The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination

by DANIEL J. BOORSTIN

  Of the many translations of Greek drama, among the most accessible are David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds., The Complete Greek Tragedies (4 vols., 1959), and Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O’Neill, Jr., eds. The Complete Greek Drama (2 vols., 1938).

  Chapter 26. The Arts of Prose and Persuasion. For the Arts of Memory, see my The Discoverers, Chapter 60. In addition to the general works above, for ancient Greek education, see: H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (1956); William M. Small, ed. and trans., Quintillian on Education (1966). For prose, rhetoric, and oratory: J. B. Bury, The Ancient Greek Historians (1958); J. F. Dobson, The Greek Orators (1919); George Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (1963); Ivan M. Linfooth, Solon the Athenian (1919). And for the relation of rhetoric to philosophy, Bertrand Russell’s stimulating and opinionated History of Western Philosophy (1945). Texts of Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle are available in The Great Books of the Western World. These and other Greek classics are in numerous translations and paperback editions, including the Penguin Classics. Of Plutarch’s many translations, that by T. North (1599) was a sourcebook for Shakespeare, but the fluent translation by John Dryden has been most popular through the centuries. Convenient access to the major Greek historians in some of the best translations is Francis R. B. Godolphin, ed., The Greek Historians (2 vols., 1942).

  BOOK TWO: RE-CREATING THE WORLD

  Part VI: Otherworldly Elements

  For the legacy of the Middle Ages there is no more delightful introduction than Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages (1970), and J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1970), to liberate us from the stereotypes that Henry Adams’s Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1913, 1986) and his Education (1918, 1974) did much to create. Another antidote is Lynn White, Jr., Dynamo and Virgin Reconsidered (1971). We must not forget that Gibbon’s Decline and Fall does not end till 1453 and has much to tell us about this era. For particular topics, The Encyclopedia of Religion and The Dictionary of the Middle Ages. And for background: Henri Pirenne’s elegant and cogent Mohammed and Charlemagne (1939), Medieval Cities (1952); H. O. Taylor’s suggestive The Medieval Mind (2 vols., 4th ed., 1930); E. K. Rand, Founders of the Middle Ages (1928, 1982); William Anderson, Dante the Maker (1980); Christopher Dawson, The Making of Europe (1956), and the deft collection of documents in The Portable Medieval Reader (1967).

  Chapter 27. The Consoling Past. For Boethius’s life, see Margaret Gibson, ed., Boethius, His Life, Thought and Influence (1981); and for his afterlife, Howard Rollin Patch, The Tradition of Boethius (1935). The Consolation of Philosophy (V. E. Watts, trans., 1969) is conveniently available in a Penguin paperback; and see Boethius, Fundamentals of Music (Calvin M. Bower, trans., 1969), and The Theological Tractates (H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand, trans., 1918).

  Chapter 28. The Music of the Word. For background and special topics, in addition to the general works above, the cogent New Harvard Dictionary of Music (Don Michael Randel, ed., 1986) and the New Oxford Companion to Music (2 vols., Denis Arnold, ed., rev. 1990) help us before taking the plunge into the copious New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (20 vols., Stanley Sadie, ed., 1980). Two excellent durable works for putting the music in context: Hugo Leichentritt, Music, History, and Ideas (1939); Paul Henry Lang, Music in Western Civilization (1941); and the textbook Donald Jay Grout, A History of Western Music (rev. 1973). For the period, lively texts: Willi Apel, Gregorian Chant (2d ed., 1966), Medieval Music (1986); Richard H. Hoppin, Medieval Music (1978); Andrew Hughes, Medieval Music: The Sixth Liberal Art (1980). For comprehensive lives: F. Homes Dudden, Life and Times of St. Ambrose (2 vols., 1935), Gregory the Great: His Place in History and Thought (2 vols., 1967). For Saint Augustine’s De Musica, there is a synopsis (by W. F. Jackson Knight, 1979) and a collection of essays, Augustine on Music (Richard H. LaCrois, ed., 1988).

  Chapter 29. An Architecture of Light. For a lively introduction to the age, begin with Amy Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings (1959), then Georges Duby, The Age of the Cathedrals: Art and Society 980–1420 (1981). On Suger and St.-Denis we are fortunate in having Otto von Simson’s brilliant and cogent The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order (1988). For a scintillating exploration of the connections with medieval thought: Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, and for the documents that have luckily survived, Erwin Panofsky, ed., Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church at St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures (2d. ed., 1979). Detailed studies: Sumner McK. Crosby, The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis, from Its Beginnings to the Death of Suger, 475–1151 (Pamela Z. Blum, ed., 1987), The Apostle Bas-Relief at Saint-Denis (1972), and The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis in the Time of Abbot Suger (1122–1151), a catalog of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1981). For the rich afterlife: Paul Frankl, The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations through Eight Centuries (1960) and a classic study by Émile Mâle, Religious Art from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century (1949); Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival (new ed., 1962), a Penguin paperback. And the views of recent scholars, Paula Lieber Gerson, ed., Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis, a Symposium (1986).

  Chapter 30. Adventures in Death. Coming to Dante anew, as some English readers will, it is hard not to be daunted by his “divine” reputation and the copious literature. T. S. Eliot, an adorer of Dante, can lead us with his essay in Selected Essays (1932). A good factual introduction and guide into the literature is Robert Hollander’s article in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages. William Anderson, Dante the Maker (1980) helps us into Dante’s world by treating his work straightforwardly as the visions of a believer, as does Jaroslav Pelikan, Eternal Feminines: Three Theological Allegories in Dante’s Paradiso (1990), which can be compared with Erich Auerbach, Dante: Poet of the Secular World (1961), and E. K. Rand, Founders of the Middle Ages (1982). Ricardo J. Quinones, Dante (1985) provides a concise guide to the relation between Dante’s life and his writings. Paget Toynbee, Dante Alighieri (6th ed., 1924) remains useful, with his study of the afterlife, Dante in English Literature (2 vols., 1909). For the institutions and literature of courtly love, see C. S. Lewis’s delightful The Allegory of Love (1936, 1985). For English readers, the definitive scholarly edition with commentary is by Charles S. Singleton, The Divine Comedy (6 vols., 1970–75). The most appealing and accessible recent translations with commentary are by Dorothy Sayers in Penguin Classics (1949) and by John Ciardi in Mentor paperback (1954–1970).

  Part VII. The Human Comedy: A Composite Work

  For background to these chapters on heroes of the Vanguard Word, we must see how the written word was diffused and circulated, both before and after printing and the coming of movable type to the West. See my The Discoverers, Chapters 60–68. We must not forget that “Littera Script Manet” was written by Horace long before words were circulated in print. On what the printed book did and how: Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book (1976); Sandra Hindman and James Douglas Farquhar, Pen to Press (1977); H. J. Chaytor, From Script to Print … Medieval Vernacular Literature (1976). And for a broader view of the role of print in Western culture: A Short History of the Printed Word (1970); John Carter and Percy H. Muir, eds., Printing and the Mind of Man (1967), a guide to an exhibit of “The Impact of Print on Five Centuries of Western Civilization,” an invaluable compendium of facts on the first entry into print of works that have made a difference. An admirable anthology with concise biographies of authors is The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces (4th ed., 2 vols., 1979). And there are comparable Norton anthologies of English and American literature. For guidance into the vocabulary of literary criticism and jargon, see M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (5th ed., 1988).

  Chapter 31. Escaping the Plague. For the context in Boccaccio’s time, see Barbara Tuchman’s engrossing A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century (1978); William H. McNeill, Plagues and People (1976). And for a scholarly and readable biography: Thomas G. Bergin, Boccaccio (1981). Until recently the most widely circula
ting English translation of The Decameron was the stilted version of (1978) John Payne (1928), with an introduction by Sir Walter Raleigh. G. E. McWilliam’s translation for the Penguin Classics is more colloquial. My favorite is the vigorous version by Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella (Mentor paperback, 1982), with an introduction by Thomas Bergin.

  Chapter 32. Joys of Pilgrimage. For pilgrimage as a path to discovery, see my The Discoverers, Chapter 15, and the Reference Notes there to Part V. The Dictionary of the Middle Ages provides readable essays on people, places, and institutions. Lively and learned essays on the background: J. J. Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages (4th ed., 1950); G. G. Coulton, Chaucer and His England (8th ed., 1963); Boris Ford, ed., The Age of Chaucer (1961). Enticing introductions to the man and his works: G. L. Kittredge, Chaucer and His Poetry (1925); J. L. Lowes, Geoffrey Chaucer and the Development of His Genius (1934), Geoffrey Chaucer of England (1951). A comprehensive biography: Donald R. Howard, Chaucer (1987). For Chaucer’s text the most accessible is F. N. Robinson, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (2d ed., 1957) with unobtrusive glossaries; and for an appealing “modernized” version of selections, Theodore Morrison, The Portable Chaucer (1949). Few other English authors have been so extensively and enthusiastically written about. An up-to-date selective bibliography is found in the latest edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  Chapter 33. “In the Land of Booze and Bibbers.” Readers should not be discouraged from tasting the outrageous Rabelais by the bulk of Gargantua and Pantagruel, by his awesome classic status, or the wilderness of scholarship that surrounds him. Despite his verbosity and his ability to make ten words do the work of one, Rabelais’s chapters can stand alone to open his wonderful world of the absurd. We can begin, for example, with Chapter 13 of Gargantua in J. M. Cohen’s robust unadulterated translation (a Penguin Classics paperback), which gives even fecal matter some comic charm without barnyard vulgarity. For biography: Donald M. Frame, Rabelais (1977); M. A. Screech, The Rabelaisian Marriage … Rabelais’s religion, ethics and comic philosophy (1958); Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (1968), a suggestive but labored Marxist view. Every reader will have to decide for himself whether Rabelais deserved to be the eponym for “Rabelaisian,” which the dictionary defines as “broadly and coarsely humorous.” Rabelais was introduced to English readers by the lively free translations of Sir Thomas Urquhart (Books I and II, 1653; Book III, 1693–94) and Pierre Motteux (Books IV and V, 1693–94), reprinted in the Everyman Classics. Samuel Putnam’s Introduction is helpful, with a selection of translations from all the books in The Portable Rabelais (1946).

  Chapter 34. Adventures in Madness. For the English-language reader there is no better introduction to Cervantes than Carlos Fuentes’s eloquent foreword and introduction to Tobias Smollett’s translation (“a novelist’s translation”) of 1755, with Smollett’s own brief life of Cervantes recently reprinted in an attractive paperback by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. For other insights into his life: William J. Entwhistle, Cervantes (1940); the detailed James Fitzmaurice-Kelley, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: a Memoir (1913); Rudolph Schevill, Cervantes (1919, 1966). And for some stimulating suggestions: Salvador de Madariaga, Don Quixote: An Introductory Essay in Psychology (1961); Josef F. Mora, Unamuno: A Philosophy of Tragedy (1962); José Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art (1968). The first notable English translation (done freely in 1712) by the same Pierre Motteux who translated Rabelais was often republished with revisions. The translation (1949) by Samuel Putnam with notes in the Modern Library became the Anglo-American standard, and he has provided an attractive Portable Cervantes (1951), with selections from Don Quixote and Exemplary Novels, along with Cervantes’s Farewell to Life. J. M. Cohen has given us his translation in the Penguin Classics (1950) that matches his Rabelais in colloquial fluency.

  Chapter 35. The Spectator Reborn. Of the countless editions of Shakespeare, I have found most helpful The Riverside Shakespeare (2 vols., 1974), with a conveniently glossed text, lively introductions by Harry Levin and others, chronologies, and facts about Shakespeare and the Elizabethan scene. And see G. B. Harrison, Introducing Shakespeare (3d ed., 1968), a Penguin book. In the vast Shakespearean literature it is easy to get lost and wander away from what Shakespeare wrote. For biography I have enjoyed Marchette Chute, Shakespeare of London (1949) and S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare’s Lives (1970; 1991). For the theater: Bernard Beckerman, Shakespeare at the Globe, 1599–1609 (1962); H. S. Bennett, Shakespeare’s Audience: Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy (1944); Gerald E. Bentley, The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare’s Time, 1590–1642 (1971); and the copious E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (4 vols., 1923). On the background: Boris Ford, ed., The Age of Shakespeare (1964); John Dover Wilson, ed., Life in Shakespeare’s England: A Book of Elizabethan Prose (1949); Kenneth Muir, ed., A New Companion to Shakespeare Studies (1968); David Riggs, Ben Jonson (1989). Samples of the vast critical literature: A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (1904); Theodore Spencer, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man (2d ed., 1966); C. L. Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy (1959); Edwin Wilson, ed., Shaw on Shakespeare (1961).

  A history of Shakespearean criticism would be a history of English literature since his time. For me the most rewarding Shakespearean criticism is by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who once called this his most important contribution to literature, to be sampled in his Shakespearean Criticism (T. M. Raysor, ed., 2 vols., 1930) or Coleridge on Shakespeare (R. A. Foakes, ed., 1971). To sense the captiousness and intensity of Shakespeare scholarship, look at the New Variorum Shakespeare (H. H. Furness et al., eds., 1871–), frequently reissued and supplemented, and E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems (2 vols., 1930). The “Shakespearean Literature” is a microcosm of the possibilities, follies, and frustrations of literary critics. Long before deconstruction, they industriously explored the possibilities that Shakespeare was someone else (perhaps Francis Bacon or the Earl of Oxford), or did not exist. Glimpse some of these theories in S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare’s Lives. For recapturing half-remembered lines, see the comprehensive Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare, Marvin Spevack, ed. (1973). For the afterlife of Shakespeare in twentieth-century technologies: Peter S. Donaldson, Shakespearean Screen: An International Filmography and Videography (1990).

  Chapter 36. The Freedom to Choose. A convenient introduction is Douglas Bush, ed., The Portable Milton (1949), with all the major poems and a selection of prose, including Of Education, Areopagitica, and some autobiographical passages. An elegant brief introduction to the relation of the life to the works is David Daiches, Milton (1957). We are fortunate in having the now-standard biography, William Riley Parker, Milton (2 vols. 1968), copious, subtle, and delightfully readable. This displaces David Masson’s Life of Milton (7 vols., 1859–94), which like some other “classics” of literary history is now remembered for having been forgotten. For a surrogate autobiography, see J. S. Diekhoff, Milton on Himself (2d ed., 1965). For a guide into the Milton literature, see James Holly Hanford and James G. Taaffe, A Milton Handbook (5th ed., 1970). Like Shakespeare, Milton provides a point of reference for a full history of English literature since his time: John T. Shaw-cross, ed., Milton: The Critical Heritage (1970); Joseph A. Wittreich, Jr., The Romantics on Milton (1970). For background, see: E. M. Tillyard, Milton (rev. ed., 1966); Douglas Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century (2d ed., 1962). A convenient edition of the prose: Malcolm W. Wallace, Milton’s Prose (1925) in the World’s Classics. A comprehensive one-volume annotated scholarly edition: Complete Poems and Major Prose, M. Y. Hughes, ed. (1957). The many editions and the vast critical literature attest to Milton’s power to stir the most diverse readers—from C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942) to Isaac Asimov’s popular annotated Paradise Lost (1974). Dr. Johnson disliked Milton’s “foreign idiom.” William Blake found him “a true Poet, and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” Interest has focused on the role of Satan as h
ero, and Paradise Lost has had an uncanny appeal to illustrators, including William Blake (1806), J.M.W. Turner (1835), and Gustave Doré (1866).

  Chapter 37. Sagas of Ancient Empire. The reader will share my passion for Gibbon’s History by beginning with the eloquent and seductive Chapter 01, then turning to the provocative Chapters 15 and 16 on the rise of Christianity. Though available in many scholarly reprints, Gibbon is best read in the edition by J. B. Bury (7 vols., 2d ed., 1926), with illustrations, maps, helpful appendixes and notes on how later scholars have revised or added to Gibbon’s story. I recommend reading a volume or two of Gibbon unabridged rather than a one-volume selection, like that of D. M. Low (1960). The best introduction to Gibbon’s life is his own Memoirs of My Life and Writing, which was edited and published by his friend and executor, Lord Sheffield, as the Autobiography of Edward Gibbon. This, itself a classic of its kind and a pioneer in the paths marked off by Montaigne (see below, Chapter 56), is handily available with an introduction by J. B. Bury in the World’s Classics. The best short life until now is the readable Roy Porter, Gibbon: Making History (1988). For details of the life and writings we have the scrupulous and exhaustive works of Patricia B. Craddock, Young Edward Gibbon: Gentleman of Letters (1988), Edward Gibbon, Luminous Historian, 1772–1794 (1989), Edward Gibbon: A Reference Guide (1987).