During the past fifty or sixty years in the history of Romance linguistics, the erratic development of vowels in hiatus has constituted an ever recurring problem. Scholars have been little preotcupied with the subject except in so far as it touches the history of the number words (CL dŭo) and the possessive adjectives and pronouns (CL měus, tŭus, sŭus). A study of the latter led d'Ovidio to give the first account of any extent of the development of vowels in hiatus in a Romance tongue; he limited his study to Italian. At about the same time, Karl Brugmann was investigating the mode of development of vowels in hiatus in Latin and Greek. Although he was able to establish a fairly clear system of development for the forms in the ancient languages, further studies in Romance linguistics failed to clarify the issue for the modern languages. In 1893, Menger attempted to answer, at least tentatively, some of the outstanding questions incidental to the problem and cleared the atmosphere somewhat; his treatment was, however, primarily a development of the possessive pronoun and was limited to Italian. The work of scholars such as Meyer-Lubke led to mere tabulation of forms; other treatments have considered at most a set group of words, like the possessive pronouns, in the various languages or have dealt only with the multitude of dialectal forms in an area geographically restricted. In short, the development of vowels in hiatus in the whole of the Romance territory has never been the object of a comprehensive study.

Wyatt wished this riddle at the bottom of the Bay of Portugal. All earlier solutions (among which we find a sow pregnant with five pigs) have in common that, far from explaining the number paradox in the first part of the poem, they even offend against it. But when in a riddle we hit upon a paradox, we may be sure that it has something to do with the solution.

Eilífs pôrsdrâpa gilt als das schwierigste der mythologischen Skaldengedichte. Weder im Hinblick auf den Gesamtinhalt noch in Bezug auf Einzelfragen der Interpretation ist Einigkeit erzielt worden. Verantwortlich dafur ist weniger unsere mangelnde Kenntnis der Skaldenkunst als die schlechte Ueberlieferung.

In a now famous article published in 1920, “Comment on est passé de ce suis je à c'est moi”, Lucien Foulet described the evolution by which the neuter pronoun ce, once representing the predicative in the pronominal formula of identification, came, by a complicated system of analogies, to be felt as subject, thereby necessitating a change of construction from ce suis je, ce es tu, etc., to c'est moi, c'est toi, etc.

In dealing with the non-Latin stratum of the Hispanic lexicon, the Romance linguist is rarely prepared to reach definitive conclusions with respect to the etymology. His is primarily the duty of assembling the cognates, doublets, and derivatives, of determining the configuration of the word family, of establishing the range of meanings, of discovering, in figurative use, the underlying images. By linking widely disseminated reflexes and combining scattered relics of an ancient word into an organic whole, he implicitly rules out untenable etymological bases, narrows down the choice of plausible solutions, and passes on a carefully classified set of data to a fellow scholar who may have the competence to integrate the unknown word family into a lexical system familiar to him, be it Iberian, Celtic, Visigothic, or Arabic. The fruitfulness of this preliminary analysis and systematization may be illustrated with the case of Spanish desmoronar, Portuguese esb(o)roar “to crumble.”

Giraut de Bornelh liked to discuss the question of whether a poet should make the products of his muse understandable to everybody (trobar leu), or adhere to a more obscure, hermetic type of poetry accessible only to a few adepts (trobar clus). In none of his poems is he so positive about the preferability of a simple style as in the well-known tenso with Linhaure and the song A penas sai comensar (Gr. 242,11; ed. Kolsen, No. 4). It is probably the latter that caused his princely interlocutor to start a poetical controversy on this topic with the troubadour, the above-named tenso. In fact, three stanzas of Gr. 242,11 deal with this problem. It is the third of them that interests us here, because it contains the phrase ab so que. It runs thus in Kolsen's edition:

Ja, pos volrai clus trobar,
no cut aver man parer
3 ab so que ben ai mester
a far una leu chanso;
qu'eu cut c'atretan grans sens
6 es, qui sap razo gardar,
com los motz entrebeschar.

In an article published in this periodical Professor James G. Southworth has reopened the question of the pronunciation or non-pronunciation of Chaucer's unstressed -e in rhyme, and has come to the conclusion that this -e was not sounded in Chaucer's time, and should not now be sounded by readers of his poetry. With Professor Southworth's conclusion many students of Chaucer will undoubtedly sympathize. The modern ear is trained to hear poetry read for the sense as dictated by the syntax, and without regard for any claims that the individual line may have to being treated as a vocal unit distinct from its neighbors. Such a reading is often made difficult by the sounding of the final -e, which tends to prolong the pause. Yet despite the attractiveness of Professor Southworth's argument there are several aspects of it that should, in view of the importance of the subject, be examined in detail before we altogether abandon the -e in rhyme. To make such an examination is the purpose of this paper.

The metrical romance Sir Launfal, with its six Middle English versions and two French sources, is rich in material for an investigation of one phase of practical literary criticism in Mediaeval England. Each redactor of the story made certain changes, which when compared with the changes made by the others, and when classified and analyzed with them will not only yield information about the editorial practice of the redactors but will also reveal something of their theory of literary criticism. Such an investigation of the English versions of Sir Launfal, however, must be postponed until the relationships of these to their sources can be made clear. The views so far advanced regarding the relationship of Lanval and Graelent show that there is little agreement on, and hence no satisfactory clarification of, the point.

There are as many defenses of poetry in the Renaissance as there are literary critics but the one name that comes most frequently to mind is that of Sidney. The reason is clear. Most critics embodied what they had to say in defense of poetry in formal, critical treatises. Sidney, with a better sense of drama, wrote his as a separate manifesto. It is known that Julius Caesar Scaliger devoted considerable energy in his Poetices Libri Septem to replying to the charges against poetry. What is less well known is that he, too, tried his hand at a separate defense of poetry which he called Contra Poetices Calumniatores Declamatio. This interesting composition is buried in the seldom read edition of his letters and orations first published in 1600, forty-two years after his death. This work deserves to be known because it puts into brief form, and in emotional language, several of the leading ideas of Poetices Libri Septem. Since it breathes defiance of the unpolished slanderers of literature who surrounded him in Agen and hints at the difficulties which he faced there, it is, also, of considerable biographical interest.

Chievrefueil,the shortest and perhaps the most charming of the lays by Marie de France, has troubled critics because, unlike her other poems, it seems to lack clarity. Is it not fair to assume, however, that in this instance the usual limpidity and forthrightness of Marie's narrative style may have been clouded by her modern interpreters, rather than by Marie herself? I hope to show that to her mediaeval audience the lovely lines of Chievrefueil presented no difficulties whatsoever, needed no esoteric subtleties for their understanding, and that their Old Norse translator as well as the scribes of both our surviving manuscripts readily comprehended Marie's lucid phrases.

The Salbenkrämerspiel (Mercator Play) occupies a place of unique importance in the history and development of the secular drama in German literature. From almost the beginning of Western drama as it slowly emerged from the Easter Mass, through the Latin Festival Plays of the thirteenth century, to the complete secularization and nationalization of this play in the Fastnachtspiele of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the development of the Salbenkrämerspiel has been the subject of special investigation by many eminent scholars.

One of the most familiar figures in Arthurian romance is the Besieged Lady, whose beleaguered castle is liberated by a young and obscure knight, and who rewards her deliverer with an offer of her love. So ubiquitous is she, in fact, that it is easy to dismiss her as an Arthurian commonplace. But even commonplaces must originate somewhere. Since the Besieged Ladies are by no means stereotyped replicas of one another, it is difficult to believe that all versions of the story derive from the earliest extant text. More probably, the story of the Besieged Lady and her troubles is a traditional narrative pattern which became a favorite with the romancers not only because of its beguiling aspects but also because of its adaptability to their concept of chivalry. A study of the more significant versions of this remarkably malleable theme will help us to discern the underlying traditions and their complex development.