The Project Gutenberg eBook, Chivalry, by James Branch Cabell, et al

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Title: Chivalry

Author: James Branch Cabell

Release Date: March 28, 2004 [eBook #11752]
[Date last updated: September 30, 2005]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIVALRY***

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CHIVALRY

JAMES BRANCH CABELL

1921

TO
ANNE BRANCH CABELL

"AINSI A VOUS, MADAME, A MA TRES HAULTE ET
TRES NOBLE DAME, A QUI J'AYME A DEVOIR
ATTACHEMENT ET OBEISSANCE,
J'ENVOYE CE LIVRET."

Introduction

Few of the more astute critics who have appraised the work of James
Branch Cabell have failed to call attention to that extraordinary
cohesion which makes his very latest novel a further flowering of the
seed of his very earliest literary work. Especially among his later
books does the scheme of each seem to dovetail into the scheme of the
other and the whole of his writing take on the character of an
uninterrupted discourse. To this phenomenon, which is at once a fact and
an illusion of continuity, Mr. Cabell himself has consciously
contributed, not only by a subtly elaborate use of conjunctions, by
repetition, and by reintroducing characters from his other books, but by
actually setting his expertness in genealogy to the genial task of
devising a family tree for his figures of fiction.

If this were an actual continuity, more tangible than that fluid
abstraction we call the life force; if it were merely a tireless
reiteration and recasting of characters, Mr. Cabell's work would have an
unbearable monotony. But at bottom this apparent continuity has no more
material existence than has the thread of lineal descent. To insist
upon its importance is to obscure, as has been obscured, the epic range
of Mr. Cabell's creative genius. It is to fail to observe that he has
treated in his many books every mainspring of human action and that his
themes have been the cardinal dreams and impulses which have in them
heroic qualities. Each separate volume has a unity and harmony of a
complete and separate l