Studies In English Official Historical Documents Classic Reprint

Author : Charles Harold Herford
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781332848003
Total Pages : 22 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (48 download)

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Download or read book The Bearing of English Studies Upon the National Life (Classic Reprint) written by Charles Harold Herford and published by . This book was released on 2016-06-21 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Bearing of English Studies Upon the National Life It is clear that in all this we have a mass of strictly historical information and further, that the abundance and precision of it are not due merely to the fact that Chaucer had extraordinary gifts of eye and style. They are due mainly to the fact that he was writing as a poet, not as a historian, to delight and amuse his hearers, not to inform them. He would not have been so brimfull of instruction for us if he had aimed at instructing his readers. What should they need to be told of an everyday matter like the pilgrimage to Canterbury They had all probably been wayfarers along the same well-trodden road and put up at the same familiar hostelries. If Chaucer had been a chronicler he would have disposed of the matter, if he mentioned it at all, in a simple entry such as this 1385 In April of this year men went on pilgrimage to Canterbury, according to their wont. They had much joyous pastime on the way, and gave a goodly supper at the Tabard, on their return, to one of their company who had best acquitted him in that sport.' In other words, a host of things get left out of the chronicler's record because they are common and matter of course, which are taken up into the poet's because, for him, the common ways of men and their matter-oi-course habits and usages are full of the zest of life; common as blood and breath, and matter of course as the beating of the heart. History for the most part records only the salient incidents, the violent interruptions which disturb the silent continuity of ordinary life, and are so interesting to read about, so disagreeable to undergo. When these are few, the annals are brief or if they are not brief they are apt to be dull and though we allow that the people were probably happy, we cannot quite forgive them for being happy in such a stupid and uninteresting way. The historian as such has to do with change, not with standing still if he describes stationary conditions at all it is as the result of, or the preparation for, change. And, on the whole, people who live an uneventful life are out of his sphere they are, so to speak, not playing his game. But it is just here that literature, with its more brooding eye, and its more profound concern with life itself, not merely with the arresting or sensational moments of life, steps in, and does for us something which the historian quite properly neglects to do, but which is nevertheless needful to be done. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com 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.