human life supplies an equally endless variety of themes; and the nature of the theme will properly lead to emphasis now on the external, now on the internal, now on the ordinary, now on the extraordinary, with appropriate variation of the technical methods employed. But with all this variation the demand holds for truth to the permanent and essential traits of human nature and human life, and for vitality and interest in the presentation of this truth. But what, the reader may ask, of the pleasure from novels? naturally, since the giving of pleasure is usually assumed as the main end of fiction. Well, pleasure largely depends on who is to be pleased: there are readers who could demand no greater pleasure than that sense of enlargement of personality, of the scope of experience and sympathy, which has been put down as the chief value of the novel. It may be claimed, also, that in the demand that fiction should impress vividly and hold the interest powerfully we have provided for the seekers after pleasure. The greatest pleasure is to live broadly and intensely, to feel oneself in a world significant at every point and palpitating in response to our activities, and this the greatest fiction surely tends to give. One of the finest of modern masters of the art, Mr. Henry James, has summed up the matter in an epigram as true as it is brilliant, that we are entertained by the novelist because we live at his expense. II. POPULAR PROSE FICTION BY PROFESSOR F. N. ROBINSON HE works to be dealt with in the present lecture are widely separated in time and place. They include "Æsop's Fables,” collection which bears the name of a Greek slave of the sixth century, but is actually a growth of many generations before and after him; the "Arabian Nights," which contains Oriental stories of diverse origin; the sagas of medieval Ireland, as represented by "The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel"; and the folk origin; the sagas of medieval Ireland, as represented by the Grimms or imitated by Hans Christian Andersen. In so broad a range of writings there is naturally great variety of matter and style, and there might seem at first to be few common characteristics. But all the works mentioned-or all except Andersen's tales-are alike in being popular prose fiction, and Andersen's collection is an artistic imitation of similar productions. THE MEANING OF "POPULAR" The term "popular" is here employed, of course, in a technical meaning, and does not have reference to vogue or popularity, in the ordinary sense. Popular works, in the stricter definition of the term, are anonymous and are held to be the product of many successive authors. They commonly pass through a long period of oral transmission before being committed to writing, and they are consequently cast in a conventional or traditional, rather than an individual, style and form. The exact nature and extent of popular composition is a matter of dispute. In the case of ballad poetry, with its dancing, singing throng, the process of communal authorship can sometimes be actually observed; but in the case of the prose tales no such opportunity exists for collective composition. Still even there the changes and additions introduced by successive narrators make of a story a common product, for which no single author is responsible. Popular works in both prose and verse show various stages of artistry; and just as in the Anglo-Saxon epic of "Beowulf," there is evidence of the hand of a single poet of high order, so in the "Arabian Nights," " for example, one may suspect that the style and structure were largely molded by a single writer, or group of writers, of skill and literary training. There are many mooted questions as to the history of the whole type, or as to the exact nature of particular works, but there can be no doubt of the existence of a great body of literature which is in a real sense public propertypopular somehow in origin and transmission, and thereby determined in its character. Both the verse and the prose of this popular sort are well represented in The Harvard Classics, the former by the traditional ballads and the latter by the works enumerated above. THE MODERN TASTE FOR POPULAR LITERATURE Writings of the kind under consideration would probably have had a less conspicuous place in a literary or educational collection a few generations ago. For interest in popular literature, or, at least, formal attention to it on the part of the learned and cultivated, is largely a growth of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In earlier periods, and especially in those when classical standards prevailed, the study of literature meant primarily the study of great masterpieces of poetry, philosophy, or oratory, and the art of criticism consisted largely in the deduction of rules and standards from such models. The products of the people, if noticed at all by men of letters, were likely to be treated with condescension or perhaps judged by formal standards, as Addison praised the ballad of "Chevy Chase," for conforming in great measure to the narrative method of the “Æneid.” But in more recent times the spirit of criticism has changed, and writers have even swung to the opposite extreme of adulation of all popular products. The part of the people in composition has been magnified, until the "Iliad" or the "Beowulf" has been conceived as the actual production of a whole community. With this renewed admiration for popular literature in its highest forms has come an enthusiastic interest in all the minor products 2 H. C., xvi, 15ff. 4 H. C., xiii. 4 1 Harvard Classics, xlix, 5ff. of popular or semi-popular composition, and vast numbers of scholars have devoted themselves to the collection and investigation of folk songs and folk tales from every corner of the world. Most interest has doubtless centered in the poetry, as most labor and ingenuity has been spent upon the great epics, such as the "Iliad" or the "Nibelungenlied." But the excellence of much popular prose narrative has also been recognized, and this also has been very extensively studied. INFLUENCE OF POPULAR UPON ARTISTIC LITERATURE Though popular fiction has not always occupied a dignified place in the works on literary history, it has long exerted an important influence on the more sophisticated forms of literature. In the ancient world, it is almost too obvious to point out, the myths upon which drama and epic turned were at the outset often popular tales of gods and heroes. The fable, as the embodiment of moral wisdom, has been, of course, the constant resource of speakers and writers, and in the hands of such poets as Marie de France in the twelfth century, or La Fontaine in the seventeenth, it has received the highest finish of art. Though the "Arabian Nights" collection, as a whole, is of recent introduction into European literature, Oriental tales of the sort which compose it circulated extensively in Europe from the time of the crusades and supplied much material for the fiction of the Middle Ages. In the last century, too, poets have found a rich storehouse in the traditions of the days of "good Haroun Alraschid." The folktales of northern Europe, again, as represented by Celtic and Scandinavian sagas or by the modern German collection of the Grimms, have been the source of much lofty poetry and romance. Many a great play or poem goes back in substance to some bit of fairy mythology or to a single tale like that of a persecuted Cinderella, or of a father and son unwittingly engaged in mortal combat. The splendid romances of King Arthurs have derived many of their essential elements from popular sagas not very different in character from the account of Da DergaR printed in this series. In the hands of court poets or polite romancers the original stories were, of course, often disguised beyond easy recognition. Their motives were 5 H. C., xxxv, 103ff. 6 H. C., xlix, 199ff. changed, and they were transferred to the setting of a higher civilization. Oftener than not the authors who treated them were wholly unaware of the history or meaning of the material. Yet a chief result of the critical scholarship of the last hundred years has been to show how the highest products of literary art are derived from simple elements of popular tradition. CHARACTERISTICS OF POPULAR NARRATIVE From the historical point of view, then, popular fiction has an important place in literary education. But in and for itself also, without regard to historical standards, this great body of writings possesses a direct human interest not inferior to that of the literature of art. The works selected for the present series illustrate very well the varieties of the type and the phases of life with which it may be concerned. The collections of Andersen' and the Grimms offer, in general, the least complicated of narratives. The tales, or Märchen (as they have come to be called in English as well as in German), deal with simple episodes, localized, to be sure, but having for the most part no marked national or personal character. They are universal in appeal, and almost universal in actual occurrence wherever folklore has been collected. A very simple stage of narrative is likewise exhibited by the Æsopic fable. The hero tale of Ireland, on the other hand, is a more complex product. Here there is accumulation of episodes, with something like epic structure; and definite characters, half-historic and half-legendary, stand out as the heroes of the action. The localization is significant, and the stories reproduce the life and atmosphere of the northern heroic age. Both the narrative prose and the numerous poems that are interspersed in the sagas testify to the existence of a distinct literary tradition, still barbaric in many respects, in the old bardic schools. Finally, the "Arabian Nights" presents a still more elaborate development in a different direction. The fundamental elements again are beast fables, fairy lore, and popular anecdotes of love, prowess, or intrigue; but they are worked up under the influence of a rich and settled civilization and depict, with something like historic fullness, the 1 manners of the Mohammedan Middle Ages. The collection, ། 221 ff. 8 H. C., xvii, 47ff. 9 H. C., xvii, 11ff. |