Modem Language Association Research Articles

Arthur Miller: Self and Tragedy

Editor's Note: At the 2014 Modem Language Association Annual Convention in Chicago, the Miller Society organized a special round table session, Arthur Miller: Self and Tragedy, that discussed cognitive approaches to Miller's work. Presided by David Palmer, the session brought together the cognitive literary scholars, Patrick Colm Hogan and Bruce McConachie and the Miller scholars: Stephen A. Marino and Matthew C. Roudane. The following is an edited transcript of the session.Palmer: Welcome. This session is the beginning of events leading up to the Society's celebration of the centennial of Miller's birth in October 2015. The core idea for our round-table discussion this evening is quite simple: bring together two scholars who specialize in cognitive approaches to literature and two scholars who specialize in the works of Miller and let them discuss how cognitive approaches provide insights into Miller's vision of tragedy and how Miller's plays reveal the workings of the human mind, in particular how a person develops a sense of self.Miller's plays seem especially well-adapted to this discussion because of the way Miller structured his tragedies. As Ben Brantley, the theater critic of The New York Times, noted in a recent issue of The Miller Journal (Vol. VII, 1 & 2, Fall 2012, 2), Every one of Miller's plays is steeped in a sense of guilt that taints each of its characters; they all take place 'after the fall.' The crisis that prompts the collapse of the narrative that constitutes a person's self generally takes place in Miller's plays before the action begins. Miller approaches tragedy not as a depiction of the moment a character confronts his flawed self-narrative but as a depiction of his characters' floundering to find a new psychological equilibrium the confrontation has occurred, after the fall. This certainly is true of the Keller family in All My Sons (1947), of Willy Loman in Death of a (1949), of John Proctor in The Crucible (1953), and of Quentin in After the Fall (1964). The same pattern is seen in many others of Miller's plays and is what makes these plays such suitable subjects for a cognitive approach to literary interpretation, in particular our understanding of crises in a person's sense of self. This is the general theme our panelists will discuss.We'll begin the round table with brief opening statements from the two cognitive scholars and follow these with statements from the Miller scholars. There then will be a discussion among the panelists, and we hope to have 25 minutes at the end of the session for an open discussion with the audience.McConachie: I've entitled my opening remarks Salesman and Literary to indicate my general endorsement of this approach to literary criticism and my application of it to Miller's Death of a Salesman. I would modify literary Darwinism in a couple of ways, however, which I hope we can talk about during the discussion.In Graphing Jane Austin: The Evolutionary Basis of Literary Meaning (2012), authors Joseph Carroll and Jonathan Gottschall, plus their two co-authors, summarize the results of their web-based survey questioning hundreds of readers about their response to nineteenth-century British novels. The four literary Darwinists draw several conclusions, three of which are particularly relevant to our purposes today. First, following the work of others, they state that story-telling and listening helped small bands of our evolutionary predecessors to survive. Second, these stories endorsed egalitarian norms through an agonistic structure that favored such values over the norms that promoted individual success. Third, the literary Darwinists demonstrate that we are still telling these kinds of stories, which continue to communicate the biocultural norms we learned in our hunter-gatherer past.Let's look more closely at these conclusions before moving to Salesman. The authors make a strong case that our ancestors adopted altruistic norms around 100,000 years ago to ensure the social cohesion and survivability of their bands. …

Monkey-girls of Old Regime France: Babiole and Ourika

In her introduction to a 1994 edition of the 1823 novel Ourika, Joan Dejean explains the text's origins in this way: 'It was in her salon that [Claire de Duras] first told the true story of a black child brought back from Senegal shortly before the Revolution by the chevalier de Boufflers (who had served as governor of the colony), whose aunt, the princess of Beauvau, raised the child along with the princess's two orphaned grandsons,' 1 In the rest of her introductory remarks, Dejean concentrates less on the text's inception than on its reception, placing Ourika in the context of the racist legislation of the Code Noir and analyzing the story's success in the current of abolitionist efforts in the early years of the nineteenth century. If Dejean attributes much ofthe novel's initial popularity to its topicality at the time of its publication, the success of her re-edition of this text may owe much to its own context as well. Preparing Ourika for the press of the Modem Language Association, Dejean and her co-editor Margaret Waller respond to academe's increasing demand for texts that address the concerns of twenty-firstcentury readers, as Carla Peterson's comment explains: 'The MLA edition of Ourika is exciting news not only for scholars who teach nineteenth-century French literature but also for comparatists, feminist critics, and those interested in the intersecting representations of gender, race, and class in literary texts. '2 Duras's novel has thus been appreciated for its pertinence in its own time and also its prescience in relation to the problem of identity politics almost two centuries later. In reexamining Ourika, however, I am less interested in the novel's relationship to our present than in how it relates to texts that preceded it. Although most readers identify Ourika as a highly original work (Dejean affirms that '[Ourika is] the first black heroine in a novel set in Europe and the first black female narrator in French literature'J), I will show that Duras belongs to a long literary tradition. While some scholars have seen sources for Ourika in other fictional figures, specifically Galatea and Cinderella,s I will examine the striking resemblances between the

Essential Encounters by Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury (review)

1 38Women in French Studies with the novel from 1879 on, and has been reproduced in this edition as well. It stresses the morality of the story, which could be expected coming from the author oíThe ExperimentalNovel who considered novelists as "moralistes expérimentateurs." Christopher Rivers' translation is superb: the text is easy to read, agreeable , captivating, and, at times, amusing. As he notes, he has tried to keep the theatrical tone ofthe original French and the page-turning nature ofthe novel. Therefore he has made it his priority to render its freshness and liveliness to the detriment of some stylistic anachronism or contemporary flair. As a result , his translation is different from previous ones as it is more modern. Besides the one published in Chicago by Laird and Lee in 1891, which he cites, another anonymous but less literal English translation does exist (Mdlle. Giraud, My Wife, by Adolphe Belot, London, Privately Printed for the Trade, n.d. - probably 1900-1909). A concise introduction by Christopher Rivers precedes the novel. It gives background information on the author's life, work and literary relationship with Zola. Rivers shows how the novel follows, but also differentiates itself from, the existing French literary tradition of representing lesbian love. He interprets the novel as less about homo-erotic love and more about the husband's discovery that his wife is lesbian, and shows how ironically the male/male intense but safe friendship prevails as embodying heterosexuality vis-à-vis a lesbian threat. It would be interesting, however, also to consider the ways in which power functions within the female/female relation. Finally, he explains the sociopolitical debate concerning religious versus secular education for young girls that took place when the novel first appeared. This re-edition and translation is most welcome. It can be used in courses focusing on 19th century history, and especially social history as Belot was known as a literary speculator who gave the public exactly what it wanted. Rivers' introduction gives the necessary and general background that will please any reader and its bibliography will satisfy the more erudite. Thérèse De RaedtUniversity of Utah Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury. Essential Encounters. Trans, and Introd., Cheryl Toman. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2002. Pp. 60 and 58. ISBN: 0-87352-794-1 and 0-87352-793-3. $6.95 for each volume. Recently published in the Modem Language Association's Texts and Translations Series, Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury's Rencontres essentielles and its translation in English, Essential Encounters, offers an interesting perspective on a woman's struggle with her role in life. Published in 1969 and set mainly in Cameroon, this ground-breaking novel tells of Flo's infertility, failed marriage , desire for love and approach to questions ofpolygamy. Kuoh-Moukoury's short novel, the first published by a woman from sub-Saharan francophone Africa, and translated here in English for the first time, has influenced a Book Reviews139 myriad ofCameroonian women writers. The author wrote the text to "inspire other women to write." Next to Calixthe Beyala's highly provocative C 'est Ie Soleil qui m 'a brûlée, published nearly twenty years after Kuoh-Moukoury's text, this novel pales in its social agenda. Nevertheless, its main character embodies an important transitional moment in the metamorphosis of the modem-day Cameroonian woman. Furthermore, remembering that Rencontres essentielles inspired Beyala's controversial text -to list one novel in a long list ofinfluences - attests to a profound evolution in the attitudes ofCameroonian women writers as espoused in their writings throughout three short decades. Kuoh-Moukoury's novel thus plays an important pioneering role. The beginning of the novel presents Flo's childhood, courting, marriage and the fateful day when she discovers she is infertile. The bliss ofher marriage quickly dissipates and Flo turns to a sorcerer and a herbal specialist to help her reproduce. When this does not yield the result she seeks, Flo stops considering a child as a solution to her marital woes. Once she asks her husband about his indifference towards her, he recognizes their troubles and proposes divorce. Flo is no less than overjoyed when a childhood friend reconnects...

Mere Illustrations: Maurice Sendak and Melville

JOHN TAGGART Mere Illustrations: Maurice Sendak and Melville Hershel Parker's Kraken Edition of Herman Melville's Pierre: Or, the Ambiguities. Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. HarperCollins, 1995. For to me it seems more the excellently illustrated re-statement of a problem , than the solution of the problem itself. But as such mere illustrations ate almost universally taken for solutions (and perhaps they are the only possible human solutions), thetefote it may help to the tempotary quiet of some inquiring mind; and so not be wholly without use. Melville, Pierre The most significant recent study of visual art in relation to literary texts is J. Hillis Miller's Iiiustration (Harvard 1992). Among several perceptions to be found in this study, perhaps the most fundamental concerns doubleness. After noting that a picture and a text in juxtaposition will always have different meanings, will always conflict irreconcilably, Miller goes on to claim that each separate picture or text is dialogical within itself and, therefore, double in meaning. "The warfare between media is doubled by an internal warfare intrinsic to each medium in itself" (95). This leads to an even larger claim: "the difficult, perhaps impossible, task of reading works in eithet medium consists, in part, of identifying in each case this othet by way of tracks it has left within the work" (96). What can be more attracting than that which has been designated as difficult, pethaps impossible? Accordingly, I shall attempt this task with specific application to Maurice Sendak's pictures as reproduced in Hershel Parker's Kraken edition of Melville's Pierre: Or The Ambiguities Arizona Quarterly Volume 56, Number 2, Summer 2000 Copyright © 2000 by Arizona Board of Regents issN 0004-1610 112John Taggart (HarperCollins, 1995). My reading will concentrate on one pictute in particular, the embrace of two nude figures, which appears both on the dust cover and within the text (Book XlI) of this edition. Let us begin with what is seen first and, considering its tendency to become worn and thus eventually discarded, perhaps never seen again: the dust cover picture. The two most prominent elements of the cover design are the picture itself and the first half of the text's title. Their prominence is one of scale. Easily the two largest elements of the design , their shared prominence suggests that the moment illustrated by the picture is the single key moment of the book, that the picture is the single, essential key to the book as a whole. This suggestion is amplified by the appearance of the names of Melville (top) and Sendak (bottom), along with that of Hershel Parker (in between), in the same, much smaller typeface. Author, editor, and illustrator are thus made equivalent , co-producers of this key to the key of the book. Many readers, however, will very probably never know about the existence of this key picture. Published only in a relatively expensive hardbound format, the Kraken edition has obviously been marketed for institutional libraries. Who else would be interested in what is, after all, a consciously partial version of the author's complete and final manuscript ? Only institutional libraries already possessing the 1971 version of Pierre—i.e., the Northwestern-Newberry edition in the Writings of Herman Melville series, an edition which has been designated "an approved text" by the Center for Editions of American Authors and the Modem Language Association of America—could be expected to purchase this edition.1 It is customary for such libraries to remove dust covers before cataloging and placing books on their shelves. What institutional readers will first see is not Sendak's dust cover picture but a gold-stamped design on a maroon "hard cover." This design shows a single-masted ship, a cross on its flag, afloat on an orientalized serpentine sea. Under the design is THE KRAKEN EDITION in the same all caps typeface as appears under the dust cover picture. An elaborated verticalization of this serpentine sea is placed on the spine ofthe book under author, title, and publisher. The provenance of this design and its relevance to the text are unclear. Sendak, who has copyrighted the pictures, may have done it; or it may be the work of...

Edward W. Said's Presidency

There are times when even decision about whether to renew membership in large professional organization turns into question of conscience. With the scheduled accession of Edward W. Said to the presidency of the Modem Language Association on 1 January 1999, regret that must resign from the association as of 31 December 1998. The president of the MLA publicly and officially represents the organization. believe that such representative should have displayed regularly only distinction in critical scholarship but also dignity in the public treatment of others. Edward professional work has extensively influenced several fields of literary study. But his public assaults against individuals whose views reasonably differ from his own deeply violate fundamental values repeatedly professed by the MLA. At times such assaults have passed beyond the forms of disparagement that often compromise contemporary academic disputes. They have passed into acts of aggressive contempt and blatant dehumanization. The variety of disturbing cases includes an exchange many years ago with several members of the MLA (An Exchange on Edward Said and Difference, Critical Inquirv 15 [1989]: 611-46). In detailed article, one scholar argued that greater accuracy and breadth of information would noticeably revise claims about the Middle East (Robert J. Griffin, Ideology and Misrepresentation: A Response to Edward Said). In his reply (Response), Said tried to discredit alternately the author's sanity, his scholarship, and his humanity. His solemn idiocies, cried Said, inhabit semideranged world entirely his own. This scholar-if that is what he is, scoffed Saidis only, to the best of my knowledge, the author of two (or is it three?) below-average articles on Dr. Johnson. I surmise, Said postured, that is actually 'Griffin,' an ideological simulacrum; it could be asked he is being. Perhaps even more than the original critique, reaction exposed some of the stark deficiencies of his own claims, including his profession to speak for the cause of humane behavior. In the same exchange, when two other members of the MLA appealed for dialogue (Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin, Toward Dialogue with Edward Said), Said replied with modified form of derision. When another scholar (Geoffrey Hartman) later protested effort to dehumanize the original critic, Said referred again to his doubt about whether Robert Griffin was human being. As for Hartman's perspective, Said sought to degrade it as patronizing and hypocritical self-congratulation that was tasteless and jejune but not surprising (Editorial Note, Critical Inquiry 16 [1989]: 199-200). Such assaults of course are no less offensive when applied to individuals outside the MLA, such as prominent intellectual (Michael Walzer) whom Said tried to demean as small frightened man (Walzer and Said, Exchange: 'Exodus and Revolution,' Grand Street 5 [1986]: 246-59). The attacks repeatedly flaunt the twists of mind that underlie them. Unlike the serious opponent he had made him up to be, Said sneered, the 'real' was good deal worse than the fiction created. But Said concealed the fact that he himself fabricated this supposedly 'real' Walzer. He clearly venerates nasty wave of Ayatollahs, exploded Said, who accused him of supporting several attitudes toward Israel opposed by Walzer himself. A figure of characteristic idiocy, concluded Said. It should be stressed that Edward Said does confine his insults to Jewish intellectuals with whom he disagrees. He has scorned Fouad Ajami as a mediocre scholar; Samir al-Khalil broadly seems quite incapable of argument, scholarship, or rational exchange; Afsaneh Najmabadi expresses wacky or puerile views (Najmabadi, Said's War on the Intellectuals, with reply, Middle East Report Nov.-Dec. 1991: 2+). Still, he reserves special aspersions for individuals he attempts to discredit by association with Israel. He has concocted the accusation that renowned scholar (Bernard Lewis) seems to advocate expelling Palestinian Arabs (Said and Lewis, in Orientalism: An Exchange, New York Review of Books 12 Aug. 1982: 44-48). The more reflective the critique of his views, the more enraged his reaction. When confronted with his insults (like those quoted in this letter), he cries that his own integrity is being impugned. The repugnant language of the incoming spokesman of the Modem Language Association cannot be excused by the claim that the cause for which he speaks grants him special license for abuse. Others with urgent causes of their own have persisted in seeking language of civil exchange under severely trying conditions. Nor is the need for such language merely point of etiquette; it is principle of ethics, the obligation to engage even adversaries as beings with capacity for understanding. Yet to my knowledge Edward Said has never repudiated the derogatory expressions to which have referred. Will he inform his colleagues in the MLA if he still endorses those expressions? To choose to remain in professional organization, of course, does necessarily imply agreeing with every position taken by its members or its president. In this case,

“Dreadful thoughts”: The tenth anniversary of the Levin petition

I n 1988, Richard Levin, Professor of English at State University of New York at Stony Brook, wrote an essay for Publications of Modem Language Association (PMI-4) explaining his objections to feminist literary criticism. The react ion f rom feminist literary critics that ensued revealed how politicized literary scholarship had become dur ing 1970s and 1980s and how literary theory was transforming into political activism. It has been ten years since feminist literary critics launched their assault on Professor Levin, and it would be enl ightening to revisit tactics in tended to int imidate literary scholars who failed to acknowledge political goals of radical academics. It is hard to measure what success, if any, feminist literary critics were able to realize f rom their attack on Professor Levin, but it surely must have been more than apparent ten years ago to n o n t e n u r e d literature teachers, graduate students, and depar tment cha i rmen that scholars risked oppor tuni ty to publish if they dared, like Professor Levin, to find fault with feminist literary criticism. In his essay, titled Feminist Thematics and Shakespearian Tragedy, Levin argued that feminist literary criticism, since it emerged dur ing mid-1970s, suffered from an overreliance on thematics, reduct ion of complex works of literature to a handful of simple and persistent themes.1 (Such an objection was consistent with Professor Levin's similar complaints in his 1979 New Readings vs. Old Plays that thematic studies deprive Shakespeare's plays of their complexity and originality. For thematic critic, Professor Levin argued, significance of Shakespeare's plays always resides e lsewhere-in contemporary documents , religious controversies, or topical events -but no t in words that Shakespeare wrote.) In his PMIA essay, Professor Levin similarly observed that the themes employed in [feminist] interpretat ions are basically same. Although terminology may vary, these criticisms all f ind that [Shakespeare's] plays are about role of gender in individual and society (125). Insisting that Shakespeare's plays are really about gender themes not only obscures o ther and richer interpretations, Professor Levin argued, but feminist literary critics too often ignore facts of plays. For example, Professor Levin cited one feminist literary critic who wrote that King Lear's rejection of his daughter in first act of King Lear is a social n o r m for patriarchal father-daughter relationship. Yet, observed Levin, the witnesses to this relat ionship--Kent, Gloucester, Burgundy, France, even Goneril and

Howells in The Heath

SINCE it was launched in a blaze of glory at the 1989 convention of the Modem Language Association (MLA), The Heath Anthology ofAmerican Literature has drawn kudos from ritually progressive academics, ever in quest of the cutting edge, as well as brickbats from programmatically conservative critics, ever on alert for the iniquities of tenured radicals. In a statement proudly broadcast by the publisher, the newly appointed associate editor of American Literature, Cathy N. Davidson, averred in 1989 that The Heath (as it is familiarly known) renders as pedagogy a movement in criticism and scholarship, to my mind, that has been the most significant development since World War II. As such it is a symbol, a symbol of both product and process in the remaking of American literature for present and future generations.' In contrast, William D. Schaefer, a former executive director of the MLA, puzzled over some of the authors listed in The Heath's table of contents: Who the hell are they?2 The clash of opinions, which the media reported as yet another salvo in the Culture Wars, was obligingly reduced to a sound bite by an unnamed spokesman for the Association of Departments of English: one extreme is a very conservative group saying we have a canon of great literature that shouldn't be altered. On the other side are people who say the canon has to be updated constantly as part of the ongoing expansion of knowledge. And the sides are doing battle.3 Any publisher would welcome such battle, for controversy is, by

Feminism without tears

PLURALISTS 'DANCE'; THEORISTS 'STORM' OR 'MARCH,' WRITES NINA Baym in her 1984 essay The Madwoman and Her Languages: Why I Don't Do Feminist Literary Theory. Setting the pragmatism and diversity of American academic feminism in the 1970s in opposition to the Francocentric, legalistic, and increasingly misogynist work of feminist theorists in the 1980s, the article and its provocation are characteristic of Baym's witty, no nonsense, and avowedly liberal feminist approach to American literature and culture in Feminism and American Literary History. In this collection of previously published essays, which range from her influential 1981 essay Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors to more recent work on women's historical writings, Baym locates herself at the very center of past and ongoing debates about the very meanings we bring to such terms as feminism, American, literary, and history. At the time Baym began teaching and writing within the institutional spaces of the American academy in the mid-1960s, literary study meant the close reading of a selection of white male canonical texts as a source of universal meaning and self-evident aesthetic value. It was in this context that Adrienne Rich, at a 1971 session of the Modem Language Association, issued her now famous call for a revisionary feminist criticism:

Language Variation in North American English: Research and Teaching. Edited by A. Wayne Glowka and Donald M. Lance. New York: Modem Language Association of America, 1993

Language Variation in North American English: Research and Teaching. Edited by A. Wayne Glowka and Donald M. Lance. New York: Modem Language Association of America, 1993

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association

The association's most significant news is its change in name from PAPC to PAMLA to strengthen its identification with the Modem Language Association and to maintain the historic presence of classical languages. The association's ninety-third annual meeting will be held 3-5 November 1995 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, hosted by the College of Letters and Science with its Division of the Humanities, and cosponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Department of Classics, the Comparative Literature Program, the Department of English, the Department of Germanic, Semitic, and Slavic Studies, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Gerhart Hoffmeister, professor of German, is serving as chair of the local committee.

South Atlantic Modern Language Association

As we conclude our fifth and final year on the SAMLA team, we are happy to report that SAMLA continues to be the largest regional affiliate of the Modem Language Association of America despite the belt-tightening measures that have been going on in the economy and in our profession. This year 1,048 colleagues attended the Baltimore convention, a testimony to the attractiveness of the site but still below what we normally experience in Atlanta. The 1995 convention will be held 3-5 November at the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta. Preregistration for the convention is $30 for regular members and $20 for graduate students. SAMLA, as always, welcomes all to what will be a lively and informative meeting. Featured speakers will include Mary Lee Settle, William Calin, Trudier Harris, and Durs Grunbein.

Teaching Japanese: Consideration of learners’ affective variables

in U.S. schools has changed dramatically in past 10 years. Japanese was once perceived an esoteric language that attracted only a limited number of students. That era is over now. According to Fall 1990 Survey of Foreign Language Registrations in U.S. Institutions of Higher Education (Modem Language Association, 1990), Japanese is the fifth most commonly taught language. In addition, one of less commonly taught foreign languages, Japanese gained a 94.9 increase in registration between 1986 and 1990. Despite this increase in popularity, attrition rate among students who take Japanese has been reported to be as much eighty percent (Mills, Samuels, & Sherwood, 1987). One of reasons cited is perceived degree of difficulty of Japanese language itself. Clearly, unlike cognate languages such French, Spanish, and German, noncognate languages are more demanding for American students. According to ETS (Educational Testing Service) Oral Proficiency Testing Manual (Liskin-Gasparro, 1982), under ideal conditions, it takes American students 720 hours of instruction to

The unfulfilled promise: Women and academe

Women in academia have made noticeable gains since the 1970s. More than a third of all Ph.D.s now go to women. Women comprise the majority of doctoral recipients in the once largely male field of psychology. The American Historical Association, the American Sociological Association, and the Modem Language Association have elected female presidents in recent years. Women have garnered book prizes for major scholarly studies. Over 500 colleges and universities have established women's studies programs. Many of the women who have produced the new scholarship in women's studies are now tenured. At all the major research universities, these women are now training a new generation of students in a vast but largely new scholarly literature about gender. How different was my own undergraduate education in the 1960s. In four years at liberal arts university, I had only two female instructors, my French teacher, a Bohemian with hair down to her waist, and my English professor, who giggled at the racy passages in Shakespeare. In French literature we translated passages from Sartre but not de Beauvoir; in English, we were assigned Joyce but not Woolf. When I asked for advice about applying to graduate school in my senior year, a favorite professor who had always treated me well and given me good grades, advised me against becoming a college professor, because I was planning to many. I would find it impossible to combine having a career and a family, he told me. A history professor with whom I had taken several courses liked to tell his female students that there were only two callings for women, secretarial work and prostitution. He advised us to pursue the more respectable of the two. Despite the more favorable atmosphere on campus in recent decades, the percentage of faculty women has grown rather slowly. In 1962, 22% of the faculty at four-year institutions was female; in 1986-1987, the comparable fig-

Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady : A Bibliography of Primary Material and Annotated Criticism

Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady: A Bibliography of Primary Material and Annotated Criticism by Marion Richmond, Canadian Publishing Foundation This bibliography of primary material and annotated criticism extending from the publication date of The Portrait of a Lady in 1881 is based, in part, on the checklists compiled by Maurice Beebe and William T. Stafford, published in the first Henry James special number of Modern Fiction Studies 3 (Spring, 1957): 73-81, 90, and the second Henry James special number of the same journal 12 (1966): 117-35, 15861 . The main sources of the Beebe and Stafford checklists are Lyon N. Richardson's bibliography in Henry James: Representative Selections (New York: American Book Company, 1941), reprinted in The Question of Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. F. W. Dupee (New York: Henry Holt, 1945); Eunice C. Hamilton's "Biographical and Critical Studies of Henry James: 1941-1948," American Literature 20 (1949): 424-35; Viola R. Dunbar's "Addenda ..." to the preceding, American Literature 22 (1950): 55-61; and Lewis Leary's Articles on American Literature: 1900-1950 (Durham: Duke U P, 1954). Also incorporated are items for the period 1881-1905 derived mainly from Roger Gard's Henry James: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1968). Beginning in 1963 one of the main sources is American Literary Scholarship: An Annual (Durham: Duke U P, 1963-1981). Main sources after 1965 are: Abstracts of English Studies. Boulder, Colorado: Colorado U; Calgary, Alberta: Calgary U P, 9 (1966)-26 (September, 1983). American Literary Realism: 1870-1910. Arlington: Texas U, 1 (1967)-16 (Autumn, 1983). American Literature. Durham: Duke U P, 38 (1966-1967)-56 (March, 1984). Budd, John, Comp. Henry James: A Bibliography of Criticism: 1975-1981. Westport, CN; London: Greenwood P, 1983, passim. Gerstenberger, Donna and Geroge Hendrick. The American Novel: A Checklist of Twentieth Century Criticism on Novels Written Since 1789. Vol. II. Criticism Written 1960-1968. Chicago: Swallow P, 1970: 197-200. Henry James Review. Baton Rouge: The Henry James Society, Louisiana State U, 1 (November, 1979)-5 (Fall, 1983). Holman, C. Hugh. Comp. The American Novel Through Henry James. [2nd ed.]. Arlington Heights, IL: AHM Publishing (Goldentree Bibliographies in Language and Literature), 1979: 78-96. Journal of Modern Literature. Philadelphia: Temple U, 1 (1971)-5 (April,1976). McColgan, Kristin Pruitt. Henry James, 1917-1959: A Reference Guide. Boston: Hall, 1979. Modern Fiction Studies. Lafayette, IN: Modem Fiction Club of Purdue U, 12 (Spring, 1966)-29 (Winter, 1983). Modern Language Association: Abstracts of Articles in Scholary Journals. New York: Modem Language Association of America, 1971-1974. Modern Language Association: International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures. New York: Modem Language Association of America, 1966-1982. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. New York: Modem Language Association of America, 81 (1966)-99 (May, 1984). Ricks, Beatrice. Henry James: A Bibliography of Secondary Works. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow P, 1975: 104-21; 230-399. Scura, Dorothy Mclnnis. Henry James, 1960-1974: A Reference Guide. Boston: Hall, 1979. Taylor, Linda J. Henry James, 1866-1916: A Reference Guide. Boston: Hall, 1982, passim. This bibliography includes reviews, criticism in books, and articles in literary journals. It also includes introductions to various editions of the Portrait, and articles dealing with other authors and other Volume 7 164 Numbers 2-3 The Henry James Review Winter-Spring, 1986 subjects in which this novel is discussed in some detail. In accordance with the selection criteria adopted by Beebe and Stafford, dissertations, newspaper reviews (except for a sampling of the early newspaper reviews), foreign language criticism, and routine discussions in handbooks and histories of literature are not included. Unsigned reviews are set out in the Appendix. The annotated criticism includes only articles of at least seven consecutive pages together with the shorter classic essays. The constraints of space also made it necessary to exclude all annotated criticism from foreign journals. The material is presented in alphabetical order according to the authors' surnames. Unless otherwise indicated in square brackets all publication dates are of first editions. Publishing facts in most instances have been transcribed from the title page; therefore, the stated names of the...

Software Reviews : Nota Bene, Version 1.1 Reviewed by Patrick W. Hamlett, University of Missouri—Rolla Publisher: Dragonfly Software, 409 Fulton Street, Suite 202, Brooklyn, NY 11201 (telephone: 718-624-0127) Year of Publication: 1985 Materials: Nota Bene master program disk, supplemental utilities disk, instruction manual Price: $495.00 Machine Specificity: IBM PC, xT, AT; Columbia; Compaq Portable & Desk-pro; Corona; ITT Xtra; Leading

In summary, I am very well pleased with Nota Bene as a word processor explicitly designed for the scholarly writer. It is an efficient and powerful word processor, capable of performing virtually every function a researcher could desire (except come up with the research ideas themselves!). The text-base feature alone would be well worth having to deal with a much clumsier text editor. The many features of this word processor will meet the needs of eventhe most demanding user. Nota Bene has been endorsed by the Modem Language Association.

Studies in American Indian Literature ed. by Paula Gunn Allen, and Three American Literatures ed. by Houston R. Baker, Jr

170 Western American Literature Jonathan Edwards. Simonson professes himself, in quaint fundamentalistic formulae, to be a born-again believer in this tradition, and practices the study of literature according to its canons. The result is nothing less than a constant polemic against a literary tradition which is uncongenial to his beliefs. Such a result is impressive — nothing less than a thorough jettisoning of the liber­ ating ideas of the last two hundred years. WILLIAM H. SHURR The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Studies in American Indian Literature. Edited by Paula Gunn Allen. (New York: Modem Language Association, 1983. 384 pages, $13.50.) Three American Literatures. Edited by Houston R. Baker, Jr. (New York: Modern Language Association, 1982. 265 pages, $9.50.) Paula Gunn Allen’s Studies in American Indian Literature and Houston A. Baker’s Three American Literatures are both results of the Modern Language Association’s interest in minority/ethnic literature and language. Studies in American Indian Literature deals exclusively with Indian litera­ ture, while Three American Literatures discusses Mexican-American, Native American, and Asian-American literatures. Studies in American Indian Literature is a collection of essays on Indian oral literature, autobiography, and Indian women’s literature. There is a section on modern and contemporary Indian literature, a section on the Indian in American literature, and a section on available resources in the field such as anthologies, texts, and scholarly articles. Each of the major sections in the book is followed by suggested course outlines and suggested reading lists. It is a text that is designed for the teacher who wishes to teach a course in this area rather than for the student. As a secondary source book, Studies in American Indian Literature has much to recommend it. Many of the articles such as Patricia Clark Smith’s “Coyote Ortiz,” LaVonne Ruoff’s “American Indian Literatures,” and James Ruppert’s “Discovering America” are first rate. While the level of the other articles tends to vary, the majority are competent. The most obvious problem is that several of the articles are out of date and should have been revised prior to publication. Paula Gunn Allen’s “The Sacred Hoop,” which discusses oral literature, is one such example. Originally written in 1975, the article has received no additional attention even though the discussion of Indian oral literature has produced new ideas and directions. A second problem lies in the suggested reading lists. For whatever reason, the lists are highly selective. Normally this would not be a particular concern, but the additions and the omissions tend to suggest that the lists were devel­ oped along the lines of personal taste rather than as a result of a scholarly stance. Reviews 171 Nonetheless, Studies in American Indian Literature is a book that should be recommended and read. At the same time, the Modern Language Associa­ tion should seriously consider publishing a second edition, updating several of the articles that need revision, adding a number of newer articles, and correct­ ing the deficiencies in the reading lists. Three American Literatures is not as ambitious an undertaking. Where Allen’s book would probably function best as a teacher’s text, Baker’s is designed more for students. Three American Literatures is a superficial intro­ duction to the literature produced by Mexican-Americans, Native Americans, and Asian-Americans. While Raymond A. Paredes’ “The Evolution of Chicano Literature” is competent, the rest of the articles tend to be very uneven. Kenneth Lincoln’s “Native American Literatures,” while it contains some interesting ideas and surveys a broad range of literature, is a victim of the author’s romantic notions about Indians and Indian literature. The essay also tends to wander, much like a child out gathering flowers with little regard for direction or pace. “An Introduction to Chinese-American and JapaneseAmerican Literatures,” the lead article in the section on Asian-American literature, is not so much an examination of the literature as it is an ad hominem attack on certain writers such as Virginia Lee, Parde Lowe, Jade Snow Wong, and Betty Lee Sung. The authors of the article, themselves writers, spend a good part of the essay discussing their own work and patting themselves on the back for...

"Give o' er the play": Closure in Shakespeare' s Hamlet and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author

Comparisons between the plays of Pirandello and Shakespeare seem, by now, rather the norm than the exception in critical examinations of either dramatist; more often than not, and for a variety of reasons, Hamlet provides the locus classicus. So it is that the papers which follow demonstrate several kinds of comparisons between Hamlet and two of Pirandello's plays. Three of the essays were first presented, in somewhat briefer versions, to the Pirandello Society at the Modem Language Association meeting in Houston, Texas, on December 29, 1980; Matthew N. Proser's paper was prompted by the discussion at that session. In the two essays presented immediately after this one, Maurice Charney and Jill Levenson, respectively, identify and carefully analyze several particular points of comparison between Hamlet and Pirandello's Six Characters and between Hamlet and Henry IV; then Proser also examines Hamlet and Henry IV; and, finally, Terence Hawkes responds to the work of Charney and Levenson. The intention of the whole group might be to invite additional comparisons between the plays to be made by readers of these essays, thus continuing (in a manner not at all foreign to either Shakespeare or Pirandello) the process of completion in the mind of the "reader/audience." Indeed, Pirandello posited just such a process of completion as essential to the theater's special dynamism when he wrote that, "in the Theater a work of art is no longer the work of the writer (which, after all, can always be preserved in some other way), but an act oflife, realized on the stage from one moment to the next, with the cooperation of an audience that must find satisfaction in it."2 That cooperation is absolutely necessary to the play's "act of life," for it is in the reception by an audience that the play reaches its final form. With this idea as context, then, this first essay may serve to introduce the rest by suggesting some general similarities in the ways both writers involve, and subsequently discomfit, their audiences in search of the final form of the play.

Measure for Measure, Montmorency, and Sardou’s La Tosca

Measure for Measure, Montmorency, and Sardou’s La Tosca Mark Eccles Angelo in Measure for Measure is “criminal in double viola­ tion” (V.i.409): he tries to violate Isabel, and he breaks his promise to save her brother when he orders Claudio beheaded. Stories of such double criminals were surprisingly widespread in the sixteenth century, and most of them are mentioned in my recent New Variorum Shakespeare edition (New York: Modem Language Association of America, 1980). I can now add one more analogue that I found too late to mention there, and point out that Sardou claimed it as his source for La Tosca. In 1548, after a salt tax had been levied on the province of Guyenne, contrary to its ancient privileges, Bordeaux and its region rose in revolt. Bayle St. John gives a vivid account of the revolt in Montaigne the Essayist, A Biography (London, 1858), I, 73-93, an account mainly based on a contemporary pasquille or pamphlet which he finds “exact in all facts it states in common with other narratives.” The Constable of France, Anne de Montmorency (1493-1567), led an army from Tou­ louse which crushed the rebels so savagely that over a hundred and forty persons of note “were hung, beheaded, broken on the wheel, impaled, tom by four horses, or burned.” One of the chief, St. John writes (pp. 84-85), was Lestonnac, Chevalier du Guet, a jurat or alderman of Bordeaux, one of whose family married Montaigne’s sister Jeanne. Lestonnac, says St. John, “had a beautiful wife, who went to beg her husband’s life of Montmorency. He promised it on one infamous condition. The poor woman complied, and he then took her to a window just as her husband’s head was falling.” Instead of being punished, Montmorency was created due de Montmorency and a peer of France. 74 Mark Eccles 75 Luther, Hans Sachs, and most of those who tell similar stories of a double criminal go on to say that the criminal was himself beheaded and so received “measure for measure.” But this did not always happen. Thomas Danett in The Historié of Philip de Commines (London, 1596) adds a story, which he had probably heard when he was in Paris, that Oliver le Dain, a favorite of Louis XI, went unpunished for such a crime, though he was hanged in 1484 on other charges. According to Henri Estienne, Apologie pour Hérodote (Geneva, 1566), and Simon Goulart (Paris, 1601), the Provost la Voultel went scotfree after seducing a wife, then hanging her husband and showing her the body, saying, “I promised to give back your hus­ band; I am not keeping him, I am giving him back to you.” The villain’s claim that he is giving back her husband to the wife by sending her the body occurs again in Claude Rouillet’s Latin tragedy Philanira (Paris, 1556) and in G. B. Giraldi’s tale in Hecatommithi (Monreale, 1565), one of the versions Shakespeare read. The story that Montmorency took Lestonnac’s wife to a window and showed her her husband being beheaded adds a dramatic touch that may have influenced later versions. Belleforest in Histoires tragiques (Lyon, 1583) imagines a captain at Turin seducing a soldier’s wife and then showing her through a window the body of her husband, already hanged. In a very popular Italian ballad, taken down since 1834 from singers in Piedmont, Como, and many parts of Italy, Cecilia, with her husband’s consent, sleeps with a captain who promises to save the husband’s life; at midnight she dreams that he has been hanged, but the captain tells her to go back to sleep and she’ll see him in the morning; when she rises in the morning she goes to the window and sees him—hanged. For varying ver­ sions, see Costantino Nigra, Canti popolari del Piemonte (Torino, 1888), pp. 43-50, and Alessandro d’Ancona, La poesia popolare italiana (Livorno, 1878; 2nd ed., 1906), pp. 140-46, who compares Measure for Measure and many of its analogues, including the story of Montmorency as retold from St. John in Revue britannique for 1859. Ancona finds no such...

English Studies in America: Reflections on the Development of a Discipline

may also be natural for English Studies-a discipline committed to the preservation and interpretation of part of man's imaginative past-to be only mildly interested in the story of its own past. This is not to say the discipline has gone metaphorically barefoot. The Modem Language Association does preserve and periodically presents facts, but in spare accounts, rarely given to interpretation or analysis of the discipline as a discipline. Allen Grossman seems correct when he charges the inveterate inability of literary studies to take its own nature as a subject of rational attention,' though even a partial study of the discipline's past reveals a story suggestive enough to deserve both attention and interpretation. What follows here is an attempt to explore part of this story by examining several important changes in work, values, and attitudes of those in the professional communitychanges that seem to have encouraged the community's lack of interest in its own development. Though accounts of the discipline's origins often suggest it somehow gave birth to itself,2 the emergence of English Studies in the American academy in the late nineteenth century (it had existed outside since the sixteenth century) was not so much the result of initiation from within as a response to external pressure. Events at Harvard illustrate the general

Language‐Oriented Careers in the Federal Government*

SEVERAL ARTICLES have appeared recently which aim at answering the student's complaint: What can I do with a Bachelor of Arts degree in language besides teach?' A recent Modem Language Association publication, English: The Pre-Professional Major (1973) by Linwood Orange, though aimed at English majors, contains valuable suggestions for any liberal arts major. In an effort reorient the thinking of the liberal arts major towards his career potential, Professor Orange documents the fact that an English major, with his general liberal arts background, can enter careers in four major professional fields: law, medicine, business, and federal service. Above all other qualifications for a career in these.areas, the respondents Professor Orange's survey of professional organizations stressed a candidate's ability to become knowledgeable in previously unfamiliar areas.2