The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination (141 page)

Chapter 32. Joys of Pilgrimage
. For pilgrimage as a path to discovery, see my
The Discoverers
, Chapter 15, and the Reference Notes there to Part V.
The Dictionary of the Middle Ages
provides readable essays on people, places, and institutions. Lively and learned essays on the background: J. J. Jusserand,
English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages
(4th ed., 1950); G. G. Coulton,
Chaucer and His England
(8th ed., 1963); Boris Ford, ed.,
The Age of Chaucer
(1961). Enticing introductions to the man and his works: G. L. Kittredge,
Chaucer and His Poetry
(1925); J. L. Lowes,
Geoffrey Chaucer and the Development of His Genius
(1934),
Geoffrey Chaucer of England
(1951). A comprehensive biography: Donald R. Howard,
Chaucer
(1987). For Chaucer’s text the most accessible is F. N. Robinson,
The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer
(2d ed., 1957) with unobtrusive glossaries; and for an appealing “modernized” version of selections, Theodore Morrison,
The Portable Chaucer
(1949). Few other English authors have been so extensively and enthusiastically written about. An up-to-date selective bibliography is found in the latest edition of
Encyclopaedia Britannica
.

Chapter 33. “In the Land of Booze and Bibbers.”
Readers should not be discouraged from tasting the outrageous Rabelais by the bulk of
Gargantua and Pantagruel
, by his awesome classic status, or the wilderness of scholarship that surrounds him. Despite his verbosity and his ability to make ten words do the work of one, Rabelais’s chapters can stand alone to open his wonderful world of the absurd. We can begin, for example, with Chapter 13 of
Gargantua
in J. M. Cohen’s robust unadulterated translation (a Penguin Classics paperback), which gives even fecal matter some comic charm without barnyard vulgarity. For biography: Donald M. Frame,
Rabelais
(1977); M. A. Screech,
The Rabelaisian Marriage … Rabelais’s religion, ethics and comic philosophy
(1958); Mikhail Bakhtin,
Rabelais and His World
(1968), a suggestive but labored Marxist view. Every reader will have to decide for himself whether Rabelais deserved to be the eponym for “Rabelaisian,” which the dictionary defines as “broadly and coarsely humorous.” Rabelais was introduced to English readers by the lively free translations of Sir Thomas Urquhart (Books I and II, 1653; Book III, 1693–94) and Pierre Motteux (Books IV and V, 1693–94), reprinted in the Everyman Classics. Samuel Putnam’s Introduction is helpful, with a selection of translations from all the books in
The Portable Rabelais
(1946).

Chapter 34. Adventures in Madness
. For the English-language reader there is no better introduction to Cervantes than Carlos Fuentes’s eloquent foreword and introduction to Tobias Smollett’s translation (“a novelist’s translation”) of 1755, with Smollett’s own brief life of Cervantes recently reprinted in an attractive paperback by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. For other insights into his life: William J. Entwhistle,
Cervantes
(1940); the detailed James Fitzmaurice-Kelley,
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: a Memoir
(1913); Rudolph Schevill,
Cervantes
(1919, 1966). And for some stimulating suggestions: Salvador de Madariaga,
Don Quixote: An Introductory Essay in Psychology
(1961); Josef F. Mora,
Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy
(1962); José Ortega y Gasset,
The Dehumanization of Art
(1968). The first notable English translation (done freely in 1712) by the same Pierre Motteux who translated Rabelais was often republished with revisions. The translation (1949) by Samuel Putnam with notes in the Modern Library became the Anglo-American standard, and he has provided an attractive
Portable Cervantes
(1951), with selections from
Don Quixote
and
Exemplary Novels
, along with Cervantes’s
Farewell to Life
. J. M. Cohen has given us his translation in the Penguin Classics (1950) that matches his Rabelais in colloquial fluency.

Chapter 35. The Spectator Reborn
. Of the countless editions of Shakespeare, I have found most helpful
The Riverside Shakespeare
(2 vols., 1974), with a conveniently glossed text, lively introductions by Harry Levin and others, chronologies, and facts about Shakespeare and the Elizabethan
scene. And see G. B. Harrison,
Introducing Shakespeare
(3d ed., 1968), a Penguin book. In the vast Shakespearean literature it is easy to get lost and wander away from what Shakespeare wrote. For biography I have enjoyed Marchette Chute,
Shakespeare of London
(1949) and S. Schoenbaum,
Shakespeare’s Lives
(1970; 1991). For the theater: Bernard Beckerman,
Shakespeare at the Globe, 1599–1609
(1962); H. S. Bennett,
Shakespeare’s Audience: Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy
(1944); Gerald E. Bentley,
The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare’s Time, 1590–1642
(1971); and the copious E. K. Chambers,
The Elizabethan Stage
(4 vols., 1923). On the background: Boris Ford, ed.,
The Age of Shakespeare
(1964); John Dover Wilson, ed.,
Life in Shakespeare’s England: A Book of Elizabethan Prose
(1949); Kenneth Muir, ed.,
A New Companion to Shakespeare Studies
(1968); David Riggs,
Ben Jonson
(1989). Samples of the vast critical literature: A. C. Bradley,
Shakespearean Tragedy
(1904); Theodore Spencer,
Shakespeare and the Nature of Man
(2d ed., 1966); C. L. Barber,
Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy
(1959); Edwin Wilson, ed.,
Shaw on Shakespeare
(1961).

A history of Shakespearean criticism would be a history of English literature since his time. For me the most rewarding Shakespearean criticism is by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who once called this his most important contribution to literature, to be sampled in his
Shakespearean Criticism
(T. M. Raysor, ed., 2 vols., 1930) or
Coleridge on Shakespeare
(R. A. Foakes, ed., 1971). To sense the captiousness and intensity of Shakespeare scholarship, look at the
New Variorum Shakespeare
(H. H. Furness et al., eds., 1871–), frequently reissued and supplemented, and E. K. Chambers,
William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems
(2 vols., 1930). The “Shakespearean Literature” is a microcosm of the possibilities, follies, and frustrations of literary critics. Long before deconstruction, they industriously explored the possibilities that Shakespeare was someone else (perhaps Francis Bacon or the Earl of Oxford), or did not exist. Glimpse some of these theories in S. Schoenbaum,
Shakespeare’s Lives
. For recapturing half-remembered lines, see the comprehensive
Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare
, Marvin Spevack, ed. (1973). For the afterlife of Shakespeare in twentieth-century technologies: Peter S. Donaldson,
Shakespearean Screen: An International Filmography and Videography
(1990).

Chapter 36. The Freedom to Choose
. A convenient introduction is Douglas Bush, ed.,
The Portable Milton
(1949), with all the major poems and a selection of prose, including
Of Education, Areopagitica
, and some autobiographical passages. An elegant brief introduction to the relation of the life to the works is David Daiches,
Milton
(1957). We are fortunate in having the now-standard biography, William Riley Parker,
Milton
(2 vols. 1968), copious, subtle, and delightfully readable. This displaces David Masson’s
Life of Milton
(7 vols., 1859–94), which like some other “classics” of literary history is now remembered for having been forgotten. For a surrogate autobiography, see J. S. Diekhoff,
Milton on Himself
(2d ed., 1965). For a guide into the Milton literature, see James Holly Hanford and James G. Taaffe,
A Milton Handbook
(5th ed., 1970). Like Shakespeare, Milton provides a point of reference for a full history of English literature since his time: John T. Shaw-cross, ed.,
Milton: The Critical Heritage
(1970); Joseph A. Wittreich, Jr.,
The Romantics on Milton
(1970). For background, see: E. M. Tillyard,
Milton
(rev. ed., 1966); Douglas Bush,
English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century
(2d ed., 1962). A convenient edition of the prose: Malcolm W. Wallace,
Milton’s Prose
(1925) in the World’s Classics. A comprehensive one-volume annotated scholarly edition:
Complete Poems and Major Prose
, M. Y. Hughes, ed. (1957). The many editions and the vast critical literature attest to Milton’s power to stir the most diverse readers—from C. S. Lewis,
A Preface to Paradise Lost
(1942) to Isaac Asimov’s popular annotated
Paradise Lost
(1974). Dr. Johnson disliked Milton’s “foreign idiom.” William Blake found him “a true Poet, and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” Interest has focused on the role of Satan as hero, and
Paradise Lost
has had an uncanny appeal to illustrators, including William
Blake (1806), J.M.W. Turner (1835), and Gustave Doré (1866).

Chapter 37. Sagas of Ancient Empire
. The reader will share my passion for Gibbon’s
History
by beginning with the eloquent and seductive Chapter 01, then turning to the provocative Chapters 15 and 16 on the rise of Christianity. Though available in many scholarly reprints, Gibbon is best read in the edition by J. B. Bury (7 vols., 2d ed., 1926), with illustrations, maps, helpful appendixes and notes on how later scholars have revised or added to Gibbon’s story. I recommend reading a volume or two of Gibbon unabridged rather than a one-volume selection, like that of D. M. Low (1960). The best introduction to Gibbon’s life is his own
Memoirs of My Life and Writing
, which was edited and published by his friend and executor, Lord Sheffield, as the
Autobiography of Edward Gibbon
. This, itself a classic of its kind and a pioneer in the paths marked off by Montaigne (see below, Chapter 56), is handily available with an introduction by J. B. Bury in the World’s Classics. The best short life until now is the readable Roy Porter,
Gibbon: Making History
(1988). For details of the life and writings we have the scrupulous and exhaustive works of Patricia B. Craddock,
Young Edward Gibbon: Gentleman of Letters
(1988),
Edward Gibbon, Luminous Historian, 1772–1794
(1989),
Edward Gibbon: A Reference Guide
(1987).

Chapter 38. New-World Epics
. The Library of America gives attractive access. Prescott’s
Conquest of Mexico
and his
Conquest of Peru
are conveniently available unabridged in a single Modern Library Giant. Both works begin with an engrossing detailed exposition of the geography, institutions, religion, mythology, and science, and are surprisingly respectful of the peculiar institutions of these non-European peoples. While passages inevitably betray prejudices of Prescott and his age, they also show an impressive sympathy for the variety of human cultures and a sense of the interconnection of all of a society’s ways. William Charvat and Michael Kraus, eds., have provided
Representative Selections
(1943), with introductions. A cogent and appreciative introduction to Prescott’s life is the essay by Roger B.

Merriman in the
Dictionary of American Biography
(1935). Harvey Gardiner,
William Hickling Prescott
(1969) provides a comprehensive critical biography.

The Oregon Trail
has often been reprinted in editions for young readers. Parkman’s other writings are less conveniently available today, but can be found in numerous subscription and library editions of the last century. An attractive sampler is the
Parkman Reader
(1955), selected and edited by Samuel Eliot Morison, with his usual grace. And, for Parkman’s life, begin with the essay by James Truslow Adams in
The Dictionary of American Biography
, then to the admirable biography by Mason Wade,
Francis Parkman: Heroic Historian
(1942), illuminated by
Letters of Francis Parkman
(2 vols., 1960), edited by Wilbur R. Jacobs. To put Prescott and Parkman in literary context: G. P. Gooch,
History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century
(new ed., 1959); Michael Kraus,
The Writing of American History
(1963); David Levin,
History as Romantic Art: Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman
(1959); Robert E. Spiller et al.,
Literary History of the United States
, Vol. 1 (1948); Van Wyck Brooks,
The Flowering of New England
(1936).

Chapter 39. A Mosaic of Novels
. For a wide perspective on the place of the novel in the history of printed literature, see: Warren Chappell,
A Short History of the Printed Word
(1970); S. H. Steinberg,
Five Hundred Years of Printing
(3d ed., 1974), a Penguin book; Daniel P. Resnick, ed.,
Literacy in Historical Perspective
(1983); Richard D. Altick,
The English Common Reader
(1957), a social history of the mass reading public. And for great novelists’ perspectives: Henry James,
French Poets and Novelists
(1878);
Essays on the Art of Fiction
(Leon Edel, ed., 1956), Vintage paperback; E. M. Forster,
Aspects of the Novel
(1927), often reprinted. For sharply focused views: W. Somerset Maugham,
Ten Novels and their Authors
(1954); Stefan Zweig,
Three Masters: Balzac, Dickens, Dostoeffsky
(1930),
Balzac
(1947); V. S. Pritchett’s vividly illustrated brief biography,
Balzac
(1973). André Maurois has found Balzac an ideal subject for his risky art of making biography read like a novel:
Prometheus: The Life of Balzac
(1965). The critical literature on Balzac is as copious as his works. Especially helpful are: Samuel Rogers,
Balzac and the Novel
(1969); H. J. Hunt,
Balzac’s Comédie Humaine
(1959); Harry Levin,
The Gates of Horn … Five French Realists
(1963). Balzac’s writings, often translated, are in numerous reprint series, notably the Modern Library and Penguin Classics.