It is a known fact that in Vegliotic Lat. ce (pronounced ke) is preserved, while ci (pronounced ki) becomes či: kaina < cēnam, kaira < cēram, plakár < placēre, takár < tacēre, akait < acētum, dekaja < dīcēbat, fakaja < ∗facēbat, kenúr < cēnāre, < cerebella, kris < ceres-, dik < decem, loik < lūcet, etc. etc.; but < cīmicem, kalčaina < calcīnam, radičaina < ∗rādīcīnam, vičain < uīcīnum, puarč < porcī, etc. etc. (cf. Bàrtoli, Dalm., ii, pp. 376 ff.). The same is true for ge with respect to gi: gelut < gelātum, Ragusean galatina < ∗gelatīnam, but Vegliotic spirač < asparagī.

Since the investigations of Konráð Gíslason, Bernhard Kahle and Hjalmar Falk nothing has appeared on Skaldic rime usage. Later authors on Old Germanic, and specifically Old Norse, verse technique add virtually nothing on this aspect of Skaldic art. Indeed, as in anatomy, little seems left to do here. The present study was suggested by an intensive reading of Einar Helgason's Vellekla, preparatory to translating it; when the observation obtruded itself that a remarkable use of interlinear hendings is made in this poem. In his commentary on it, Finnur Jónsson has this to say:

Reflective Englishmen of the seventh and eighth centuries, living under the transforming influence of classical and Christian ideas, must have satisfied a special need by revaluating their Germanic patrimony in terms of the new culture. In that process the Teutonic heritage naturally took on an added lustre wherever it lent itself to Christian interpretation. Beowulf more fully than any other English poem reflects that effort to assimilate and reappraise whereby the Germanic tradition from the Continent was ennobled by the new theology, as by a light flashed backward into the heroic past. Thus the career of the Danish king Heremod becomes an exemplum for a Christian homily on pride; Grendel, creature of northern fantasy, is placed in a Biblical lineage of evil reaching back to the first murder. The poet probably recognized, however, that his illumination of the past stopped short of perfect fusion of new and old, to say nothing of historical fidelity. Doubtless he was less disturbed than we are by vestiges of his pagan sources that lie awkwardly in the matrix of his Christian prepossessions. He had the advantage of knowing what he meant when, for example, he used terms of various and elastic connotation like wyrd. Also, if I am not mistaken, he saw his divergent materials in relation to a great central truth, an underlying principle which enabled him to recognize a larger unity in his fabulous tales than appears on the surface, and which made them in his eyes more worthy to survive in a reflective poem of epic magnitude.

L'étymologie de la particule anc. française mon, qui se trouve encore dans des passages fameux du théâtre classique (“Ça mon vraiment! il y a fort à gagner à fréquenter vos nobles!”, Molière, Bourg. gent.iii, 3; “Ardez, vraiment, c'est mon, on vous l'endurera,” Corneille, Galerie du Palais, v. 1392), est loin d'être sûrement établie. “Ce petit mot a fait verser des flots d'encre,” nous dit Livet, Lex. de Mol., s.v., ça mon: il a inspiré aux philologues depuis Silvius (1531), R. Estienne et J. Thierry, jusqu'à Ebeling (1900) les explications les plus fantaisistes (v. pour la bibliographie, en outre de Livet, Behrens, Beitr. z. frz. Wortgeschichte, p. 305): multum, meum, munde, minus, germ, mund, suédois monne, grec. et (c'est la dernière, la plus phantastique, qui avait séduit l'esprit bizarre d'un Furetière et qu'un Ebeling, grave et vétilleux élève de Tobler, devait rééditer). On s'arrête généralement aujourd'hui à l'explication de Diez: munde (l'adverbe de mundus ‘pur,’ donc littéralement = ‘proprement, nettement’), que répètent Littré, Meyer-Lübke, Gamillscheg, Dauzat. Cette étymologie, certainement acceptable au point de vue sémantique (cf. l'ital. pure), se heurte pourtant à un fait phonétique: jamais nous ne trouvons en anc. français de -t final, qui pourtant devrait se présenter au moins d'une façon sporadique (cf. mundus ‘monde’ > a.fr. mont à côté du latinisme monde; Meyer-Lübke donne lui-même un a.fr. mont ‘pur’ sous mundus, que je n'ai pu, il est vrai, trouver dans les dictionnaires: il ne me semble exister que le latinisme monde et son opposé immonde). On comprendrait p. ex. qu'on trouve mon pour ∗mont dans des textes du Sud-Ouest ou anglo-normands où -t final disparaît d'assez bonne heure (cf. Pope, From Latin to Mod. French, p. 453: Gaimar rime sumun < submonet avec gerun, passiun)—mais nous ne trouvons pas de trace de mont dans le reste de la France, au moins au moyen âge. Un mont variante de la particule mon n'apparaît qu'assez tard en français, au moment où la spéculation étymologique se mêle à l'orthographe: chez Oresme, qui offre aussi la forme altérée moult (v. Godefroy), et chez des grammairiens du XVIe siècle, avides, comme on sait, d'étymologie. En face de la forme mon, seule usitée en anc. français, l'étymologie munde est intenable. Il y a encore un argument contre l'admission d'un adverbe: c'est le manque total de formes avec -s adverbial, si fréquent dans l'adverbe voir(s) ‘vraiment’: on ne trouve pas de forme ∗mons. Si nous comparons l'adverbe anc. français espoir ‘peut-être,’ qui est la forme pétrifiée de la le pers. du présent de esperer, nous remarquerons là aussi le manque de l’ -s adverbial.

The many valuable studies on Old French spirituality which we possess do not consider the higher spirituality par excellence, namely mysticism. The reason for it is evident: We have only a few Old French mystical texts, none of them presenting an adequately recognizable system. Consequently the meaning of the words and metaphors used there remains obscure, if there are no Latin parallel texts whose semantic implications are more evident. But even if Latin parallels help to a certain extent to clear up the meaning, there remains one fact which characterizes not only the Old French medieval mystical texts, but the German, Italian, and English ones as well. The popular mystical texts are vague and not as well organized as the texts of the Schoolmen, whose clear terminology generally contains a more precise expression of the Ineffable. The whole interest of the linguist lies in discovering how a young vernacular language competes in expressivity with the Latin of the theologian, and what it can achieve. The fact that a mystical literature in any vernacular comes into being, always means that experimental mystics tell others of their experiences, or that pious souls yearn for this religious experience of a direct contact with the Divinity after having understood the lore of those experimental or real mystics. For the linguist, of course, it makes no difference—as it does for the theologian or the psychologist—whether the mystical text comes from real or would like to be mystics. The latter in their urge can be poetically and lingusitically more creative than the former who, though religious geniuses, may turn out to be poor language makers.

Like the Old English poem 74 on metempsychosis, which will soon be discussed in another article, the present poem 39 has puzzled Anglo-Saxon scholars ever since Dietrich in 1859 suggested the solution Day. Later proposals, Time and Moon, are hardly more convincing than the first. In presenting here the solution Hypostasis Death I wish to say that I consider it to be supported not only by the contents of the poem, but also by historical material, from which it may be concluded that during the early Middle Ages speculative theologians inclined towards the belief in the reality of death.

Ever since 1859, when Dietrich suggested hand-mill among the possible solutions for the present riddle, this answer has been advocated time and again without, however, finding general acceptance. Finally, the latest commentators of the Old English Riddles, while hesitatingly offering handbell or flail as possible solutions, label the riddle “unsolved.” In my opinion hand-mill is the subject of the riddle. The reason that this solution has not appealed to readers seems to lie in the fact that so far the repeated references to a ring or a plurality of rings in the riddle have defied interpretation. I offer the following translation which varies from the accepted one only in a few details, and shall then discuss the famoux crux of the riddle.

Old French, until the end of the Gallo-Roman period, was physiologically characterized by articulatory laxness to a high degree. This laxness of articulation chiefly manifested itself by intensifying certain syllables while weakening others, and by producing diphthongs and affricates out of strongly situated sounds while others tended to disappear or remained as they were. During the ninth century, physiological characteristics of precisely opposite nature started to appear, and French gradually gained in tenseness until it became about what it is today: the tensest of known languages. We reject here the theory proposed by W. von Wartburg concerning the effects of Germanic invasions on early Old French changes. “Le provençal s’étendait autrefois jusqu’à une ligne qui allait depuis l'embouchure de la Loire jusqu'aux Vosges méridionales. Cette ligne coïncide assez exactement avec une limite ethnique et politique qui s’était formée vers 500, grâce aux invasions germaniques.” And we accept the opposite views which attribute the early Old French laxness to the Celtic substratum and only the tenseness of a later period to the Germanic superstratum. They are well exposed by Dauzat:

Scholars have regretted that the enormous work embodied in The Text of the “Canterbury tales” did not leave Professor Manly the time and strength to integrate in a summary his main ideas as to the early history of the work. For that unwritten chapter no one, of course, could hope to offer a substitute. Yet much which would have gone into it and is not clear at the first reading takes form and coherence as one's familiarity grows with Manly's ideas and his material. One comes to see that, on most of the important features of the early history of the text, he had formed very definite opinions, while his silence on a number of others, if in some cases hard to interpret, more often clearly reflects a conviction that no light can be elicited either from the manuscripts or anything else within our ken. Correlating all indications I shall try to present in its main lines Manly's view of the history of the Canterbury tales to c. 1500, indicating as far as possible the basis for his opinions.

The romance of Partonopeus de Blois, though widely read and much admired in the Middle Ages, has not aroused a comparable interest among modern scholars. No edition of the French text has been published since 1834, and no exhaustive investigation of its literary sources has yet appeared. The story is usually explained as a medievalized version of the legend of Cupid and Psyche, with the roles of hero and heroine reversed under the influence of Breton lais of the fairy mistress type. Since critical discussions have tended to emphasize—perhaps overemphasize—the indebtedness of Partonopeus to the classical legend and its folk tale analogues, the connections with the Breton lais and the matière de Bretagne have been explored only in a general and rather tentative way. A more specific study of these connections based on the available French edition may help us to reach a clearer understanding of the materials which compose this charming romance, although a comprehensive analysis must await a critical edition of the text.

Remy Belleau, whom Ronsard himself once characterized as the seventh poet of the Pléiade, is a very familiar name to us, and indeed we continue to read certain of his poems with pleasure year after year. Yet, as Chamard has recently remarked in his Histoire de la Pléiade, “l'éclat radieux dont brille le chef de la Pléiade [Ronsard] a fait un peu perdre de vue ses compagnons: depuis quelques dix ou douze ans il semble qu'ils soient éclipsés.” Certainly little has been written on Belleau since the book by Alexandre Eckhardt and an article by Georges Prévot. These studies date from the time of the last war. In the pages which follow I shall try to reexamine some of the influences which could have affected Belleau's composition of his Amours et Nouveaux eschanges des Pierres Précieuses. From this we will turn to a brief survey of the sources of his lapidary material. This last was discussed in 1886 by R. Besser, but I feel that Besser did not always conduct his study systematically without parti pris. My own investigation of sources was made entirely independent of that of Besser, at the outset.

The Perlesvaus, even the most casual reader perceives, is intended to have serious religious significance. Certain of its symbolical adventures have been carefully studied as expressions of Christian doctrine, but no one has yet demonstrated the completeness of its religious symbolism.

The commedia dell'arte had no theatre of its own. When the commedia took form in the second half of the sixteenth century, the itinerant actors found themselves in the midst of intense theatrical activity, and readily appropriated available stages as a background for their buffoonery. In public squares, at fairs, festivals, and other gathering places, mountebanks attracted crowds to their platforms by songs interspersed with dialogue, trickery, and acrobatic stunts. In palatial halls of wealthy dukes, guests assembled to witness spectacular shows with expensive settings and intricate mechanical devices. With these opportunities before them, the comedians soon began to appear with the charlatans, and to come under the patronage of influential dukes. The players were invited to participate at wedding festivities, triumphal entries, sumptuous banquets, in the courts of kings, and in the splendor of royal palaces. Again the same troupe might also be found on a crude platform in the Square of San Marco, at a fiesta in Florence, or along a travelled roadside. The comic Arlecchino, dressed in patchwork, the pedantic Dottore, with his academic gown, the braggart Capitano, with his long rapier, and the foolish old Pantalone, with his long flowing gown, performed for king and artisan in London, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, or Ferrara.