Hippolyte Taine - History of English Literature (Vol. 1-3)

Hippolyte Taine

e-artnow, 2021

Contact: info@e-artnow.org

EAN 4066338118875

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Table of Contents Table of Contents Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3

INTRODUCTION

I. Historical documents serve only as a clue to reconstruct the visible individual

II. The outer man is only a clue to study the inner invisible man

III. The state and the actions of the inner and invisible man have their causes in certain general ways of thought and feeling

IV. Chief causes of thought and feeling. Their historical effects

V. The three primordial forces.—Race

VI. History is a mechanical and psychological problem. Within certain limits man can foretell

VII. Law of formation of a group. Examples and indications

VIII. General problem and future of history. Psychological method. Value of literature. Purpose in writing this book

BOOK I.—THE SOURCE CHAPTER FIRST - The Saxons

SECTION I.—The Coast of the North Sea

SECTION II.—The Northern Barbarians

SECTION III.—Saxon Ideas

SECTION IV.—Saxon Heroes

SECTION V.—Pagan Poems

SECTION VI.—Christian Poems

SECTION VII.—Primitive Saxon Authors

SECTION VIII.—Virility of the Saxon Race

CHAPTER SECOND - The Normans

SECTION I.—The Feudal Man

SECTION II.—Normans and Saxons Contrasted

SECTION III.—French Forms of Thought

SECTION IV.—The Normans in England

SECTION V.—The English Tongue—Early English Literary Impulses

SECTION VI.—Feudal Civilization

SECTION VII.—Persistence of Saxon Ideas

SECTION VIII.—The English Constitution

SECTION IX.—Piers Plowman and Wyclif

CHAPTER THIRD - The New Tongue

SECTION I.—The First Great Poet

SECTION II.—The Decline of the Middle Ages

SECTION III.—The Poetry of Chaucer

SECTION IV.—Characteristics of the Canterbury Tales

SECTION V.—The Art of Chaucer

SECTION VI.—Scholastic Philosophy

BOOK II.—THE RENAISSANCE

CHAPTER FIRST - The Pagan Renaissance

Part I.—Manners of the Time

SECTION I.—Ideas of the Middle Ages

SECTION II.—Growth of New Ideas

SECTION III.—Popular Festivals

SECTION IV.—Influence of Classic Literature

Part II.—Poetry

SECTION I.—Renaissance of Saxon Genius

SECTION II.—The Earl of Surrey

SECTION III.—Surrey's Style

SECTION IV.—Development of Artistic Ideas

SECTION V.—Wherein Lies the Strength of the Poetry of this Period

SECTION VI.—Edmund Spenser

SECTION VII.—Spenser in his Relation to the Renaissance

Part III.—Prose

SECTION I.—The Decay of Poetry

SECTION II.—The Intellectual Level of the Renaissance

SECTION III.—Robert Burton

SECTION IV.—Sir Thomas Browne

SECTION V.—Francis Bacon

CHAPTER SECOND - The Theatre

SECTION I.—The Public and the Stage

SECTION II.—Manners of the Sixteenth Century

SECTION III.—Some Aspects of the English Mind

SECTION IV.—The Poets of the Period

SECTION V.—Formation of the Drama

SECTION VI.—Furious Passions—Exaggerated Characters

SECTION VII.—Female Characters

CHAPTER THIRD - Ben Jonson

SECTION I.—The Man—His Life

SECTION II.—His Freedom and Precision of Style

SECTION III.—The Dramas Catiline and Sejanus

SECTION IV.—Comedies

SECTION V.—Limits of Jonson's Talent—His Smaller Poems—His Masques

SECTION VI.—General Idea of Shakespeare

CHAPTER FOURTH - Shakespeare

SECTION I.—Life and Character of Shakespeare

SECTION II.—Shakespeare's Style—Copiousness—Excesses

SECTION III.—Shakespeare's Language And Manners

SECTION IV.—Dramatis Personæ

SECTION V.—Men of Wit

SECTION VI.—Shakespeare's Women

SECTION VII.—Types of Villains

SECTION VIII.—Principal Characters

SECTION IX.—Characteristics of Shakespeare's Genius

INDEX

Table of Contents

History, within a hundred years in Germany, and within sixty years in France, has undergone a transformation, owing to a study of literatures.

The discovery has been made that a literary work is not a mere play of the imagination, the isolated caprice of an excited brain, but a transcript of contemporary manners and customs and the sign of a particular state of intellect. The conclusion derived from this is that, through literary monuments, we can retrace the way in which men felt and thought many centuries ago. This method has been tried and found successful.

We have meditated over these ways of feeling and thinking and have accepted them as facts of prime significance. We have found that they were dependent on most important events, that they explain these, and that these explain them, and that henceforth it was necessary to give them their place in history, and one of the highest. This place has been assigned to them, and hence all is changed in history—the aim, the method, the instrumentalities, and the conceptions of laws and of causes. It is this change as now going on, and which must continue to go on, that is here attempted to be set forth.

On turning over the large stiff pages of a folio volume, or the yellow leaves of a manuscript, in short, a poem, a code of laws, a confession of faith, what is your first comment? You say to yourself that the work before you is not of its own creation. It is simply a mold like a fossil shell, an imprint similar to one of those forms embedded in a stone by an animal which once lived and perished. Beneath the shell was an animal and behind the document there was a man. Why do you study the shell unless to form some idea of the animal? In the same way do you study the document in order to comprehend the man; both shell and document are dead fragments and of value only as indications of the complete living being.