The Battaile of Agincourt

The Battaile of Agincourt

This text uses UTF-8 (Unicode) file encoding. If the apostrophes and quotation marks in this paragraph appear as garbage, you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts. First, make sure that your browsers character set or file encoding is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change the default font. Typographical errors are shown in the text with mouse-hover popups. The spelling Fift is used consistently. In the main poem, v is used initially, u non-initially. Exceptions are noted in the same way as errors. [The portrait of Michael Drayton given here as a frontispiece is from a picture, taken at the age of sixty-five (three years before he died), in the Cartwright Collection at the Dulwich Gallery. The name of the painter is not known, but the picture is signed Ano 1628.] All civilized nations possessing a history which they contemplate with pride endeavour to present that history in an epic form. In their initial stages of culture the vehicles of expression are ballads like the constituents of the Spanish Romanceros and chronicles like Joinvilles and Froissarts. With literary refinement comes the distinct literary purpose, and the poet appears who is also more or less of an artist. The number of Spanish and Portuguese national epics, from the Lusiad downwards, during the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, is astonishing; and it was impossible that English authorship, rapidly acquiring a perception of literary form under classical and foreign influences, should not be powerfully affected by the example of its neighbours. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 27770
Author: Drayton, Michael
Release Date: Jan 11, 2009
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Garnett, Richard, 1835-1906