SOURCE: "Narrative Transformations: Prior's Art of the Tale," in Studies in Philology, Vol. XC, No. 4, Fall, 1993, pp. 442-61.

In the following essay, Nelson examines four of Prior's verse tales, comparing them to their sources, and explains how their adaptations benefitted from Prior's "refinements in narrator, theme, and characterization."

In 1968 Bertrand Bronson published an imaginative dialogue between Matthew Prior and Samuel Johnson called "On Choosing Fit Subjects for Verse; or, Who Now Reads Prior?"¹ In their discussion Prior blames Johnson for his low current reputation as a writer, suggesting that it has never recovered from some of Johnson's statements in the Lives of the Poets. Johnson, on the other hand, defends himself by recalling several of his original comments in which he praised Prior's poetry, particularly the tales. These, he noted, were significant achievements, despite the existence in them of some "improprieties," which detract from such narratives as "Hans...