In studying the language or pronunciation of any section of the country, it is necessary first of all to trace back the history of the people inhabiting it to the earliest beginnings in order to explain understandingly the dialectical peculiarities of its grammar or pronunciation. I shall, therefore, preface my remarks on the linguistic peculiarities of this region with a brief sketch of its earliest settlements and later development.

The earlier history of Western Virginia, now known as West Virginia, begins a century later than that of Eastern Virginia, or Virginia proper. In 1710 Alexander Spotswood, a Scotchman, was the deputy governor of the Colony of Virginia.

Hauptmann hat es eigentlich vermieden, über sein Schaffen zu sprechen. “Bilde, Künstler, rede nicht!” ein Lieblingswort Goethes, zitierte er mit Vorliebe. Aber in seinem Geleitwort zu Shakespeare-Visionen spricht er von dem Schöpfungsprozess, diesem geheimnisvollen Verlauf des dichterischen Genius: “was wissen wir über den Schöpfungsprozess, der den Visionen und Gestalten Shakespeares ihre besondere Art von Realität, Dauer und Weite gibt? … Es geschehen vielleicht in der Dichterseele Ballungen stürmender Rotation, erzeugen im Verdichten Wärme, Licht und zuletzt das Leben. Dabei ist etwas wie Kampf zwischen Ormuzd und Ahriman.”Sein unablässliges Arbeiten, die regelmässigen Stunden des Diktats, die Produktivspaziergänge, die Visionen der einsamen Stunden sind von Behl, Kästner und Voigt wiederholt beschrieben worden. Hauptmann, der naive Künstler, konnte das schöpferische Geheimnis nicht benennen. Wenn er jedoch beim Diktat auf falsche Pfade geriet, spürte er es bald und brach ab. Selbst beim Vorlesen aus neuen, im Entstehen begriffenen Werken, konnte er plötzlich unmutig aufhören, weil er einen falschen Ton hörte. Andererseits war er der glücklichste Mensch, wenn ihm die Arbeit gelang, wenn beim Diktat wundervolle Verse hervorsprudelten oder die Wucht einer Szene ihn mitriss. Es dichtete in ihm, und er wurde zum Sprachrohr einer inneren Stimme. Seine naive Freude daran war rührend. Ein gequältes “Produzieren” im engsten Sinne des Begriffs war ihm fremd. Seine künstlerische Eigenart, das tief Persönliche und Wesentliche seiner dramatischen Arbeitsweise, ist unlösbar mit dem Werke selbst verbunden und nicht davon zu trennen. Die innere Einheit dieses immer noch nicht zu überschauenden Werkes zu erfassen, bleibt die Aufgabe der Zukunft.

Gianlorenzo Bernini's single surviving playscript offers a satire on Bernini's own fame as a creator of scenic stage marvels as well as a satiric analysis of his younger painter-playwright rival from Naples, Salvator Rosa. But Bernini's play also raises general issues about the relations of amateurs and professionals in the leveling context of carnival, about the effect of printing on a subgenre of the improvisational scenarii of the commedia dell' arte as printed texts established a popular reading audience in seventeenth-century Rome, and about the concept of “popular” in the relations of class and genre implicit not only in Bernini's satire but in much of the seventeenth-century generic mixing that took place far outside the exemplary conditions of the Roman commedie ridicolose.

No modern commentary on this changelessly relevant poem identifies its specific occasion as that of a new attempt by dissenters in 1732 and 1733 to repeal the Sacra mental Test Act in Ireland, Such an occasion is, however, suggested or explicitly stated by eighteenth-century transcribers of the poem, including William Collins, William Shen-stone, Ralph Griffiths, and the anonymous author of The Friends (1773), a rare novel in which “The Day of Judgement” first appeared in print. Substantive variants in the early transcriptions, often intensifying the criticism of dissenters, are significant in understanding how the poem was read in the eighteenth century. Jonathan Swift's authorship is corroborated by similarities in other works by him on the same subject in 1732-33, a somewhat later date than that usually assigned for the poem's composition.

This bibliographical essay brings together for the first time all evaluations of Housman's poetry and poetic-theory 1920-1945. It effects a twofold end: (1) historical—a survey of Housman estimates by scholar-critics and by poet-critics; (2) critical—a survey of all critical ideas and problems of contemporary criticism as focussed upon a poet of the preceding age.

With no immediate source of Chaucer's Prioress' Tale yet brought to light, postulations about the nature of this source, such as may be tentatively formulated from a study of the thirty-two available analogues of the miracle, have been made in order to estimate the extent and artistry of Chaucer's contribution to this tale of the little clergeon. Carleton Brown in his admirable studies published in 1910 and 1941 traced the development of the legend from what he considered the most primitive stage through Chaucer's story and the analogues which resemble it most closely. For this purpose Brown divided the thirty-three versions into three groups, A, B, and C, each of which represents a distinct form of the miracle and a distinct pattern of events.

It seems to me one of the most exciting and baffling characteristics of Eichendorff's art that, if I may use this paradox, his most profound insights are hidden on the surface. They travel, a strangely elusive contraband, in the full light of day, so that the last truths of his poetic vision, the whole web of his religious beliefs, his intellectual conceptions, his socio-ethical postulates transform themselves into the most deceptively simple folktunes, sung by his people with an ease and unconcern usually assigned in the secular psalter of a nation to that section which is headed “folk song, author unknown.” Goethe's solemn warning with regard to the ultimate secret and mystery of life, his injunction “Tell it no one but the sages,” was utterly lost on Eichendorff. He told it to every listening ear; and so it could happen that what in reality was an exploration and manifestation of truth, the poetic transmission of knowledge, was taken—or mistaken—as a bewitching play of lyrical mood and atmosphere. A comprehensive and integrated view of life thus turned in the public's hand into a picture book, lovely and self-contained, easy to peruse; and for the reader it was easy to absorb its sensuous refulgence without comprehending the meaning of design, color, and composition.

It is customary for the President of the Association to deliver an address as part of the annual program. For the most part my predecessors have used this occasion to discuss a subject of scholarly concern lying within the range of the speaker's competence, and the records of our annual meetings include a number of erudite papers of this character which were, or should have been, of interest to the audiences and which as published material have continuing significance for scholarship in widely diversified fields. By tradition, however, this occasion is for the President, who is in a few days to give place to a successor, a sort of moriturus saluto and he is therefore free to discuss any subject that he thinks of importance for the welfare of the organization. Several of my predecessors in office have departed from the erudite tradition and dealt with questions of contemporary import or of practical importance for the programs of the Association. The crisis in national affairs, which has its bearing on all forms of co-operative undertaking, leads me to follow this precedent and take up a matter, the significance of which for the future of higher learning in our country has not, I think, been realized or adequately discussed. It is the problem of the relation between nationalism and scholarship and, more specifically, the development of an American national scholarship in the humanities.

“The poem of Beowulf,” Klaeber tells un, “consists of two distinct parts joined in a very loose manner and held together only by the person of the hero.” Like W. P. Ker, Klaeber finds some reason to regard the second part as s late-conceived sequel to the first, rather than as integral with it in the poet's original plan.

The four invocations to the Muse in Paradise Lost signal the stages of a compositional process coordinating the levels of the poem's inspiration and overall design. Using in downward sequence the four inspirational “furors” Neoplatonism derived from Plato's Phaedrus, Milton calibrated each narrative stage of his work to the thematic range governing that inspirational level, while the entire progression of the poem expresses the structural significance of this scalar paradigm. Such techniques were used by Dante and others and by Milton himself in Lycidas. But in Paradise Lost the inspirational pattern, as the spatial axis governing the poem's descending and ascending movements, combines with the narrative movements of the poem's temporal axis to shape a particular form that Milton considered essential to every art dedicated to the highest good and final end implicit in the divine scheme. It is this “universal form” that both metaphysically and structurally underlies Paradise Lost.

To distinguish between the course of rhetorical ideas, and the growth of style on the one hand, and of systematic rhetoric on the other, is perhaps to endeavor after too nice a distinction. Yet when we read sixteenth-century English, we may see, between the general effort to use prose with effect and the rather arid sequence of treatises on formal rhetoric, certain definite ideas on prose expression, certain views as to the best vocabulary, certain views on sentence-structure or figures of speech. The frank, vigorous prose of Latimer has style of a sort, the slight treatise of Cox has system. Neither the one thing nor the other is the opinion pro and con as to inkhorn words, for example. The following paper notes in the direction of the vocabulary only, a conscious effort to determine some fundamental principles which should obtain in the use of English as a means of literary expression.

In the course of preparing an edition, with the kind permission of the Coleridge family, of the unpublished correspondence of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I have found, among the several hundred letters examined, five written by Coleridge to Lord Byron which afford a fuller view of the relationship between the two poets. The contact between Coleridge and Byron was brief, their correspondence being confined to the period between Easter 1815 and April 1816, the time at which Byron finally departed from England. It is known that in 1812 Byron interceded with the managers of Drury Lane for the production of Coleridge's Remorse and that he attended at least two of Coleridge's lectures in 1811 and 1812; but their personal intercourse apparently did not extend beyond those incidents and the exchange of a few letters. Most of Byron's letters to Coleridge have already been published, but the five letters which Coleridge wrote to Byron have never been published in full.

Since Dryden lived in a period when the authority of Aristotle in matters of poetry was gaining rather than losing strength, and since he was both a critic and a writer of serious plays, it was inevitable that he should come to grips with the principle of a tragic catharsis and with the broader problem of the function of tragedy. The passages in which he gave his answer to these problems are well known, but the significance of his remarks in relation to the ideas of his time has not always been understood. Especially, the assumption in recent years that all Neo-Classical renditions of the Aristotelian catharsis are irrelevant because of the strong moral bias of the period has led to the ignoring of quite important differences between the theories of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In an age of questioning like ours, literary definitions can as little as anything else escape being called to the bar to give an account of themselves, and of their right to exist; and some, no doubt, would say that the case has already been decided against them. Personally, after having engaged in framing a few of my own, I do not share that view; and what I wish to do here is to consider briefly what gives literary definitions their validity, and what considerations ought to guide us in framing them. The task will involve some attention to the general speculative background against which purely literary problems are relieved, and may bring together some aspects which will derive at least relative novelty from their juxtaposition.

Sometimes a question has been answered in so many creative ways that we overlook the assumptions underlying such responses. When students ask, “What can I do with a degree in literature?” the answers suggest that instructors hear a second, unasked part of the question: “-besides a career in teaching.” That PMLA has reserved space to address a related question-“Why major in literature-what do we tell our students?”-suggests a professional interest not merely in the careers available to literature majors but more broadly in testing what MLA members say about our profession. One answer is that literature majors, like other majors in the liberal arts and humanities, have a wide selection of career choices. The knowledge students gain from modern and classical languages, history, social and political sciences, philosophy, and literature serves graduates by giving them a breadth of experiences and ideas, by developing creative thinking, and by providing skills in communication that make BAs and MAs attractive to employers in business, technology, industry, government, and research, to name a few. But these options omit the one career, sometimes considered a clichéd choice, often left unsaid: literature majors make-or ought to make-excellent teachers.

Beowulf confronts the limits of knowledge in various forms: the unknowability of death, the secretive behavior of the poem's monsters, the epistemological distance of the past, and our inevitably fragmentary understanding of the poem itself. In the process, the poem also tells us something important about the methods and possibilities that it imagines for the work of discovery and literary interpretation more broadly. Scholars commonly address the poem as a text whose secrets need uncovering, but the poem's engagement with the mechanics of secrecy can be a cue for thinking through our own methods as literary critics in encounters with texts of the past. If we take Beowulf's treatment of secrecy as a guide for the poem's hermeneutic potential, then we find that the poem invites a kind of reading that rigorously, yet humbly, acknowledges how little we can actually know.