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By WILLIAM D. MCCLINTOCK
Assistant Professor of English Literature, University Of Chicago
AND
PORTER LANDER McCLINTOCK
Chautauqua Reading Circle Literature1893
READING LIST.Owing to the necessarily fragmentary character of the readings ofthis volume, it has seemed well to the editors to indicate a listof books for those who wish a wider reading In MediaevalLiterature. These books are all available and cheap.
1. French Literature.(1) Longfellow's "Poets and Poetry of Europe".(2) O'Hagan's "The Song of Roland".(3) Rourdillon's "Aucassin and Nicolette".(4) Malory's "Morte Darthur".(5) Chaucer's "Romance of the Rose".(6) Caxton's "Reynard the Fox".(7) Saintsbury's "Short History of French Literature".2. Spanish Literature.(1) Longfellow, as above.(2) Ormsby's "The Cid".(3) Lockhart's "Ancient Spanish Ballads".3. Scandinavian Literature.(1) Longfellow, as above.(2) Anderson's "Norse Mythology".4. German Literature.(1) Longfellow, as above.(2) Lettsom's "Niebelungenlied".(3) Scherer's "History of German Literature".5. Italian Literature.(1) Longfellow, as above.(2) Rossetti's "Dante and his Circle".(3) Cary's "The Divine Comedy".(4) Norton's "The Divine Comedy".(5) Campbell's "The Sonnets and Poems of Petrarch".
The aim of this little book is to give general readers some ideaof the subject and spirit of European Continental literature inthe later and culminating period of the Middle Ages—theeleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries.
It goes without saying that translations and selections are, ingeneral, inadequate to the satisfactory representation of anyliterature. No piece of writing, of course, especially no pieceof poetry, can be perfectly rendered into another tongue; nopiece of writing can be fairly represented by detached portions.But to the general English reader Continental Mediaevalliterature, so long as it remains in the original tongues, isinaccessible; and translations of many entire works are notwithin easy reach.
What translation and selection can do in this case, is to putinto the hands of the ordinary student of the Middle Agessufficient material for forming an estimate of the subjects thatinterested the mediaeval mind and the spirit in which they weretreated. And this is what the general reader desires. Matters ofform and expression—the points that translation cannotreproduce—belong, of course, to the specialist.
The claim that so slender a volume of selections can representeven the subject and spirit of so vast a body of literature, issaved from being unreasonable or presumptuous by a considerationof the fact that, from causes easy to trace, the nationalliteratures of Continental Europe had many commoncharacteristics: the range of subjects was not unlimited; thespirit is the same in all.
No English is included for two reasons: Mediaeval Englishliterature is easily accessible to those readers for whom thisbook is prepared; during the special period in which the bestmediaeval literature was developed, England was comparativelyunproductive.
The constant aim has been to put before the reader the literatureitself, with comment barely sufficient to make an intelligibles