John Huntington

“This Ticklish Title”: Chapman, Nennio, and the Critique of Nobility

he tone and language of h s praise of intellection and true knowledge w d be f a d a r to any reader of Chapman, yet the consequences of this measure for “the differencing of men in excellencie” have not been drawn. Does the praise of learning and true knowledge entail a criticism of the wealth and inherited title that identhe nobility? Any possible social critique remains tacit in this passage; how does the later praise of Essex as a “true heir of true knowledge” (lines 866-87) reflect on h s status as the heir of the earldom? A sirmlar ambiguity occurs when Chapman poses the obverse to the praise of learning and criticizes the court and what he t e rm “false nobility.” In “A Coronet for his Mistresse, Phdosophie,” Philosophy is said to be unaltered by

H. G. Wells in Love: Postscript to an Experiment in Autobiography (review)

Gindins discussion of Coppard and Bates also makes essential points. Though both are theorists of the short story, extolling unity, compression, selection, as well as Turgenev, neither Coppard nor Bates is truly in the modernist tradition, both regarding as inappropriate the making of the particular into the representative. Nevertheless, both Coppard and Bates deserve better by way of critical treatment than they have heretofore received, and Gindin makes every attempt to do them justice. Pedens treatment of Pritchett is restricted to three collections of stories published in or before 1945. About them Peden makes the point that the better pieces are typical of Pritchctts best, being revelations of character, relatively simple in narrative, but complex in implications. As important, however, as the things that are said in this volume are the things not said. Flora makes the same point at the conclusion of his Introduction. This volume is an introduction to closer scrutiny of the short story in England 1880-1945; and it is an intriguing introduction.

Condemnation and Pity in Chapman's Hero and Leander

HAPMAN’S Hero and Leander is one of the most narrowly didactic products of the Ovidian fashion of the 1590’s and one of the most open and exploratory. The poem begins with clear ideas of moral order and judgment, and given Chapman’s reputation for moral rigor, it has been natural for critics to try to treat the whole poem as an amplification of these ideas.l But as it progresses, the poem abandons the opening premises about reality in favor of a darker vision of a chaotic and violent world in which “nought serves our turnes” (VI, 239).2 At its