Miscellaneous Reviews

51 MISCELUNEOUS REVIEWS 1. Robert Langbaum. THE POETRY OF EXPERIENCE: THE DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE IN MODERN LITERARY TRADITION. NY: Random House, 1957; rptd Norton Library, 1963- Paper. $1.45. Mr. Langbaum here deals with the breach in poetry, a dissociation of thought and emotion which began to be felt in the 17th century as a result of the work of Newton and Locke. Attempts to heal this breach, Langbaum maintains, began with Thomas Gray. The healing, Mr. Langbaum argues, still goes on in the work of modern "anti-rational ist" poets, whose work, we are told — a little preciously — is "so very modern and — rational." The book has many fine pages on Browning, Tennyson, T. S. Eliot, VJordsworth, end Shakespeare. Again, however, except for a few pages on Hopkins and Yeats, one notes a very large gap in the discussion between Browning and Eliot. Mr. Langbaum's book, excellent in its scholarship and surely provocative in its thesis, often seems to be a collection of separate articles that have, as an afterthought, been pressed Into service to make a book with a central thesis. —HEG 2. Leonard Feinbsrg, THE SATIRIST: HIS TEMPERAMENT, MOTIVATION, AND INFLUENCE. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State U P, I963. $4.95. Mr. Feinberg's book is likely to annoy some of us stuffy academicians. Some of us will find suspect a book which quotes just about every commentary on satire from Steve Allen and Clifton Fadiman to VJalter Blair, Louis Bredvold, Gilbert Highet and many other reputable scholars. There is no bibliography, although the quite good reading list is apparently designed to substitute for cne. There are no footnotes; literally hundreds of quotations are not specifically located although they may presumably be found somewhere In the works included in the reading list. There is no index, although, since this book is largely an encyclopedia of comments on satire and the satirist, an index would seem to be essential. However, after one has complained about all these things and if one still retains some good humour, it is also necessary to say that this is a most useful survey of various theories that have been used to explain the nature of satire, the reasons for its rise in certain cultural situations, its pervasiveness in all cultures and under nearly all conditions, the temperament of the satirist, and so on. Mr. Feinbérg rejects most of the traditional explanations for the rise of satire and analyses of the satirist's temperament. For Feinberg the satiriist is primarily an artist who writes satire as another artist writes comedy or tragedy. And the satirist may write satire anywhere and at any time as the comic and tragic writers may produce their works at any time and anywhere. The conclusion Feinberg finally arrives at seems to provide no clear distinction between satire and, say, humor or comedy, or, for that matter, irony. Still, Feinberg's book is a very useful introduction to a very difficult subject. Now that some attempt has been made to give satire the same artistic status as comsdy and tragedy have, perhaps the subject can be explored further In a fresh way. —HEG 3. Douglas Bush. MYTHOLOGY AND THE ROMANTIC TRADITION IN ENGLISH POETRY. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard U P, 1937; rptd NY: Norton Library, I963. Paper. $2.45. Professor Bush here primarily concerns himself with the antithesis, particularly since the early 19th century, "between Christian and antique subjects and between Christian and antique (usually Dionysian) ways of iife." And he also recognizes the complicating conflict "between the claims of the antigüe and of modern realism." He concludes that "Most of the important poets consciously or unconsciously , philosophically or sentimentally, solve the problem for themselves by investing ancient myths with modern significance, yet that solution has never satisfied the realist." Apparently recognizing that the conflict between Pagan 52 and Christian, Classical and Realist matters and manners is especially critical during t!.e ELT period, Professor Bush devotes two chapters (XIII, XIV) to the period "From the Nineties to the Present." In the first of these two chapters Bush treats the "traditional, literary, and academic," the often "antique poems and dramas" of such writers as Robert Bridges, Sturge Moore, Gordon...