'the most influential English literary historian and critic of the early 20th century. His lively style and wide knowledge helped make his works both popular and authoritative.
'Disappointed at not getting a fellowship at Merton College, Oxford (M.A., 1868), Saintsbury spent almost a decade as a schoolmaster, at the same time beginning a lifelong study of French literature... The appearance of his essay on Baudelaire in the Fortnightly Review in 1875 caught the attention of the literary world. When a school at which he was teaching failed in 1876, he decided to write for a living. He contributed 35 biographies and the article on French literature for the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed., 1875–89). He was an unorthodox critic of French literature, but his Primer of French Literature (1880), A Short History of French Literature (1882), and Specimens of French Literature from Villon to Hugo (1883) all had great success. In 1881 his study of Dryden (“English Men of Letters Series”) was the first of his extensive writings on English literature. Specimens of English Prose Style from Malory to Macaulay (1885) and A History of Elizabethan Literature (1887) followed.
'In 1895 Saintsbury was appointed to the Regius chair of rhetoric and English literature at the University of Edinburgh. He continued his writing while at Edinburgh, producing, among other works, A Short History of English Literature (1898) and A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day, 3 vol. (1900–04), one of the first surveys of critical literary theory and practice from ancient Greek to modern times. He also wrote A History of English Prosody from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day, 3 vol. (1906–10); the supplementary Historical Manual of English Prosody (1910); and the complementary History of English Prose Rhythm (1912). He retired from his professorship in 1915.
'Saintsbury continued his writing with The Peace of the Augustans: A Survey of Eighteenth Century Literature as a Place of Rest and Refreshment (1916)... Saintsbury’s Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, 3 vol. (1921), helped revive interest in 17th-century poetry, as did his editions of Dryden and Shadwell for Restoration drama.
'Saintsbury was the foremost practitioner of the so-called conversational school of criticism; he analyzed the style of literary works and the development of literary forms in an informal, lively, and readable prose designed as much to stimulate and entertain as to inform. Saintsbury deliberately formulated no philosophy of criticism; however, certain principles underlie his writing: extensive reading, intuitive appreciation, comparative assessment, and ranking. Though a more rigorous approach has replaced his copious, wide-ranging writing, he opened the way to a broad view of Western literature and, by his diverse enthusiasms, emphasized enjoyment as literature’s primary aim.'
There are a few odd things about Britannica's summary regarding Saintsbury. But first let's look at a passage from the first of the three volume
A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day: Classical and mediæval criticism (1908).
'.... For the great, the immense value, of the literature of the Middle Ages, consists in its freshness and independence, and the consequent fashion in which new literary bents and faculties of the human mind were manifested. The Greeks had, at any rate so far as we know, neither the advantage nor the disadvantage of any precedent literature before them, but their spirit of theory and of philosophising, while it helped to concentrate and intensify the peculiar virtue of their product, tended also to narrow and stereotype their range. Latin suffered from the double drawback of system and model. And modern literature itself has not with all its achievements, been able to free itself from the inevitable consequences of ancestry. It is a great deal too literary; it has in almost all cases the obsession of the library and the printed book upon it. ...[I]t has all sorts of cants... unacknowledged and often unconscious trammels and twitches. Its fountains are very rarely of living water; they are fed from carefully constructed and collected reservoirs, if not by positive distillation from the great sea of older literature....
'[T]he Middle Ages and their literature present a spectacle which is exactly the reverse of this. The authors have the appearance of following [but] they are really straying each at the dictation of his own tastes and instincts only. You may as well try to teach a cat to do anything in any but her own way as a mediaeval writer. When he copies a Romance he will change the names if he does nothing else but probably he will do much else, writing it in sixains if his model is in couplets, in decasyllables if his original is octosyllabic and so forth. Nothing shall induce him to keep historical distinctions or philosophical differences. His hero shall be as beautiful as Paris of Troy or Absalom ...[H]is story of Alexander shall blend sober history and the wildest fiction with a coolness which is only not reckless because it does not see anything to reck. Formal restrictions of the minor kind, prosodic and other, he will observe devoutly because they come naturally to him and are of his own devising but any restrictions of literary theory he utterly ignores. His Muse will wear no stays though she does not disdain ornaments. The reward of this obedience to Nature was signal.
'In the first place the Middle Ages created or practically created the STORY. Of course there were stories before, of course the Odyssey would be the best story in the world, if, of the main elements of Romance- Passion and Mystery -one were a little more developed, and is almost the best story in the world as it is. Of course there are capital fabliaux in Herodotus, fine apologues in Plato, good things of other kinds elsewhere But the ancients not only hampered themselves by almost always telling their longer stories in verse but seldom knew how to manage them in verse or prose.'
Britannica refers to Saintsbury as 'early 20th century', as part of a 'conversational trend', as exhibiting 'diverse enthusiasms'. Such struggling for a vague and lackluster summary reveals the inability of scholars to deal with a talent and genius as original as that of George Saintsbury.
'Disappointed at not getting a fellowship at Merton College, Oxford (M.A., 1868), Saintsbury spent almost a decade as a schoolmaster, at the same time beginning a lifelong study of French literature... The appearance of his essay on Baudelaire in the Fortnightly Review in 1875 caught the attention of the literary world. When a school at which he was teaching failed in 1876, he decided to write for a living. He contributed 35 biographies and the article on French literature for the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed., 1875–89). He was an unorthodox critic of French literature, but his Primer of French Literature (1880), A Short History of French Literature (1882), and Specimens of French Literature from Villon to Hugo (1883) all had great success. In 1881 his study of Dryden (“English Men of Letters Series”) was the first of his extensive writings on English literature. Specimens of English Prose Style from Malory to Macaulay (1885) and A History of Elizabethan Literature (1887) followed.
'In 1895 Saintsbury was appointed to the Regius chair of rhetoric and English literature at the University of Edinburgh. He continued his writing while at Edinburgh, producing, among other works, A Short History of English Literature (1898) and A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day, 3 vol. (1900–04), one of the first surveys of critical literary theory and practice from ancient Greek to modern times. He also wrote A History of English Prosody from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day, 3 vol. (1906–10); the supplementary Historical Manual of English Prosody (1910); and the complementary History of English Prose Rhythm (1912). He retired from his professorship in 1915.
'Saintsbury continued his writing with The Peace of the Augustans: A Survey of Eighteenth Century Literature as a Place of Rest and Refreshment (1916)... Saintsbury’s Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, 3 vol. (1921), helped revive interest in 17th-century poetry, as did his editions of Dryden and Shadwell for Restoration drama.
'Saintsbury was the foremost practitioner of the so-called conversational school of criticism; he analyzed the style of literary works and the development of literary forms in an informal, lively, and readable prose designed as much to stimulate and entertain as to inform. Saintsbury deliberately formulated no philosophy of criticism; however, certain principles underlie his writing: extensive reading, intuitive appreciation, comparative assessment, and ranking. Though a more rigorous approach has replaced his copious, wide-ranging writing, he opened the way to a broad view of Western literature and, by his diverse enthusiasms, emphasized enjoyment as literature’s primary aim.'
There are a few odd things about Britannica's summary regarding Saintsbury. But first let's look at a passage from the first of the three volume
A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day: Classical and mediæval criticism (1908).
'.... For the great, the immense value, of the literature of the Middle Ages, consists in its freshness and independence, and the consequent fashion in which new literary bents and faculties of the human mind were manifested. The Greeks had, at any rate so far as we know, neither the advantage nor the disadvantage of any precedent literature before them, but their spirit of theory and of philosophising, while it helped to concentrate and intensify the peculiar virtue of their product, tended also to narrow and stereotype their range. Latin suffered from the double drawback of system and model. And modern literature itself has not with all its achievements, been able to free itself from the inevitable consequences of ancestry. It is a great deal too literary; it has in almost all cases the obsession of the library and the printed book upon it. ...[I]t has all sorts of cants... unacknowledged and often unconscious trammels and twitches. Its fountains are very rarely of living water; they are fed from carefully constructed and collected reservoirs, if not by positive distillation from the great sea of older literature....
'[T]he Middle Ages and their literature present a spectacle which is exactly the reverse of this. The authors have the appearance of following [but] they are really straying each at the dictation of his own tastes and instincts only. You may as well try to teach a cat to do anything in any but her own way as a mediaeval writer. When he copies a Romance he will change the names if he does nothing else but probably he will do much else, writing it in sixains if his model is in couplets, in decasyllables if his original is octosyllabic and so forth. Nothing shall induce him to keep historical distinctions or philosophical differences. His hero shall be as beautiful as Paris of Troy or Absalom ...[H]is story of Alexander shall blend sober history and the wildest fiction with a coolness which is only not reckless because it does not see anything to reck. Formal restrictions of the minor kind, prosodic and other, he will observe devoutly because they come naturally to him and are of his own devising but any restrictions of literary theory he utterly ignores. His Muse will wear no stays though she does not disdain ornaments. The reward of this obedience to Nature was signal.
'In the first place the Middle Ages created or practically created the STORY. Of course there were stories before, of course the Odyssey would be the best story in the world, if, of the main elements of Romance- Passion and Mystery -one were a little more developed, and is almost the best story in the world as it is. Of course there are capital fabliaux in Herodotus, fine apologues in Plato, good things of other kinds elsewhere But the ancients not only hampered themselves by almost always telling their longer stories in verse but seldom knew how to manage them in verse or prose.'
Britannica refers to Saintsbury as 'early 20th century', as part of a 'conversational trend', as exhibiting 'diverse enthusiasms'. Such struggling for a vague and lackluster summary reveals the inability of scholars to deal with a talent and genius as original as that of George Saintsbury.
No comments:
Post a Comment