Observations on the Language of Chaucer's Troilus (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Observations on the Language of Chaucer's Tr...)
Excerpt from Observations on the Language of Chaucer's Troilus
The following Observations are intended to furnish some materials for the large induction necessary to reasonable certainty in the matter of Chaucer's language, particularly his use of final -e. Other matters than final -e are of course dealt with from time to time; but to this in particular the Observations are directed. In other words, the study here presented to members of the Chaucer Society is a study in forms, not in phonology. This study was begun in August 1887, and has been frequently interrupted. The printing has of necessity extended over an unconscionable length of time. It is hoped that these facts may serve as the excuse for some trifling inconsistencies of typography, and perhaps even for some slight vacillations in plan and method. For actual blunders no excuse is offered; but it is hoped that the work may contain enough that is useful to make scholars indulgent for such errors as they may observe. Corrections will be gratefully received.
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A Study of Gawain and the Green Knight (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from A Study of Gawain and the Green Knight
Thi...)
Excerpt from A Study of Gawain and the Green Knight
Thirteen years ago this volume was announced, in a foot note to Arthur and Gorlagon, as something that the writer hoped to publish in a few months. It was then practically finished, but procrastination has deferred its appearance beyond all accounting. However, the world has somehow got along without it, and meantime the manuscript has undergone revision from year to year, and has submitted to a final overhauling at the last moment, with the printer at the door.
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This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
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As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
(Excerpt from Arthur and Gorlagon
Then I took the child ...)
Excerpt from Arthur and Gorlagon
Then I took the child back to his father in a ship. On the voyage I came to an island, in which there was but one habitation, a court dark and gloomy. I entered, and found no one within but a frightful hag. I heard somebody groaning. She said it was her son, whose hand had been bitten off by a dog, - ih another country, twelve years before. I offered to cure him, and was left alone with him in an inner room. He had but one eye, and that was in the middle of his forehead. I had heated an iron bar, pretending that it was to burn away the corrupt flesh, but I plunged it into his eye as far as I could. He tried to catch me, but I got out of the chamber and shut the door. I told the hag that he would be quiet pres ently and would then sleep a good while. She gave me the reward that she had promised, eight young lads and three young women, who, she informed me, were the sons and daughters of the king and had all been stolen by her son.
I took ship again, sailed to the king's country, and restored the twelve children to him and his queen. The king gave me the child whose keeper I had been. I spent a time, till my visit was over, and I told the king all the troubles I had been through; only I said nothing about my wife.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
(Excerpt from The Old Farmer and His Almanack
Few volumes...)
Excerpt from The Old Farmer and His Almanack
Few volumes can claim so intimate an association with the people of New England as the Old Farmer. Books to them, wrote Charming in his Wanderer, speaking of the un lettered population of a remote corner of the seacoast.
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(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
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Shakspere: An Address, Delivered on April 23, 1916, in Sanders Theatre at ...
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George Lyman Kittredge was an American educator and author. He served as a Gurney Professor of English Literature at Harvard University from 1917 to 1936.
Background
George Lyman Kittredge was born on February 28, 1860 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, the elder child and only son of Edward Lyman Kittredge and his wife, the widowed Deborah (Lewis) Benson. Both parents came of old New England families, his mother's going back to the Mayflower. His father, born in Nelson, New Hampshire, was a forty-niner who brought back stories rather than gold from California, and who spent the rest of his life as a respected if never overly prosperous storekeeper. That his mother had been born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, had a profound influence on Kittredge. The family lived in Barnstable during two years and it was his summer home all his life; this association fostered his interest in the history and lore of New England.
Education
Kittredge studied at Barnstable school for two years. He prepared for college at Roxbury Latin School and entered Harvard with the class of 1882, supported in part by funds supplied by friends on Cape Cod. His concentration was in the classics, especially Greek, but his career as teacher and scholar was determined by his courses with Francis James Child, Harvard's first professor of English, to whom he remained closely bound, professionally and personally, until Child's death in 1896. Although Kittredge graduated first in his class, he had also taken part in undergraduate clubs and publications, to which he contributed reviews (some of learned works), comic sketches, and light verse. He began graduate study, but lack of money forced him to give it up after a few months. In 1886 he went for a year of study in Europe. Kittredge studied at the universities of Leipzig and Tübingen where he extended his knowledge of the Germanic languages and made the acquaintance of numerous scholars, chief among them Eduard Sievers. He received honorary degrees from the University of Chicago (1901), Harvard (1907), Johns Hopkins (1915), McGill (1921), Yale (1924), Brown (1925), Oxford (1932), and Union College (1936).
Career
In 1883 Kittredge became a teacher of Latin at Phillips Exeter Academy, where he remained for 5 years. In 1888 he was appointed the instructor in English at Harvard University. On the faculty, he was one of the young conservatives who opposed President Charles W. Eliot in his modernization of the university. Each had a wary admiration for the other, and, as a contemporary remarked, though no young man debated more vigorously with Eliot than did Kittredge, none was promoted so rapidly by Eliot as was Kittredge. He became assistant professor in 1890 and professor in 1895; in 1917 he was named the first Gurney Professor of English Literature, a chair he held until his retirement in 1936.
As a teacher, Kittredge was a master of two styles. Undergraduates saw him as a classroom performer. With an impressive presence, a full beard, originally red but early becoming white, a fondness for wearing suits of a light color, one who taught while walking rather than standing, he kept the attention of even the most listless. He was witty but never clowning, moral without being oppressive. His mastery of subject enabled him to bring back almost any passage in Shakespeare from a few words quoted by a questioner and to teach the Beowulf, on occasion, from an unmarked text. Although in general he evoked great admiration and respect, a small minority of students regarded him as something of a martinet and even, because he emphasized the meanings of words in their historical context, a pedant.
His manner in his graduate courses was altogether different. After his lectures, the class moved to his home for a series of evening meetings where the reading and discussion of the students' reports were followed by an hour or two of general talk. Here Kittredge was at his best, relaxed, informal, genial, reminiscent, never dominating the conversation and deftly bringing in the shyest among the group. Classroom work was only a part of Kittredge's service as a teacher. Until his retirement he attended almost every oral examination given under the Division of Modern Languages, of which he was long chairman, including those for seniors who were candidates for honors in English.
He was a masterly examiner, almost always on the side of the student. The dissertations which he directed, many on subjects outside his chosen fields, received meticulous attention on style and content, and he was frequently successful in arranging for publication. In retrospect it is easy to say that Kittredge slighted research for tasks which others could have done or which could have been left undone, but he would not have agreed, since for him a teacher's monument was in his students rather than in his own writings.
In this country and abroad, Kittredge for the greater part of his life was the best-known American literary scholar. The range and number of his publications can only be suggested here. His major contributions fall into broad categories. Next to Child, no one did more for the study of the English and Scottish popular ballads. Kittredge contributed comparative notes to the later sections of Child's great collection of these ballads and after the latter's death supervised its completion.
In 1904 he prepared, with the assistance of Child's daughter, a one-volume edition of Child's work, with a luminous introduction, which in time was attacked by the opponents of the so-called communal theory of ballad origins. His first important book, Observations on the Language of Chaucer's Troilus (1894), marked out another area of his scholarship. This was followed by many articles on Chaucer and by Chaucer and His Poetry (1915), still among the best and best written of the criticisms and interpretations of Chaucer. From his study and teaching of medieval romance came A Study of Gawain and the Green Knight (1916), a model of the comparative technique, modified but not impaired by the later discovery of texts which he had not known. The history of witchcraft early drew his attention, and his investigations culminated in Witchcraft in Old and New England (1929), where 373 pages of fascinating and horrifying exposition are bolstered by 223 pages of notes, whose learning at once encourages and intimidates any student.
For generations of Harvard students, Kittredge and Shakespeare were synonymous, and it is for his work on Shakespeare that he remains best known. His most famous course, English 2, was a year's intensive study of six of Shakespeare's plays. Throughout his career Kittredge gave many lectures, singly or in series, on Shakespeare; these, with one exception, he resolutely refused to publish, partly no doubt because of the thrifty feeling that published lectures are no longer current coin, but primarily because their form did not meet his high standards. His Shakespeare: An Address (1916) stands beside the Preface of Dr. Johnson (whom Kittredge greatly admired) in its concise, trenchant, and sensible criticism. When his Complete Works of Shakespeare appeared in 1936, it contained the soundest text of the plays hitherto available, and his separate editions of sixteen of them (two completed after his death by Arthur Colby Sprague), have introductions and notes seldom equaled for learning and common sense.
The history and folklore of New England engaged Kittredge's attention in books, articles, and editions ranging from the entertaining and discursive The Old Farmer and His Almanack (1904) to the more austere account of Doctor Robert Child, the Remonstrant (1919). Beginning in 1888 he was involved in the preparation of a long series of Latin grammars and texts, many of them still in use. One of his collaborators was the classicist James B. Greenough, with whom he wrote Words and Their Ways in English Speech (1901), which, if it does not anticipate later linguistic theories, continues to fulfill its purpose of introducing the common reader to the richness and vagaries of the English language.
In 1941, five years after his retirement, he died at Barnstable from sclerosis of the coronary artery. He was buried there in the Lothrop Hill Cemetery.
Achievements
George Lyman Kittredge was best known for his work on Shakespeare and Chaucer. He was largely responsible for the introduction of Chaucer as a standard part of the college English curriculum. He published about half a dozen volumes of ballad versions from various parts of the United States and Canada and helped prepare a number of English grammars and exercise books for secondary schools. He was also a founder of the Mediaeval Academy of America.
Kittredge was a devout Congregationalist and regular church attendant.
Politics
In political thinking Kittredge was a conservative of New England Federalist-Whig tradition and naturally at home in the Republican party.
Membership
Kittredge was a fellow of the Mediaeval Academy of America and president of the Modern Language Association of America (1904 - 1905), the American Folklore Society (1904 - 1905), and the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (1900 - 1907).
Personality
Kittredge was a good talker and a good listener, fond of good food and good drink, he enjoyed the various dining and literary groups to which he belonged. He delighted in the theater, in vaudeville and melodrama as well as Shakespeare. His wide reading included detective stories and other light literature. Despite a surface austerity, which masked an unexpected shyness, he was like Dr. Johnson a clubbable man.
Connections
Kittredge married on June 29, 1886, Frances Gordon, the daughter of Nathaniel Gordon and Alcina Eveline Sanborn. They had three children: Frances Gordon, Henry Crocker, and Dora.
