Acknowledgments
All introductions in this book are mine, excepting the collaborative effort in “The Persian Tale of ‘The Old Harper.’” The translations are likewise mine, except when otherwise acknowledged. Such appreciation is thankfully extended to Mohsen Ashtiany for the Persian material (previously unpublished), Réka Forrai for “The Hungarian Tale of ‘The Fool’” (also never before put into English), and Royall Tyler for “The French Tale of ‘Péquelé’” (reprinted by his kind permission), all in Part 1. Looking back decades, I will always be grateful to the late Mary Weigand for making me aware of W. H. Auden’s ballad and to Bencie Woll for the Hasidic tale. Considering more recent times, I appreciate the six first-year students who by enrolling in a freshman seminar with me in the fall of 2021 made themselves the test market for a draft of this book. Cordelia Burn, Erin Cavanagh, Zoë Dienes, Remi Edvalson, Sofia Giannuzzi, and PK Vincze: thank you.
The final chapter of Part 2 presents five poems. “Our Lady’s Tumbler” by Patrick Kavanagh is reprinted by kind permission of the Trustees of the Estate of the late Katherine B. Kavanagh, through the Jonathan Williams Literary Agency. “The Ballad of Barnaby,” copyright © 1969 by W. H. Auden; from Collected Poems by W. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson (New York: The Modern Library, 2007), 824–27. Used by permission of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Excerpt from Tales of the Hasidim by Martin Buber, copyright 1947, 1948, copyright © renewed 1975 by Penguin Random House LLC. Used by permission of Schocken Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. My gratitude goes to Virginia Nyhart for permission to reproduce her “Our Lady’s Tumbler.” For “The Chapel at Mountain State Mental Hospital,” I have relied upon Virginia Hamilton Adair Papers, Collection no. 0051, Special Collections and Archives, University Library, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. In the case of Turner Cassity’s “Our Lady’s Juggler,” I am beholden to the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library of Emory University, for assistance in the protracted quest to identify and contact literary executors.