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(Stephen Swift & Co.) (William Briggs.)

English Literature, 1880-1905, J. M. Kennedy.
Treasury of Canadian Verse, Theodore H. Rand.
Anglo-Indian Literature, Edward F. Oaten. (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner,
& Co., Ltd.)

The Drama To-Day, Charlton Andrews. (J. B. Lippincott Company.)
The Development of Australian Literature, Turner & Sutherland. (Long-
mans, Green, & Co.)

Irish Plays and Playwrights, C. Weygandt. (Houghton Mifflin Company.) The Great English Short-story Writers, W. J. & C. W. Dawson. (Harper

and Brothers.)

American Writers of To-day, Henry C. Vedder.

Some American Story-Tellers, F. T. Cooper.

(Silver, Burdett, & Co.) (Henry Holt & Co.)

Some English Story-Tellers, F. T. Cooper. (Henry Holt & Co.)

See also Bibliography on The Short-story, in Chapter IX, pages 392 and

393.

CHAPTER IX

THE CHIEF TYPES OF LITERATURE

Their names. The chief types of literature are the Epic, the Drama, the Essay, the Novel, the Lyric, and the Shortstory. History, biography, philosophy, science, oratory are also immensely important. They are so important that literature would be worthless if they did not exist, for literature is based upon them, and yet very few histories, biographies, systems of philosophy, scientific treatises, or orations do not have their day and cease to be," while permanency is an essential quality of what we call literature.

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Their historical order. Each of these types of literature was a dominant type at some one time in the history of English literature, though at the present time Drama, Novel, and Shortstory rival each other in popularity, with the Short-story, perhaps, in the lead. The following table will be convenient in helping one to remember the periods during which the types became very important. It should be remembered, however, that in the case of the Epic the period in which it came to be very important did not give the greatest English epic. The greatest English epic is Milton's Paradise Lost, and that was written during the seventeenth century. Also it should be remembered that the Essay was not most important at the time when it became "very important." The essay was most important during the nineteenth century in the hands of Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, and others, but it first came to be very important in the eighteenth century. So that the following table

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is not intended to show when the types, in each case, were of greatest importance, but merely when they rose to be the temporarily dominant type and at the same time were very important.

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The logical time to begin the study of each of the types would be at the close of the study of the historical development of the literature during each of these periods, as indicated above, though it is not likely always to be convenient to begin at such points.

I. THE STUDY OF THE EPIC

Kinds of epic. The one distinctive mark of the epic upon which all agree is its narrative character. All poems whose purpose is primarily to tell a story are called epical. In many lyrics there is story, but the primary purpose of the lyric is not to tell the story. (See the section on The Lyric, pages 379-386.) All dramas tell stories, too, but the purpose of drama is primarily to show the reader characters in a certain situation. (See the section on The Drama, pages 359-366.)

The truest form of epic is sometimes called the "Grand" epic, sometimes the "authentic " as opposed to the "literary epic. Sometimes writers speak of the "authentic" epic as something that has "grown," while the "literary" epic is spoken of as having been " made." The grand epic is always a long poem. The grand epic has grown directly from the folk

stories of the early national life of a people. The Iliad of Homer is a complete national epic of the country of Greece, consisting of a series of stories which were passed about by word of mouth from one group of people to another until Homer, or "the weaver," wove the songs together into one fabric. The Teutonic Nibelungenlied is also a national epic, but less poetically perfect than the Iliad. In the tales about King Arthur in Britain there existed the material for another complete national epic, but it has never been written.

The Eneid of Virgil and the Paradise Lost of Milton are excellent examples of grand epics, but they can hardly be called authentic," because they were deliberately invented or made by writers in all their details and not composed of material furnished the writers by the singers of folk-stories. But while they are "literary" epics, they also are long poems. "The epic poet is like a painter who has to fill a large stretch of canvas, or he is like a sculptor who has to mold a colossal statue, or he is like a musician who has to fill a wide space with sounds." Therefore he always works upon a large scale.

Characteristics. - Underlying every great epic poem there is a struggle, amounting to a war between right and wrong. This is obvious in the grand epics we have already mentioned. Even in Tennyson's Idylls of the King, which consists of stories and scenes from the unwritten Arthurian epic, there is the war between right and wrong, disguised in the form of allegory. Tennyson himself in the epilogue describes his work

as an

old imperfect tale

New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul.

The great epic, whether "authentic" like the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied, or "literary" like the Eneid and the Paradise Lost, has a noble theme. Its theme is based upon the legends

of mythology and is always more or less religious in its nature. Its characters are heroic. They are gods, demi-gods, and heroes. The construction of the grand epic is simple, consisting of a series of stories strung like pearls upon the strand of the life of some great chief among the heroic personalities in the poem. Episodes, or stories that can be detached from the context and yet be complete stories, abound. The action is leisurely, though at times very vivid and tense.

The following classification of epic poems will indicate the chief kinds of epics besides the grand epic. It is only the older ballads that approach the grand or "authentic " epic in spontaneity.

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