What is the history of literature?

Critical Inquiry

Volumn 23, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 460-481

  Greenblatt, Stephen ^a  

^a Department of English ^*  (United States)

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EID: 60950646191     PISSN: 00931896     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/448838     Document Type: Review

References (39)

1. See Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, in The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, ed. R. H. Super, 10 vols. (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1960-1974), 5:163-75; hereafter abbreviated CA
2. Arnold, "Literature and Science," Poetry and Criticism of Matthew Arnold, ed. Arnold Dwight Culler (Boston, 1961), p. 395
3. Henry Bradshaw, Here begynneth the holy lyfe and history of saynt werburge/very frutefull for all christen people to rede (1521; London, 1887), bk. 2, stanzas 1 and 3, II. 2-6, 15. The passage is cited in part in the Oxford English Dictionary, s. v. "literature."
4. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. G. H. McWilliam (1471; Harmondsworth, 1995), pp. 488-489
5. On the opposition of idioti and litterati, see Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, N.J., 1983), pp. 28-30
6. Quoted in Leona C. Gabel, Benefit of Clergy in England in the Later Middle Ages (1928-29; New York, 1969), p. 64
7. On clerical status and the legal processes both of verification and of degrading, see R. Génestal, Le Privilegium fori en France du décret de Gratien à la fin du XIVe siècle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1921, 1924)
8. and Austin Lane Poole, "Outlawry as a Punishment of Criminous Clerks," in Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait, ed. J. G. Edwards, V. H. Galbraith, and E. F. Jacob (Manchester, 1933), pp. 239-46
9. See the account of the examination for clergy in Thomas Smith, De republica anglorum: Of him whom the xij. men pronounce guiltie, the Judge asketh what he can say for himself: if he can reade, he demaundeth his Clergie. For in many felonies, as in theft of oxen, sheepe, money, or other such things, which be no open robberies, by the high way side, nor assaulting one by night in his house, putting him that is there in feare, such is the favour of our Lawe, that for the first fault the felon shalbe admitted to his Clergie, for which purpose the Bishop must send one with authoritie under his seale to be Judge in that matter at everie gaole deliverie. If the condemned man demandeth to be admitted to his booke, the Judge commonly giveth him a Psalter, and turneth to what place he will. The prisoner readeth as well as he can (God knoweth sometime very slenderly:) then he asketh of the Bishops commissarie, legit ut clericus? The commissarie must say legit or non legit, for these be wordes formall . . . . If he say legit, the Judge proceedeth no further to sentence of death: if he say non, the Judge forthwith, or the next day proceedeth to sentence. [Thomas Smith, De republica anglorum, ed. L. Alston (1583; Cambridge, 1906), pp. 102-103]
10. See Gabel, Benefit of Clergy in England in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 72-73
11. "Particularly dangerous to public order was the high percentage of highway robbers who were able to plead their clergy and who returned to their particular form of crime at a later date" (John Bellamy, Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages [London, 1973], p. 154)
12. A judicial record concerning two men caught in a burglary in 1613, cited by Lawrence Stone, eloquently conveys the difference an ability to read could make: "'The said Paul reads, to be branded; the said William does not read, to be hanged.'" Stone argues that the possibility of claiming benefit of clergy was, along with the desire to read the Bible, one of the two principal motives for the rise of lay literacy in Early Modern England (Lawrence Stone, "The Educational Revolution in England, 1560-1640," Past and Present, no. 28 [July 1964]: 43). David Cressy notes that the Middlesex records show that 32 percent of the capital felons in the reign of Elizabeth and 39 percent in the reign of James successfully claimed clergy
13. See David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1980), p. 17
14. On the significance of reading and writing for medieval England, see M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066-1307 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979)
15. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976; New York, 1983), p. 184
16. J. S. Cockburn, Calendar of Assize Records: Home Civil Indictments (London, 1985), 1:225; hereafter abbreviated C
17. See Stock, The Implications of Literacy, pp. 26-27
18. See also H. Grundmann, "Litteratus-illitteratus: Der Wandel einer Bildungsnorm vom Altertum zum Mittelalter," in Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 40 (1958): 1-65
19. The Lauterian vil say maist constantlie, that the scripture iudges for his pairt, that the treu bodie of Christ is in the sacrament ioynit vith the breid and vyne; the Zuingliane vil constantlie afferme, that thair is na thing in the sacrament bot breid, and vyn, quhilk ar signes of the bodie and blude of Iesus Christ; The Cauuinist maist bauld of al vil afferme, that the vord of God is for him, that the bodie of Christ is treulie in the lordis suppar, and that ve be certane pilleis, or ingeynis ar liftit vp to heauin be ane incomprehensibil maner. Quhat vald ye nou that ane pure man, quha can nather reid nor vryt, and suppoise he could, hes nocht sufficient literatur to vndirstand the scripture sould do in this caice? I dout nocht bot gif ye be nocht aluterlie obstinat, ye may persaue that he vald be in ane veray greit perplexitie; and that he hes na sure moyen quhairbie he may resolue him self, and consequendie gif thair be na vthir iudge by the vryttin vord that Christ hes nocht sufficientlie prouydit for his kirk, nocht leuing in it ane esie and infallibil reul, quhairbie euerie ane quha plesis may discerne the treu religione from the fals, as euerie man in the day of iudgement man gif compt in particular of his auin religione and fayth. [Nicol Burne, Disputation (1581), in Catholic Tractates of the Sixteenth Century: 1573-1600, ed. Thomas Graves Law (Edinburgh, 1901), Niii-Niiii, p. 148]
20. Quoted in Williams, Keywords, p. 184
21. See Norbert Elias, The History of Manners (New York, 1982)
22. Francis Bacon, De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum libri IX (1623)
23. trans. James Spedding, under the title Of the Dignity and Advancement of Learning, in The Works of Francis Bacon, trans. Spedding and Robert Ellis, ed. Spedding, Ellis, and Douglas Heath, 15 vols. (Boston, 1857-1882), 8:418
24. hereafter abbreviated AL. The Latin reads, "Quodque Historia Literaria desideretur" (Argentorati: Sumptibus Johan. Joachimi Bockenhoferi [Berlin, 1654], 2:4, p. 90; hereafter abbreviated A)
25. Bacon, "Epistle Dedicatory," The Works of Francis Bacon, 8:24
26. Quoted in Antoine Compagnon, "Literature in the Classroom," in A New History of French Literature, ed. Denis Hollier et al. (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), p. 822; hereafter abbreviated "LC."
27. In 1935 F. W. Bateson declared in a response to F. R. Leavis that literary history makes propositions of the "'type A derives from B'"; his example is Dryden's tribute to Waller: "'Unless he had written, none of us could write.'" Literary criticism, by contrast, pronounces "'A to be better than B.'" The province of the former then is verifiable facts. The "truth or falsehood" of its propositions, Bateson writes, "can be tested by a simple examination of the relevant evidence . . . just as a fact is tested in a court of law," while the province of the latter is intuition, opinion, and faith (F. W. Bateson, "Correspondence," Scrutiny 4 [Sept. 1935]: 181
28. see also René Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature [New York, 1942], p. 28). By the 1960s the evaluative project ascribed to criticism had evolved in America at least into an interpretive one, and there was no longer a social requirement, a test of breeding, for the interpreter. Hence whatever democratic advantage literary history might once have enjoyed was lost
29. See Edwin Greenlaw, The Province of Literary Hutory (Baltimore, 1931), chap. 2
30. Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi, ed. Raffaele Spongano (1512; Florence, 1951), no. 211
31. Levinas observes that "magic, recognized everywhere as the devil's part, enjoys an incomprehensible tolerance in poetry" (Emmanuel Levinas, "Reality and Its Shadow," trans. Alphonso Lingis, The Levinas Reader, ed. Séan Hand [Oxford, 1989], p. 141). But it was precisely this tolerance that made Bacon, set on liberating man from the idols of the mind, suspicious of poetry
32. On indulgere genio and defraudare genium, see the references in the entry on genius in Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines, ed. Charles Daremberg and Edmund Saglio (Graz, 1896), p. 1489
33. See also the useful entries in the Oxford Classical Dictionary and Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities. Ben Jonson, perennially alert to Latinate implications, has Volpone declare that he will "cocker up my genius and live free" (Ben Jonson, Volpone or, The Fox, 1.i.71)
34. William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 2.iii. 17-20
35. See Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York, 1985)
36. Whenever I come to a new experiment of any subtlety (though it be in my own opinion certain and approved), I nevertheless subjoin a clear account of the manner in which I made it, that men knowing exactly how each point was made out, may see whether there be any error connected with it, and may arouse themselves to devise proofs more trustworthy and exquisite, if such can be found; and finally, I interpose everywhere admonitions and scruples and cautions, with a religious care to eject, repress, and as it were exorcise every kind of phantasm. [Bacon, Instauratio magna
37. trans. Ellis, under the title The Great Instauration, in The Works of Francis Bacon, p. 50]
38. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, 1.i.30, 127; hereafter abbreviated H
39. Philip Sidney, "The Defence of Poesie" (London, 1595). This text is readily available on the web via Project Gutenberg's homepage (http://www.promo.net/pg/)