The Beowulf Poet's extraordinary facility in using a vast and diverse word-hoard has long excited students of the poem. Among the critical studies, discussions of vocabulary rank high in number, and almost every conceivable approach to the subject has been investigated either in part or with a high degree of thoroughness. Single words, such as ealuscerwen, and groups of related words, such as rime-words, kennings, and words of Christian content or reference, have received close attention, as well as larger lexical patterns, such as variation and the formulaic texture, while further studies have compared the vocabulary with that of other Old English poems or Nordic literatures. Aside from purely lexicographical or etymological inquiries, there are three perspectives to which these many discussions generally belong: 1) descriptive: usually statistical observations about the number of compounds relative to simplices or of formulas relative to the whole vocabulary of the poem, or a comparison of the frequency of certain lexical types with other poems, or a classification of the habits of word-formation; 2) figurative and appellative: the types of verbal figures and their analogues elsewhere in Old English and Old Norse; and 3) usage: the use of words in particular contexts or for specific effects, and the structural use of synonymic substitution and variation. The first emphasis is important because it reveals the composition and its formative strata of the poem's total vocabulary, and also the lexical relationships with other poetry or poetic traditions. The second serves to isolate a lexical stratum which is by nature exclusively poetic and to observe how much of this stratum is probably original and how much traditional. But it is the third perspective which is interested most essentially in the poet, since here the attempt is made to discern the many ways by which he has used language significantly to dramatize, emphasize, elucidate, intimate, and so on. Much that has been written in this category has concerned itself with the larger patterns of variation as a characterizing, describing, or structural device, rather than with smaller, more confined, strokes of verbal association and verbal play. A well-known instance of the latter is the epithet for Grendel, healoegn (142) which, in its context, wherein a bona fide hall-thane anxiously seeks out a hiding place as protection against the intruder, may with complete justification be termed ironic, and the same thing may be said of a similar appellation used later for both Grendel and Beowulf, renweardas (770), There are also hints here and there that the poet may have been influenced by learned Latin figures. Many years ago Albert Cook compared flod blode weol (1422; Exodus 463, flod blod gewod) to Aldhelm's fluenta cruenta (De Virginitate, 2600), and more recently H. D. Meritt called attention to the similarity between Hrothgar's warning that in death “eagena bearhtm / forsiteo ond forsworces” (1766b-67a) and Aldhelm's “ferreus leti somnus palpebrarum conuolatus non tricaverit” (De Virg. Prose, 321.7, ed. Ewald). It is in the smaller strokes, I think, that the poet's acumen and craft are most incisively contained, and it is to some of these that the present discussion is devoted.

It is with considerable pleasure that I meet with you today to discuss the mutual efforts of the community of English scholars, teachers of English and the Office of Education in the enterprise which we have come to call Project English. Just one year ago we were in the throes of attempting to organize this joint effort. As many of you know, this was a period of considerable casting about to determine the directions and magnitude of our effort in this area.

This will be a brief, factual, uncolored, and dull account of the first year of Project English. To understand the first year, however, we should go back a little further.

Four recent articles have presented two contradictory opinions concerning Johnson's sources for the Ethiopian background of Rasselas. The contention that his inspiration for the Happy Valley came from a wide variety of readings on Ethiopia is counter-balanced by an equal insistence on the importance of his debt to Lobo's Relation d'Abissinie. The student of Johnson remains unenlightened by this series of articles, not only because the relative merits of their arguments are never discussed but also because none of them has been based on a comprehensive study of the Ethiopian materials available to Johnson. In an effort to bring the problem closer to its definitive solution, I propose to examine a largely neglected body of material on Ethiopia, identify specific sources for Ethiopian features of Rasselas and Rambler essays 204–205, and suggest that the circumstances of the composition of Rasselas were significantly different from those generally imagined.

Am 1. oktober 1786 folgt Wilhelm Heinse, damals vierzig Jahre alt, dem Ruf an den erzbischöflichen Hof in Mainz und wird Vorleser des Kurfürsten und Erzbischofs Friedrich Karl Joseph Freiherr von Erthal. Daß Heinse in die Dienste eines katholischen Kirchenfürsten tritt, dürfte zu seinen Lebzeiten Verwunderung hervorgerufen haben und hat neuerdings zu Vermutungen über einen Wechsel in der religiös-kirchlichen Einstellung des Dichters geführt. Bis dahin hatte Heinse nie aus seinem Haß gegen Kirche, Religion und Gesellschaftsmoral einen Hehl gemacht. Gegen die kirchliche Métropole Mainz zeigte er sogar eine besondere Abneigung. Am 5. Februar 1772 schrieb er aus Erlangen an seinen Freund Joseph Schwarz entrüstet iiber Wielands Wunsch, ihn zu einem Abbé des päpstlichen Nuntius zu machen, “daß alle Götter der Freuden mich davor behüten möchten, daß ich ein Diener eines Dieners des Nachfolgers der Ungeheuer würde”. Lieber wollte er des Hungers sterben, als einen solchen Schritt tun. Sich in den Pfaffenorten Wien oder Mainz niederzulassen, bedeutete ihm in einem Brief an Gleim vom 17. April desselben Jahres soviel, wie in die Holle reisen zu müssen. Von der Landschaft und der Lage von Mainz ist er immer entzückt gewesen. Mit dem breiten Strom vor dem herrlichen Rund des Gebirges, so schreibt er auf der Ruckreise von Italien 1783 in sein Tagebuch, sind ihm Stadt und Fluß ein prächtiges Amphitheater der Natur; und noch 1789 preist er die Gegend als die erste und herrlichste am ganzen Rhein (VII, 290 u. 321). Aber so sehr er von dem Naturparadies des Mainzer Landes begeistert ist, so abfàllig äußert er sich gegen Kirche, Religion und Gesetze dieser Gegend, wo die Menschen niemals fröhlich werden sollen und “durch Trübsal und ganze Sumpfe voll Ungemach in's Reich Gottes wandern müßten”.

Dante Scholars have long recognized the central role played by the first Canto of the Comedy. In the last half-century the wealth of hidden riches contained in the Canto has received such emphasis that as early as 1925 P. Luigi Pietrobono could defend the Canto against those detractors who felt that its allegorical structure led to an obfuscation of thought. For Pietrobono, “Nel primo Canto Dante ha poste le basi del più complesso e armonioso edificio d'arte che mente umana abbia mai con-cepito; e perô, anzichè correre a criticare e a supporre che un cosî mirabile costruttore di mondi si sia sentita tremar la mano proprio nel tirarne le prime linee, direi molto più con-veniente volgere l'ingegno a ricercare il fine a cui con la sua opera intendeva.” He then proceeded to single out the many Biblical echoes that resound throughout the Canto, with special emphasis on the drama of the resurrection of Israel.

That vast distance from the muscle-bound Samson in the Book of Judges to the tragic figure of Samson Agonistes is to be traversed, as we now know, by means of Biblical commentary and its metamorphosis of a solar myth into a parable of faith. Yet one of the important stepping-stones along the way from Bible to Milton seems not to exist. Samson is emphatic in its references to wisdom, but the Samson of Christian tradition, even when a typological symbol for Christ, was but rarely noted for his strength of mind. Milton's unparalleled concern for wisdom is nevertheless no startling innovation, I think, but rather the inevitable consequence of a second tradition, equally valid and quite as long, which is within the poem. For this tradition the brief formula is “wisdom and fortitude”—sapienlia etfortiludo—a phrase descriptive of the heroic ideal and conventional to relevant background materials of at least three kinds. The first, surveyed some years ago by Ernst Curtius, begins with the heroic poems of Homer and Virgil and continues into the Renaissance. The second, considered more recently by R. E. Kaske, includes the Germanic and Old English literature of heroism, the important example being Beowulf. And the third, upon which I think Milton primarily relied and with which I shall be concerned, is a philosophy of courage, classical in origin but Christian in development. These backgrounds differ among themselves in significant ways. While the loftiest heroes—Odysseus, Aeneas—seem always to have been simultaneously wise and brave, heroic literature sometimes allows these virtues to be separable from one another. The classic illustration is summarized by Macrobius: “Nestor … helped the army quite as much with his prudence as all the youth with their might.” So, in the Song of Roland (l. 1093), “Rollant est proz e Oliver est sages.” Philosophic discussion, however, insists that these virtues cannot be divorced, that an unwise courage cannot exist. “If,” wrote Henry More, an unwise man should “light upon the doing of some brave Action, 'tis not Virtue, but Fortune, that must be applauded for such happy chance.” The interesting result of such a position is that fortitude undergoes a radical change in meaning; it refers no longer to the brute strength of an Ajax nor to the prowess in arms of Achilles but to what Milton calls “heroic magnitude of mind.” The extent of this profound alteration is first perceived in Plato and Aristotle, but for the comprehensive and systematic account, one turns to the Summa theologica of Aquinas.

I am happy to report once again on the year's foreign-language activity. It is varied and vigorous, and it is by no means exclusively sponsored by our FL Program. Our first large production of 1962 was, in fact, a joint MLAAAT enterprise, the Selective List of Materials for Teachers of Modern Foreign Languages in Elementary and Secondary Schools, whose short title, Selective List of Materials, we further abbreviated to S.L.O.M., or simply SLOM. Produced under contract with the U. S. Office of Education, and accompanied by elaborate criteria for evaluating various categories of teaching materials, it gives detailed ratings of materials in ten foreign languages. As part of our contract, we distributed 53,000 free copies to administrators and high-school teachers. In the eight months since publication we have sold only three thousand copies. Our profession seems to be divided into teachers who already have a free copy of SLOM and teachers who have never heard of it. Perhaps the present plug may act as a hearing aid. And despite its full title, this bibliography has value for college teachers as well as for school teachers. It has 128 pages of useful information and it costs only one dollar.

In many ways this particular section meeting has become one of the most significant in the annual program of the Modern Language Association. It serves to provide us with a measuring device which we can use to determine the extent to which we are fulfilling our international educational obligations. Considering the speakers who have been invited to address you today, if this afternoon's program has a theme, it might well be characterized as International Responsibility.

Although as a whole Chaucer's Monk's Tale is justly criticized for dullness, its opening two tragedies, the Lucifer and the Adam, form an effective and related pair:

Fifty years after the modern study of sentimentalism was inaugurated by Ernest Bernbaum, the problem remains whether the term has ever been satisfactorily defined or described. Two recent developments reveal some of the difficulties: Arthur Sherbo in The English Sentimental Drama takes five basic criteria considered by most authorities as typical, and shows that they may all apply to plays demonstrably not sentimental. John Harrington Smith, in the preface to The Gay Couple in Restoration Comedy (1948), announces that he has completely avoided the term “sentimental” as too vague to be of much value. Yet Ronald Crane, writing fourteen years before, assumed the essential traits of sentimentalism to be fairly clear, and Norman Holland has implied that two criteria borrowed from Bernbaum and Krutch still supply an adequate definition. There is not even agreement whether sentimentality is a positive or negative quality. Krutch and Sherbo feel that it is false and dishonest, therefore bad. Crane concedes that it is somewhat limited intellectually, but emphasizes its humanitarianism and emotional warmth, especially the “self-approving joy” that makes virtue satisfying. Bernbaum vacillates between sympathy and contempt.

Alfred Tennyson'S poetical career, extending over sixty-five years between first and last volumes—from Poems by Two Brothers in 1827 to his posthumous volume published three weeks after his death in 1892—is punctuated not only by recurrent themes but also by the reworking of old manuscripts and his well-known revision of published texts. His revision and expansion of 110 lines beginning “Oh! that ‘twere possible” published in The Tribute in 1837 resulted in 1855 in the much longer Maud, in which the earlier lyric, now beginning “O that ‘twere possible,” is Part II, Section iv. This lyric is interesting as the nucleus around which Maud developed and also because of its affinities with In Memoriam.

Jerome K. Bruner, the distinguished psychologist from Harvard who may presently be influencing American education more deeply than any other individual, recently asserted that this country is embarked on a permanent revolution in education based on a broad redefinition of the nature of the educational profession. This revolution in the educational Establishment is symbolized, says Bruner, by the presence of Nobel laureates in physics devoting their talents and energies to the devising of school curricula in science. Underlying the revolution is the assumption that “those who know a subject most deeply know best the great and simple structuring ideas in terms of which instruction must proceed.”

Concentration on the ascetic element in Puritanism has led to a misunderstanding of the Puritans' attitude towards style and the use of figurative language. Kenneth Murdock cites as characteristic of Puritan style in prose and poetry a tension arising from the conflict of theoretical asceticism with a recognition that practical effectiveness in preaching demanded an appeal to man's senses. “Constantly one feels in Puritan literature,” writes Murdock, “a conflict between the desire to convince and persuade by the readiest means, and the determination never to cross the line into pleasing the sensual man.” Thus, though the Puritan writer generally depreciated the power of words as dead things incapable of conveying the living truth, “he used figures of speech … because he knew that whatever the ideal potency of divine truth might be, fallen man responded most directly to it when some concessions were made to his errant fancy.” This resembles the theory of accommodation, and Mr. Murdock calls it by that name when he cites Richard Baxter as a kind of authority for the stylistic practice of American Puritans. While he admits that it is, in a strict sense, “borrowed and improper,” Baxter justifies his use of figurative language in terms of its usefulness and effectiveness. The American Puritans, armed with Baxter's “doctrine of accommodation,” formed their literary theory “in an attempt to answer the old riddle of how infinite and eternal variety is to be expressed in the finite terms comprehensible to mortal man.”

The endeavor of the pioneer critics—in what has somewhat exaggeratedly been called the Trollope revival—was to define a Trollopian oneness, like the oneness which Geoffrey Tillotson discerns in Thackeray. The attempt was healthy and beneficial, and its impetus not unreasonable. The sheer bulk of the novels had hindered assessment, and, despite his charming frankness and efforts at objectivity “from the further shore,” Trollope's own attachment to everything he wrote only charms us to his sense of evenness. Moreover, the Trollope canon itself fosters assumptions of unity based on similarity. The pioneer critics, by defining a unity of Trollopian flow and direction, sought to lead us through a maze deceptively landmarked with clergymen, barristers, and MP's; Franks, Harrys, and Lucys; London, Barchester, and manor houses.

From the death of Mark Twain in 1910 until 1937 Albert Bigelow Paine was the official editor of Mark Twain's literary papers. Paine was not a scholar. He wrote popular biographies, sentimental novels, and books for children. When he came to edit Mark Twain's letters, speeches, notebooks, and autobiography, he made countless deletions, following the procedure often practiced by editors dealing with such material.

If “much adverse criticism has been spent on [Milton's] allegorical figures of Sin and Death,” the blame lies less with the poet or his critics than with time—with the evolution of poetic theory and its inevitable corollary, the relativity of critical standards. The principles underlying the composition of Paradise Lost are by no means identical with those by which the poem has been judged. In the case of much neo-classical criticism, this disparity is particularly significant, as its basic assumptions are often so close to Milton's that one overlooks their actual divergence.

It two articles based on his study of the Bodleian MS of Shelley's “The Triumph of Life” G. M. Matthews has presented evidence which, he suggests, proves that, during the weeks immediately preceding Shelley's trip to Leghorn with Edward Williams and their subsequent drowning, Shelley and Jane Williams engaged in “a love-affair, passionate on Shelley's part and at least complaisant on Jane's, cutting across the pattern of marriages within the confined little community of Casa Magni,” and that much of the somber tone of “The Triumph of Life” can be attributed to this domestic crisis.