In the belief […] that certain words or concepts do […] limit our effectiveness as students of literature I wish to offer a few casually selected terms for present consideration.

Some of the writers whose remarks I have quoted may belong to the school often referred to as the New Critics. At any rate, if we can trust their frequently expressed disapproval of current scholarship, the New Critics would not disagree with those remarks. I do not wish to be intolerant of those whose intolerance I deprecate. There is more than one fruitful approach to a work of literature, and while some of the New Criticism seems to me to be quite sterile I am ready to welcome any method of interpretation which leads to the fuller understanding and enjoyment of a work of literature. What I am not willing to admit is that the New Criticism is the only true source of illumination. Behind the poem is the poet, and whatever in his own life or in the life of his time helps us to understand the man helps us to understand his work. Literary history is a frame which enhances the work of art, or, if I may change the figure, a means of displaying it, a setting which permits us to view it in proper perspective. Without it we should be like the historian who would interpret Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence without reference to the conditions which called these documents into being. Besides this, literary history as a part of the history of man is as legitimate an object of interest and as worthy of study as political or economic history, or the history of science or art. And the history of literature has been made possible only by the patient labors of scholars who have quarried and shaped the stone out of which the edifice has been built. We need criticism and we need the historical perspective which investigation makes possible. Let us seek for a fruitful union of the two without disparaging the share which each contributes to the common end.

I look back with nostalgia on my early days in the MLA. It was then tripartite with the divisions English, Romance, German. One could attend all three and hear all the papers offered in them if one wished. That was “then.” Now we migrate from room to room, sometimes from building to building, hoping to hear, if we can, the papers in the special research or discussion groups that interest us. This only to find that all those we wish to hear come simultaneously. These changes in the structure of the society did not come, of course, from changes in policy but resulted from increasing enrolment, and beyond question they have advanced professional training and scholarship among us. The MLA has risen in membership, scope, and dignity to a degree that the founding fathers could not have foreseen.

How does a profession, ours or any other, express itself? How does it establish standards and achieve its common purposes? Well, the American way of doing these things is familiar enough. Whenever we discover an interest in common, we call a meeting and elect officers. Then we appoint committees. Presto, we have an organization. It's easy to poke fun at this process, but it's a democratic invention, and one especially valued by teachers, who in point of law (we sometimes forget) are nothing more than hired employees of corporate bodies over which they have no control whatsoever. When we form our own organization and its program fails to take into account the special concerns of a minority, these may start a new organization. American geography being what it is, we are also prompted to form, not only national, but regional, state, and local societies. Because we are now internationally minded, we even join international societies. We have councils and federations, too, plus institutes, “workshops,” conferences, academies, and a great deal of peripheral pother. There is an organization for almost everything, and lone wolves are asked to pay annual dues for their sheep's clothing.

If ours is a young man's world, it is also a woman's world. Some of us who are fortunate to have women among our graduate students and as young colleagues are extraordinarily impressed by the high level of their work. Indeed, we often wonder if criticism will not make substantial strides forward, blending the cognitive and the affective values, taste and a rational approach, the logic of the intellect and that of the heart, only when women take over a large share of it, as they are now out-numbering men as teachers of English and of languages in many schools. This country witnessed a bold feminist movement several decades ago. The second sex then conquered all the rights and courageously accepted corresponding duties. College presidents in women's colleges were in many cases women. In anthropology, archeology, psychology several American women have been outstanding. So have they been in journalism. Why not to the same extent today in philology, medieval studies, literary history, criticism? Are men to blame, wary of these potential rivals, preferring to utilize women's generosity and their capacity for devoted attachment by keeping them as secretaries and obedient confidents of their profound male cogitations? Have women put so much energy in once winning equality and security that they are now content to enjoy these rights, and to look upon maternity and procreation without tears and without anesthesia as their sole vocation? Men in any case have the duty to make room for them, to incite them to express themselves more boldly, to elect them to more positions of power in this Association and in others, to ask them for the healthy challenge which our duller brains need to receive from their keener perceptiveness in matters of art and literature.