Craft and tradition : essays in honour of William Blissett PDF
Preview Craft and tradition : essays in honour of William Blissett
Page iii Craft and Tradition Essays in Honour of William Blissett Edited by H.B. de Groot and Alexander Leggatt University of Calgary Press Page iv © 1990 H.B. de Groot and A. Leggatt. All rights reserved ISBN 0919813747 University of Calgary Press 2500 University Drive N.W. Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4 Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: Craft and tradition Bibliography: p. ISBN 0919813747 1. Blissett, William. 2. English literature History and criticism. I. Blissett, William. II. de Groot, H. B., 1939– III. Leggatt, Alexander. PR14.C73 1988 820'.9 C880913266 All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, 379 Adelaide Street West, Suite M1, Toronto, Ontario M5V IS5. Printed in Canada Wood engraving used on front cover (entitled "Unicorn and Broken Column") by David Jones (1930) with permission of the Trustees of the David Jones Estate. Cover design by Rhae Ann Bromley Page v Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements xi WFB, with love xvii George Johnston (Emeritus Professor of English, Carleton University) The Bride from the Strange Land 1 Northrop Frye (Victoria College, University of Toronto) Spenser's Broken Symmetries 13 Sean Kane (Trent University) Closure in Spenser's The Faerie Queene 23 A.C. Hamilton (Queen's University) Positioning Spenser's "Letter to Raleigh" 35 Gordon Teskey (Cornell University) Spenser at the Still Point: A Schematic Device in "Epithalamion" 47 Germaine Warkentin (Victoria College, University of Toronto) Donne's "Anniversaries" and the Beatification of Elizabeth Drury by Poetic 59 Licence René Graziani (University College, University of Toronto) Zigzag in Hamlet I, v 81 S.P. Zitner (Trinity College, University of Toronto) The Hidden Hero: Shakespeare's Coriolanus and Eliot's Coriolan 89 Alexander Leggatt (University College, University of Toronto) King Lear, Sir Donald Wolfit and The Dresser 99 R.B. Parker (Trinity College, University of Toronto) Page vi Individualism and Order in the Byron Plays of Chapman and Jonson's 111 Catiline John Margeson (Emeritus Professor of English, University of Toronto) Ben Jonson and the Play of Words 123 Wyman H. Herendeen (University of Windsor) The Silent Woman in the Restoration 137 A.H. de Quehen (University College, University of Toronto) To be Redeemed from Fire by Fire: The Deaths of Heracles and Siegfried 147 Emmet Robbins (St. Michael's College, University of Toronto) Parsifal and the Right Point of View about Everything 157 Philip Wults Mein Leben: Richard Wagner and the Art of Autobiography 169 H.B. de Groot (University College, University of Toronto) "Den ubetvingele kallelse": On the Objectivity of Brand's Calling as Priest 185 Charles Leland (St. Michael's College, University of Toronto) Vision and Design in The Playboy of the Western World 203 Ann Saddlemyer (Victoria College, University of Toronto) The Waste Land, Order and Myth 217 John Tucker (University of Victoria) In Parenthesis: The Displacement of Chronicle 229 Thomas Dilworth (University of Windsor) David Jones and Literary Modernism: The Use of the Dramatic Monologue 241 Vincent Sherry (Villanova University) "Intermixed Lingo": Listening to David Jones 251 W.J. Keith (University College, University of Toronto) Stanley Spencer and David Jones 259 Guy Davenport (University of Kentucky) Page vii H.D.'s Trilogy and the Poetics of Passage 269 Thomas R. Whitaker (Yale University) The High Modernism of F.T. Prince 281 Michael Kirkham (New College, University of Toronto) The Languages of Contemporary West Indian Poetry 295 J.E. Chamberlin (University College, University of Toronto) The Sound of Verse 311 Kenneth Quinn (Emeritus Professor of Classics, University of Toronto) A Checklist of the Principal Writings of William Blissett 325 Douglas Freake (University College, University of Toronto) and H.B. de Groot Page ix Preface In this Festschrift we are not only honouring William Blissett's achievements in scholarship and teaching but trying to reflect something of the range of his interests. Those who know him will immediately object that there is little or nothing on the paintings of Tiepolo, or on César Franck's piano quintet—not to mention baseball or the lives of minor American presidents. But Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Wagner and David Jones are all here. There are essays on modern drama, on neglected poets, on the connections between one artistic medium and another, on the craft of poetry, and on the religious dimension of literature. We hope that the sheer range of the collection will make its own point: at a time when we complain of excessive specialization while digging deeper into our specialties, William Blissett has shown that another kind of academic life, an informed and intelligent investigation of a wide range of our culture, is not only possible but essential. It is significant that the artists who most attract him—notably Spenser, Jonson, Wagner and Jones—all think on a large scale, and create works not just out of a single personal impulse but out of a broad awareness of tradition. Spenser and Wagner address their own times in the language of older mythologies, Jonson and Jones in their different ways are fascinated by Rome, and Jones in particular—to use his own words—moves with ease "from the cultivation of cabbages to Melchizedek, king of Salem." It is appropriate that so many of the essays here presented show how through works of art one period or culture impinges on another. That accounts for one of the key words in our title. As a critic and teacher, Professor Blissett has always been interested in how things are made, and that accounts for the other. Even the briefest conversation with him will contain some mischievous Page x play on words; this is the sportive side of that serious interest in language that leads him to make his students do memory work. (He notes that while they grumble at first, "they live to thank me.") It follows that his favourite artists are makers, whose craft demands and rewards the closest analysis. And thus it is appropriate that so many essays in the present volume are based on close attention to words. Two forms, poetry and drama, and two periods, Renaissance and Modern, account for nearly all of these essays. This is no accident, for it is in these forms and these periods that different cultural lines are most likely to cross. In his attention to both craft and tradition, in the careful layering of one culture on another, David Jones is perhaps the first example one would give of a characteristic interest of Professor Blissett's; but to present a collection of essays on a single figure would have been inappropriate to the occasion and the recipient. We have tried instead to balance craft and tradition, close analysis and broad curiosity. It is a tribute to the force of Professor Blissett's example that our way of doing this has been not to issue specific orders to contributors but simply to ask for essays they thought would interest him. We are grateful to all contributors for the alacrity with which they responded to our invitation. We wish to thank Cyrilene Beckles and Donna Jones for typing the articles; and we are most grateful to the University College Alumni Association for a generous grant towards publication. We also wish to thank our copyeditors at the University of Calgary Press, Sandy Buker and Sharon Boyle. Page xi Acknowledgements For permission to reproduce excerpts from already published manuscripts, the University of Calgary Press wishes to acknowledge the following publishers, estates and authors. W.W. Norton and Company, Inc. for Donald Jay Grout, A History of Western Music, Shorter Edition, 1964. University of Toronto Press for Essays in English Literature from the Renaissance to the Victorian Age Presented to A.S.P. Woodhouse, ed. M. MacLure and F.W. Watt, 1964. J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd. for A.S.P. Woodhouse, Milton The Poet, 1955. Yale University Press for Geoffrey Hartman, Criticism in the Wilderness: The Study of Literature Today, 1980. The University of Chicago Press for Geoffrey Hartman, The Fate of Reading and Other Essays, 1975. Princeton University Press for Thomas P. Roche, Jr., The Kindly Flame: A Study of the Third and Fourth Books of Spenser's "Faerie Queene," 1964. Columbia University Press for Form and Convention in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser, ed. William Nelson, 1961. Page xii Mouton de Gruyter, a division of Walter de Gruyter and Co., for John Fletcher, The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed, ed. G.B. Ferguson, 1966. Faber and Faber Limited for T.S. Eliot, Complete Poems and Plays, 1969. Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, Inc. for T.S. Eliot, Complete Poems and Plays, 1969 (U.S. rights). Methuen and Co. Ltd. for William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Arden Edition, 1976. Grove Press Inc. for Ronald Harwood, The Dresser. Oxford University Press (Oxford) for C.H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson edition, Ben Jonson, 1925–52. Insel Verlag for Richard Wagner, "Eine Mitteilung an meine Freunde," Dichtungen und Schriften, ed. Dieter Borchmeyer, vol. 6, 1983. Houghton Mifflin Company for Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, ed. Ernest Samuels, 1973. Robert Kroetsch for "F.P. Grove: The Finding," published in An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English, ed. D. Bennett and R. Brown (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1983). Cambridge University Press for Richard Wagner, Mein Leben, trans. A. Grey: ed. M. Whittal, 1983. Oxford University Press (Oxford) for The Oxford Ibsen, ed. J.W. McFarlane, 1960–77. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. for Ibsen: Letters and Speeches, ed. Evert Sprinchorn, 1964. Macmillan Publishing Company (New York), for W.B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (copyright Mrs. W.B. Yeats 1961), Autobiography (copyright 1916, 1936 by Macmillan Publishing Company, renewed 1944, 1964 for Bertha Georgie Yeats), and The Letters of W.B. Yeats, ed. Allan Wade (copyright 1953, 1954, and renewed 1982 by Anne Butler Yeats). A.P. Watt Ltd. for W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies and "Sailing to Byzantium" on behalf of Michael B. Yeats and Macmillan London Ltd. Oxford University Press (Oxford) for The Collected Letters of John Millington Synge and Collected Works, J.M. Synge.
The list of books you might like
