, but not demonstrably connected with it.” —from the introduction

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Maresca: Pope’s Horatian Poems

Pope’s Horatian Poems

Thomas E. Maresca

Recent critical studies of Alexander Pope have sought to define his poetic accomplishment in terms of a broadened awareness of what the eighteenth century called wit. That Pope’s achievement can be located in wit is still generally agreed; but it now seems clear that the fullest significance of his poetry can be found in the more serious meaning the Augustans attached to that word: the ability to discern and articulate— to “invent,” in the classical sense—the fundamental order of the world, of society, and of man, and to express that order fittingly in poetry.

Thomas E. Maresca maintains that it is Pope’s success in this sort of invention that is the manifest accomplishment of his Imitations of Horace. And Maresca finds that, for these purposes, the Renaissance vision of Horace served Pope well by providing a concordant mixture of rational knowledge and supernatural revelation, reason and faith in harmonious balance, and by offering as well all the advantages of applying ancient rules to modern actions. Within the expansive bounds of such traditions Pope succeeded in building the various yet one universe of great poetry.

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Babb: Jane Austen’s Novels

Jane Austen’s Novels

The Fabric of Dialogue

Howard S. Babb

In this stylistically grounded analysis of Jane Austen’s fiction, Howard S. Babb concentrates on the dialogues, finding in them the real dramatic action of the novels. His main task is to show how Jane Austen reveals through the speech of her characters their personal qualities and behavior

This examination of the novels will be invaluable to any serious student of Jane Austen, for it explores the dialogues in a new way and illuminates the manner in which they come to life in her fiction.

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Weber: Theology and Poetry in the Middle English Lyric

Theology and Poetry in the Middle English Lyric

A Study of Sacred History and Aesthetic Form

Sarah Appleton Weber

In recent years scholars have shown the influence of Christian theology on the forms of medieval art, music, and drama. In this study Dr. Weber establishes the profound way in which medieval theology determined the aesthetic characteristics of the Middle English religious lyric. The theological basis of analysis is the liturgy, which not only provided the source and texture of the lyrics, but which was the foundation upon which medieval theology itself developed. The liturgy was fundamentally a sacred history that shaped the history of man from his birth to his death to the plan of redemption. The method of the liturgy’s formulation of the history of redemption provided certain dynamic forms and principles of proportion for the lyrics that evolved from it.

By selecting several lyrics on each of the central events of the redemption—the annunciation and birth of Christ, the crucifixion and resurrection, Christ’s ascension and Mary’s assumption—and by analyzing them in the order celebrated by the liturgy, Dr. Weber has demonstrated that the aesthetic structure of each lyric can be found only by means of its specific theological subject and that the meaning and structure of a lyric on one event of sacred history can be fully grasped only in its total context of the other events of sacred history. The divine ration and symmetry of proportion within sacred history provides the principle of proportion within the poem. The subjective element in these Middle English lyrics also receives its ultimate definition in terms of the object sequence of events in sacred history. Poetry itself when it comes into relationship with medieval theology is not an autonomous art, but is assumed as part of the endeavor of the Christian soul into being a means by which he may reach eternal delight. Thus an aesthetic theory appropriate to the nature of the medieval religious lyric, including the lyrics composed in the ancient classical tradition, can be formed only when beauty is defined in its relationship to the Eternal Art.

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Wiles: Freshest Advices

Freshest Advices

Early Provincial Newspapers in England

R. M. Wiles

When Princess Anne was crowned Queen of her several realms in 1702, there were only two provincial newspapers in England to report the coronation. When, two generations later, another Archbishop placed the crown on the head of George III, there were local weekly newspapers in twenty-nine English towns. Between these two events, during the reigns of Anne and the first two Georges, scores and scores of newspaper sprang into being in country towns all over England. This book gives an account of that rapid development in early journalism.

The significance of the phenomenon was recognized by very few people at the time. Even so astute an observer as Samuel Johnson saw only the fact; he was not aware that a mighty struggle was in progress, the struggle of a force that burst its way into the open, thrusting aside all impediments, gaining momentum steadily, and bringing a new dimension into the life of England.

An examination of the papers themselves provides the modern reader not only with an account of the provincial press in its formative years but also with an incredible abundance of material on every aspect of life in a swiftly developing nation. For in them are revealed what political and economic questions were of chief concern to their thousands of readers, what incidents in the normal day-to-day life of people were thought to be worth reporting, what kinds of prose and verse the local papers disseminated throughout England’s fifty thousand square miles, and what efforts were made by printers to keep the public informed about events in other parts of the nation and of the world.

When compared with the stately official papers in Great Britain’s archives, these ephemeral and hastily produced weekly bulletins of news may seem pathetically unimportant as historical documents; yet their numerous details of fact and speculation disclose, perhaps more strikingly than any other body of evidence, the ethos of early Georgian provincial England.

The author has assimilated a prodigious mass of detail to write, with grace and humor, a definitive study of an important aspect of eighteenth-century publishing history.

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