Soseki NATSUME, Bungaku Hyoron (Literary Studies), Tokyo, 1909. A study of the early eighteenth century literature. In Chap. 4 the author discusses Swift and his misanthropy. (Other chaps, are on Addison, Steele, Pope, and Defoe and the general background of the age.) NATSUME, one of the most distinguished novelists in modern Japan, seeks to throw light on Swift's misanthropy by considering some biographical facts. Just like Swift, Natsume is a satirist and his discussion shows that he and Swift had sympathies in common. Ki-ichi HIRATA, Jonathan Swift, Tokyo, 1937. An introductory book. Surveys Swift's life and work. Discussion sounds rather mediocre. Yoshio NAKANO, "Swift and Gulliver's Travels", Bungei (Literary Magazine), 1942. Yoshio NAKANO, "Literature of saeva indignatio", Ningen (Literary Magazine), 1946. On Swift's "indignation". The author concludes that Swift seems to have had a high regard for the individual person's goodwill notwithstanding his bitter hatred to the general mankind. (We must add that Nakano published several essays in which he tried to set up his theory of satire. His book on satire in general is still expected. See, for example, his "Preface to Satire", Bungei, 1946.) Yoshizo MIYAZAKI, "Swift's Attitude", Eigo Seinen (Journal of English Studies), extra issue published in 1950. On Swift's attitude in politics. Rintaro FUKUHARA, Eibungaku no Tokushitsu (Characteristic of English Literature), Tokyo, 1954. The author describes in the book the short history of the English satire and tells how to read Gulliver's Travels. He also seeks for the Japanese tales written in the form of Gulliver's Travels. Three Japanese books published in 1763, 1774, and 1809 respectively are mentioned. Yoshizo MIYAZAKI, "Political thought in Gulliver's Travels", Eibungaku Kenkyu (Studies in English Literature), vol. 32 (1955), no. 1. The author finds many passages in Gulliver's Travels which indicate that for Swift the ideal form of government is the mixed state. It is concluded that Swift remained negatively oriented to the social change of his time. Isamu MURAOKA, "On Gulliver's Travels", Eigo Seinen, vol. 102 (1956) no.5. An interesting study of the rhetorical construction of Gulliver's Travels. Shows, first, that Swift wrote the book following the tradition of "the chain of being", and second that he was influenced by the scientific movement of the age especially when he symbolized moral nature through physical size. Provocative article. Kozo FUKAMACHI, "Swift's Women", Eibungaku Kenkyu, vol. 33 (1957), no.2. On some peculiarities of Swift's personality. Makoto IWATA, "Preface to Swift", Waseda Hogaku Kaishi (Journal of the Department of Law, Waseda Univ.), nos. 8-12 (1957-1962). Most comprehensive study of Swift ever written by Japanese. The article shows a wide reading of Swift's works and modern studies of Swift in England and America. A very valuable introduction of Swift. Daishi HORI, On Swift and Other Essays, Tokyo, 1959. An attempt to analyze the complex manifestations and implications of Swift's thought. The author concludes that Swift's gloom is to be interpreted as an idiosyncrasy of a single writer, and does not agree with R. Quintana who says "Swift's genius was not original but representative." Yoshizo MIYAZAKI, "Swift and Defoe", Eigo Seinen, vol. 105 (1959), no.6. Compares An Argument against Abolishing Christianity with The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. Kazuhiko YONEDA, "Swift", Eibei Bungakushi Koza (Vol. 5 of Kenkyusha's History of English Literature), Tokyo, 1961. A useful account of Swift's life and work. Makoto IWATA, "The Meaning of the Houyhnhnms", Eibungaku (Journal of English Studies of Waseda

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As well known, modern Japanese literature has been much influenced by European literature. Exaggeratingly speaking, the history of modern Japan is the history of the import of Western civilization. In the literary world, and even in the academic world, one of the chief matters of concern was how to understand Europe, and how to accomplish the modernization of Japan. But one nation cannot accomplish anything but its own. So was the problem of Romanticism. The main theme of my essay is to survey the historical development of Japan's understanding of English Romanticism. Firstly, I trace the romantic thought current in the Meiji Era. As well known, the Meiji Restoration was, as it were, a Renaissance of Japan. Yet in this period any intrinsic understanding of the nineteenth century Romanticism was not yet seen. Because, in the early Meiji Era, in which Japan's national ideal supported the people, the Romantic isolation had not yet existed. It was in the third decade of the Meiji Era that the Romantic isolation was found in Japan's mental history. Wordsworth's and Byron's influences were seen in Toson Shimazaki, Tokoku Kitamura and Doppo Kunikida. Christian thinker Masahisa Uemura wrote an essay on Wordsworth, and Romanticism was gradually accepted in Japan. In the Taisho Era, authors of "Shirakaba School" established a Romantic idealism, and Whitman's humanism influenced on them. In this period, in the academic world, Takeshi Saito showed an idealistic or rather ethical understanding of Keats. Saito's Keats' View of Poetry was one of the best fruits in the literary study in Japan. But, on the other hand, the aesthetic acceptances of Romanticism were seen in Bin Ueda, Hojin Yano, etc. They understood not only the Romantic Poets but also the Symbolist Poets. These two different currents of understanding of Romanticism co-existed in modern Japan. In the Showa Era, left-wing literature arose in Japan. In this period, romanticism was often blamed for its evasion from the actual society. In the wartime, "Nihon-Roman-ha" (Japan Romantic School), which was influenced by German Romanticism, became gradually connected with. Militalist Japan's ideology, and English Romanticism was neglected. In the postwar era, in which democracy was being established in Japan, the humanistic individualism covered almost all the field of culture. The new estimation of English Romanticism was also connected with this thought current. Hideo Kano's view of Romanticism was much colored with humanism. He regarded the Romantic Movement as a humanistic movement in poetry, and tried a high estimation of Wordsworth. But in the postwar second decade, Japan's society came to be a very established one. Progressive thought current became considered as not almighty. Thus appeared the change of the estimation of Romanticism. The Romantic Poets began to be considered as men of isolation and agony. This was, as it were, an anti-humanistic and pessimistic view of Romanticism. The problem of imagination came to show new aspects. And the present task of the study is probably how to develop the new view of Romanticism.

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The famous love story of Dido and Aeneas recounted in Books I, II and IV of Virgil's Aeneid has inspired a number of fine creations in later ages, but the theme has also undergone various changes according to the writer's own temperament and, perhaps more, to the spirit of the time. In Virgil's epic the emphasis is on Aeneas' mission and his pietas. Dido, wounded as she was, did not deserve much sympathy, because Aeneas' course as decreed by the gods was thought to take priority over private love however passionate or sincere. When we consider Aeneas' agony in parting with Dido, we feel that he is the tragic character not she. Only a few decades later the emphasis shifted, when Ovid in Heroides VII reveals his sympathy with the queen, while censuring the hero for his infidelity. This tendency remained dominant through the Middle Ages, and Chaucer is no exception in his The House of Fame and The Legend of Dido. Nevertheless it was in the Renaissance that Dido's misfortune was most markedly taken up as a touchingly sad story. Thus in Marlowe's The Tragedie of Dido, Queene of Carthage, Dido's human passion and subsequent death are portrayed far more attractively than Aeneas' otherworldly piety which shocks the humanistic mind. In order to intensify Dido's tragic feature, Marlowe stresses her nobleness, and the furor (frenzy) which characterizes the original Dido almost disappears; whereas Aeneas, in complete contrast to Virgil's hero, is turned into an irresolute and tricky figure. A century after Marlowe, Henry Purcell composed an opera titled Dido and Aeneas, of which the libretto was written by Nahum Tate, public poet and laureate. Though Purcell's music is splendid enough to be counted not only among his masterpieces but as representative of English baroque music, the drama as such is incredibly absurd and hardly related to the original. Dido appears as a prettier, gentler and purer woman than even in Marlowe; Aeneas more foolish and nasty. Probably the most drastic difference is the fact that in Tate's libretto Aeneas is called away by a witch masquerading as a god. A plausible motivation of Aeneas' action is thus utterly removed. The traditional conflict between duty and love is lost since Dido is deprived of life, reputation and love by nothing but the witches' malicious scheme. The last traces of sublimity have vanished and there remains only larmoyant sentimentalism. Nahum Tate was, in fact, the author of the version of King Lear with a happy ending. It is then not surprising that he was capable of distorting the Dido episode. Nevertheless when we bear in mind that the adaptation of King Lear remained current for more than a century and a half, we may conclude that rather than the personal whim of the librettist of Dido and Aeneas it was the vagaries of the Zeitgeist that mattered most.

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Not so learned and educated as Fielding, Samuel Richardson seemed to dislike giving a systematic opinion or theory on his novels. Even so, he had much to say about his own writings in his correspondence with his friends as well as in his prefaces and postscripts to his novels. These scattered opinons, if collected together, are remarkably characteristic of his ideas on the art. The present paper is an attempt to investigate what Richardson conceived on his novels in reference to their backgrounds and significance. The most important document on his theory of fiction is the postscript to Clarissa, in which Richardson, first of all, defended himself against those who insist that he should have written a happy ending to the story. Behind this defense, however, lies "the Christian Doctrine," by which the author consistently shows the importance of death as a universal lot of human beings. Richardson's correspondence with Edward Young shows how he warned Young in his composition of Conjectures against the excess of the theory on genius or originality for the Christian dispensation. We can also see this old and traditional Puritanism when Richardson showed his strong antipathy to the school of Shaftesbury, and again when he became sceptical about the optimism of David Hartley. Underlying these opinions, we can perceive Richardson's persistent Puritanism. His opposition to the contemporary novels and romances was based mainly upon the puritan sense of reality. For him, "novels" were generally too "low" and "pernicious" without any serious purpose, while "romances" were usually unrealistic and "marvellous" without any specific concern with everyday reality. His objection to epic had also the same basis; he was against the improbability as well as the immorality of epic poetry. Thus, the literary genre upon which Richardson would establish his theory of fiction naturally became the drama. It was partly because of the epistolary method of his novels that Richardson came to depend upon the theory of the drama. He insisted on the dramatic representation and the dramatic unity in his novels, which he once called "my Drama." The lively technique of "writing to the moment", of which he was justly proud, and which made his descriptions "minute and circumstantial," was one of the natural sequences of the dramatic representation. Needless to say, it is a new psychological method of the later eighteenth century. The combination, however, of this new psychological method of "writing to the moment" with the old traditional idea of Puritanism, is in itself a very curious and incompatible one, a combination of the old idea and the new expression. Thus, something very unexpected and curious happened when Richardson's intention for minute and circumstantial descriptions became more intensive and successful. For, the more circumstantial his descriptions were, the more improbable his novels became as epistolary correspondence, till they lost dramatic unity and became digressive. Richardson's puritan opposition to romances also became very ambiguous and complex when he not only applied the theory of the drama to that of his novels, but also practised in his novels various dramatic devices of his contemporary plays. For there were lots of devices peculiar to romances which through the drama came into Richardson's novels. As a result, we find some mutually incompatible elements jumbled together even in his theory of fiction. The so-called "Richardson's divided mind", which recent critics pointed out in his novels, may be explained psychologically from his frame of mind or sociologically from the class conflicts. But if we consider the above-mentioned incompatible elements in his theory, we would conclude that there may be some connection between say his descriptions

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In 1906, when the Irish Dramatic Movement was at high tide, Yeats, still full of hope for its future, almost believed that he could make an 'average audience' understand his 'vision' through some practical devices. The movement might have turned out, after all, not exactly as he expected, for in an essay under the title, "A People's Theatre" (1919), he is seen intimating Lady Gregory his wish to create an 'unpopular theatre' for a chosen audience. An ardent passion for 'vigorous and simple men' seems to have been utterly frustrated and replaced in his heart with the feelings of bitter contempt and cold anger toward the 'people'. His effort to connect himself with the theatre audience was, however, not made for nothing. It opened up a new vista in the sphere of poetics and made, in a sense, a new poet of him, whose figure is to be ultimately embodied in the epistle dedicatory of Responsibilities (1914). And Discoveries, his 'spiritual diary' in Autumn, 1906, shows us how the idea took its embryonic shape in the slow and complicated process of reasoning. One of his discoveries was that 'oratory', rather than 'music', should be 'the type of all the arts'. We might at first sight take this assertion as a fairly radical change from his former poetical beliefs. Oratory is a means of persuasion. It can hardly be doubted that the oratory must have meant for Yeats a way of communication more direct than the 'wavering, meditative, organic rhythm' or 'sound, colour, and form... in a musical relation'. So he seems to be weighing the discursive element in the language against the evocative one. But his idea of oratory was a far more complex one. It resulted less from a drastic change of attitude than a very careful and subtle readjustment of earlier poetic beliefs to a new need for persuasion. First of all, his 'oratory' was quite different from a mere 'rhetoric', which he detested persistently all his life. 'Rhetoric' means for him nothing more than a reflection of the desire of the crowd, whereas what 'oratory' suggests is fundamentally a way of communicating a personal vision to them. Secondly, it does not really reject the musical element of words. In 1900, in fact, 'the noble art of oratory' had meant for him mainly the art of 'half-chant', its aim being to evoke an exhausting emotion 'that comes with the music of words'. Thirdly, it must necessarily presuppose the existence of an acting bodily form, because it means also a persuasion by 'laughter' and 'tears'. It needs a bodily function, a gesture, of an orator, who, in turn, has to be a speaker, a singer, an actor, and a poet all at once, as the Irish ballad-singers were. To put it in another way, the poet as an orator must make an organic being of himself by unifying all the apparently contradictory functions of 'oratory'. Thus the idea of 'oratory' comes to be closely connected with the idea of 'personality', of 'the whole man-blood, imagination, intellect, running together'. To be a 'personality' was not quite the same thing as that which Verlaine might have meant by 'd'etre absolument soi-meme'. Yeats' 'personality' was not a thing to be ascribed to nature. It was an achievement of a deliberate effort, or rather, an ideal that could not be attained except by a kind of dissembling. It was a 'fictitious personality', a persona. It was an idea that could live, if at all, only in a poem.

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