source. The two analyses are clearly independent things: one belongs to literary history and so to the Outer Study, the other is a purely literary analysis. To take a specific example. In the much-discussed Book of Deuteronomy, if we adopt the ordinary symbols for the different sources-P, J, E, JE, D— the historic structure of the book comes out something like this:

Literary analysis determines this Book of Deuteronomy to be a succession of orations and songs, with connecting matter, in such sequence as to present a dramatic situation developed to an impressive climax. The literary structure comes out like

It is perfectly clear that these two structures are different in kind, and have no bearing the one on the other. Yet in the

general study of the Bible the historic and the literary analysis are constantly confused: the critical analysis, which deals with the question how our Bible originated, and therefore belongs to the Outer Study of literary history, is somehow understood to be an interpretation of what the Bible is. It becomes necessary to lay down as a principle: The literary structure of a work cannot possibly be affected by any theory as to its origin. We are familiar with many theories as to the historic origin of Deuteronomy: (1) that it was written by Moses; (2) that it is an imaginative work composed in the reign of Josiah; (3) that traditions of the farewell of Moses to Israel, such as appear in Leviticus, were worked up into the form of our Deuteronomy at a much later date; (4) that the 'Book of the Law' discovered in the reign of Josiah was substantially our Deuteronomy, but received many later additions or corrections. Assume any one of these views to be true: how can it affect the question whether the Deuteronomy we have is or is not correctly analyzed as a succession of orations and songs with their connecting matter?

All this makes one more reason for insisting upon that which is the subject of the present chapter, the necessity of recognizing a distinction between the Outer and the Inner literary study. By a long tradition literature has been studied only in entanglement with other studies-of biography, language, history. The boundary line between literature and the rest has been obscured. All that here is assigned to the Outer literary study has, no doubt, relevance to the subject of literature, yet is distinct from the essential study itself. The Outer Study has responsibility for the total output of particular authors or nations or epochs: the Inner Study recognizes only what part of this discloses features of literary evolution, or in some other way has significance in the conception of literature as a whole. What is especially to be resisted is the common idea that such biographic, linguistic, historic adjunct to literary study is a prerequisite without which the study of literature cannot be

sound. On the contrary, there is a pure study of literature which is entirely independent, and which has a field, a method, a scholarship of its own. No doubt, one who would be expert in any subject will do well to acquaint himself with many adjoining fields of study. But one who is attracted to the pure study of literature as literature need not think that he must first exhaust the subsidiary and external provinces. He need not keep himself forever in the region of knowing about literature instead of setting himself to know the literature as it is.

BOOK III

LITERARY EVOLUTION

AS REFLECTED IN THE HISTORY OF WORLD LITERATURE

CHAPTER VI : THE DIFFERENTIATION OF POETRY AND PROSE

CHAPTER VII: EVOLUTION IN EPIC POETRY

CHAPTER VIII: EVOLUTION IN DRAMA

CHAPTER IX : EVOLUTION IN LYRIC POETRY