In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

REVIEWS 195 that it is the right one. It has led in his book to some of the most delightful and illuminating writing, particularly on Carlyle and Hardy. His comments on improbabilities in Hardy (pp. 24B ff.) and on his use of details of natural description (pp. 251 ff.) , and on Carlyle's use of imagery (pp. 2B ff.) occur to me as passages of special excellence, although the relating of Eliot's methods of characterization to her role as sage is perhaps equally good. Some of the judgments offered as emerging from the critical method used here are also original and convincing: I would mention the explanations of the failure of Daniel Deronda (p. 140), and the view of Jude as an anomaly in Hardy'S later novels (pp. 245, 2B9). I note two minor slips: on page 20, chapters I and v should read II and VI, and on page 226 the order should be "Menander, Swift and Plato respectively." THINGS ATTEMPTED YET IN PROSE OR RHYME' A. E. BARKER Since the early eighteenth century, particularly since 1749, when William Lauder used passages from a Latin verse translation of Paradise Lost to deceive Dr. Johnson into believing Milton guilty of large thefts from certain Renaissance poets, the search for the "sourcesn of Milton's epic has produced much sound scholarship and a very great deal of rubbish. Lately, apart from some minor Hdiscoveries," the search seems to have been all but given over, partly through the passing from favour of literary genetics but also largely on account of the bad odour of the rubbish and because of the conditions that made it possible. Paradise Lost is by no means a merely encyclopedic epic; but it is the work of one of the last encyclopedic minds of the Renaissance . When such a range of knowledge as was Milton's is combined with such a power to select, modify, and recombine according to his great idea, the task of tracing the landmarks on the road to Hell or Eden is staggering. It has invited irresponsible asseveration and dogmatic speculation, particularly with reference to Milton's immediate predecessors, because few of the Renaissance treatments of the matter of Satan and Adam have been readily available as a check on the reports of the sleuths. The subsidence of interest in Milton's "sources" has gone far towards depriving Milton criticism of a valuable instrument . The tendency of much recent and most new criticism of Milton seems to be to take quite literally the statement that his celestial·The CelMtiai Cycle: The Theme 0/ Paradise Lost in World Literature with Translations of the Major Analogues. By WAT SON KIRKCONNELL. Toronto; University of Toronto Press. 1952. Pp. xxvii, 701. $7.50. 196 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY patroness dictated to him slumbering-and to attempt a critical imitation of his supposed poetic practice. But the study of works which may have influenced Milton's epic and are certainly analogues of it is, in its joining of the critical with the historical, too useful an instrument towards the appreciation of the poem's value to be discarded. If there is one aspect of the poetic process in Milton that is above all others striking, it is the combination of the traditional with highly individual talent; and in both Lilliputian and Brobdignagian criticism, it must always be true that nothing is great or little but by comparison. To induce such critical comparison is the aim of President IGrkconnell 's volume-a monumental piece of Canadian scholarship cer~ tainly deserving of the support it received from the Humanities Research Council of Canada. Part I consists of twenty-four analogues of Paradise Lost, complete or represented by generous selections, in the original English, or contemporary translations, or in new translations by the compiler, from Avitus' Poemata in the sixth century, through the "Caedmonian" Genesis, to narratives and dramas by authors closer to Milton-Valvasone, Grotius, Marini, Andreini, Salandra, Vonde!, and others. Part II is a descriptive catalogue of 329 treatments of the celestial cycle or its parts (War in Heaven, Creation, Fall, Redemption), from a Sumerian Paradise myth of perhaps the eighteenth century B.C. to Paul Valery'S...

pdf

Share