ABSTRACT
R. W. Chambers published his last book, under the grand Wordsworthian title Man’s Unconquerable Mind. It should be stressed that Chambers was himself no insular chauvinist. Both in ‘The Continuity of English Prose’ and in Man’sUnconquerable Mind can see how Chambers’s literary judgments draw upon his deep convictions about Middle — its long-standing unity as a nation, and the continuity of its traditions and character. Turning to the other end of the Middle Ages, find Chambers, in his fine essay on Langland, describing Piers Plowman as ‘the most thoroughly English of all religious poems’. Chambers chose for his collection a title, Man’s Unconquerable Mind that linked him with Wordsworth and Milton in the thought that the truest heroism lay in mental, not physical, effort. The representation of England in Old and Middle English literature is a large subject, which would repay further study.
