Historical Character Of English Lyrics From The Proceedings Of The British Academy Vol V PDF Download

Excerpt from The Historical Character of English Lyric We Englishmen - or, at least such of us as think about the matter at all, and have taken some pains to sift our thinkings thoroughly - are for the most part perhaps apt to think very highly indeed of it. But it has to be remembered that this estimate is not universal by any means, even among ourselves; and has sometimes been distinctly traversed by foreigners of various nations, some of whom have by no means been hostile in disposition or inappreciative of English literature generally. It can hardly be regarded as necessary to cite these latter; but I may perhaps remind you that in the middle of the nineteenth century a writer who was a scholar, really a man of letters and interested in the subject, Archdeacon Evans, went to the extravagant length of declaring that 'English lyric must always be a blank'; while much later Mr. Swinburne, himself a consummate practitioner of it, deliberately excluded lyric from the position of competitor with similar functions of other languages as representing the greatness of English literature. This latter dictum was, it is true, cursory, and may be to some extent subject to discount in view of the fact that the writer was one very apt to be carried away by advocacy and was at the moment in the position of advocate of another department, Drama. But in other decriers of our lyric I think it is possible to discover certain general prejudices - in the strict meaning of that word - which throw a good deal of light on their mistake. And I know no better way of doing this than to undertake, if only in outline, but perhaps from more than one point of view, the survey indicated in my title. There is perhaps no point which ought to strike the inquirer into this matter more forcibly than the fact that while English literature is notoriously composite in character, no part of it is more manifestly so than its lyric. Whether, in Old English itself, there is next to no lyric, or whether there is next to nothing else - propositions both of which have been advanced - need not be discussed here: for the question, like so many others, is again a mere logomachy of definition. But when we come to Middle English there is no further doubt about the matter. It is of course, in a fashion, a coincidence that the first distinguished and delightful collection of lyric that has come down to us is trilingual, but, as in the case of not a few other coincidences, causation is not absolutely far off. The influence of Latin and of French is upon Alison and its companions, as obviously as the poem itself is found in company with examples of these actual languages. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.