Stirrings of protest within the MLA during the past year challenge many received ideas about the structure and functioning of the Association. For example, we need to consider constitutional revisions transferring power from the Executive Council to a more representative legislative body. There is a basic disagreement within the MLA between conservatives who believe that the study and teaching of literature should be and can be “objective,” and radicals who maintain that such a claim is fraudulent because if the scholar fails to denounce the existing social and economic order, he is in effect an apologist for it. Although the Foreign Language Program has been characterized as merely an adjunct to American imperialism, it has operated primarily to increase study of major European languages long a part of the liberal arts curriculum. The Faculty Exchange, which has been vigorously criticized, is highly useful to small departments; the question of its abolition requires careful study. These various controversies are generated by conflicting notions of how the MLA should serve society. We must resolve the basic issue if we are to maintain the integrity and effectiveness of the intellectual enterprise to which our profession commits us.

Unlike their counterparts in socialist countries, American literary scholars and critics are generally unaware of an ideological dimension to their work. This very unawareness, however, is suited to the requirements of advanced capitalism. While our literary studies rarely exhibit the patent ideological bias to be found in the social sciences, they are dominated by ideologically congenial habits of mind. The scholarly ideal of shedding prejudice would seem to be well served by a critique of those habits, which often yield implausible or trifling conclusions.

As teachers of literature we find ourselves involved with and compromised by the contemporary world. The events of the December 1968 Modern Language Association meeting made our dilemma painfully clear. The dissidents of the MLA have shaken the organization out of its lethargy. We must assess the extent of our responsibility and the nature of our commitments on two levels, the personal and the professional. To teach literature effectively and communicate with students themselves intensely aware of contemporary realities we must ourselves be responsible and conscious. The present disagreement within the MLA concerns the mode of our responsibility: shall we act as private individuals on social and political questions or shall we assume that precise and uniform political involvement is our best course? The course proposed to us by the dissidents of the MLA would endanger our position as critical intellectuals free to determine our own responsibility and to assume it. To politicize the MLA would be to institutionalize bad faith precisely at the moment when we realize most acutely the necessity of good faith and ruthless honesty with ourselves if we are to survive as a meaningful organization.

In the Perlesvaus the conquest of the Grail Castle and in the Prose Lancelot the conquest of the Castle of Dolorous Guard both serve to establish the supremacy of the hero. The succession of events in the two recitals contains many parallels proving that they are closely related. The details of the Prose Lancelot are such as to show a probability that it used the Perlesvaus as a source. For instance, the despair of the besieged, but noncombatant, lords, demonstrated on the walls of their castles, is carried swiftly to suicide in the Perlesvaus, reduced to flight and suicidal behavior in the Prose Lancelot. Again, the three shields that give Lancelot marvelous strength and that differ in appearance only through the number of bands that decorate them celebrate nothing, though the whole episode stands as the crowning step in the process by which the Lady of the Lake brought the child whom she educated to acceptance as the best knight in the world. In the Perlesvaus the various supernatural aids all manifest la vertu de Deu in harmony with the sole purpose of that romance, the exaltation of Christianity.

While it has recently been established (thanks to the records of the Bibliothèque du Roi, now the Bibliotheque Nationale) that Diderot read a major treatise by Roger de Piles, the influential seventeenth-century art critic and theorist, as early as 1748, the nature and extent of Diderot's indebtedness to his predecessor have not yet been fully explored. Internal evidence, as well as direct and indirect references, reveal the impact of Roger de Piles on Diderot's ideas concerning composition, design, and color. Roger de Piles was the first French art critic to take an uninhibited delight in light and color and to attempt to render, through a bold use of concrete and technical terms, the freshness and vividness of his impressions. In this respect, too, he is an important precursor of Diderot, for the latter frequently borrowed especially apt expressions and images from the writings of Roger de Piles. Articles in the Encyclopedia devoted to the fine arts also confirm the high esteem in which de Piles was held by eighteenth-century artists and connoisseurs. Diderot and his contemporaries recognized above all de Piles's expertise in practical matters concerning the artist's craft. Even though Diderot departs from de Piles in his preoccupation with the moral message of a work of art, he shares with his predecessor a spontaneous appreciation of the exuberant forms, the animated scenes, the down-to-earth realism that characterize the Dutch and Flemish schools of painting. The sketch, as an art form more revelatory of a painter's inner spirit and genius than the more finished product, was the subject of several key remarks by de Piles which Diderot, in turn, amplified and developed in his critical essays. And it was in the writings of de Piles that Diderot found some of his most telling arguments against artificiality and mannerism in art and against an unquestioning adherence to doctrine and dogma. (In French)

Given Stendhal's known liberal opinions, his admiration for Napoleon has always appeared paradoxical. Through a detailed examination of the two works most fully representing Stendhal's thoughts on Napoleon, an attempt is made to resolve the paradox. To do full justice to the complexity of the author's attitudes, what he found to blame is first contrasted with what he praised. The admiration for the man of destiny contrasts with the dislike of the statesman, extraordinary qualities of character are set against weaknesses. Beyond the description of the man, Stendhal discerns general historical laws operating in Napoleon's career. The course of events from rise to prominence through imperial power and progressive decline embodies a lesson for mankind. Despotism promotes a state of national demoralization and, therefore, prepares its own defeat. Such a judgment derives from the historiography of Enlightenment liberalism. The contrast between Stendhal's attitude toward Danton and Napoleon confirms that this is the tradition to which Stendhal belongs. As a utilitarian Stendhal nevertheless concludes that Napoleon's impact on European history was not wholly negative, since it led to a greater sum of happiness. As a liberal he affirms that lasting happiness within a state is only possible with constitutional government.

In Gothic, as in Proto-Germanic, primary word stress was fixed on word-initial syllables, including roots, reduplicating syllables, and prefixes; the Gothic negative-pejorative prefix un- appears to have been no exception to the rule. Secondary word stress occurred initially on second immediate constituents of compounds and quasi-compounds; the stress of gudhŨs ‘temple’ and faurhāh ‘curtain’ was not exceptional. Weak word stress fell medially on vowels between syllables bearing other degrees of stress and on syllable-forming suffixes directly following primary or secondary stress; finally, weak word stress occurred on syllable-forming endings. Evidence for primary phrase stress is very limited. Excepting ga-, proclitics of verb phrases–as distinguished from compound verbs and adverbs plus verbs–bore secondary phrase stress. There appears to be no evidence to show that this stress remained in Gothic feminine compound verbal abstract nouns. The phonologic development of forms like sg. dat. pamma ‘this, that,’ sg. dat. hiamma ‘whom, what,’ and pi. 3 sind ‘they are’ reflects a stress alternation that was dependent upon their syntactic context. Go. ga-, -u -u-, and -uh -uh- bore weak phrase stress. The Gothic stress of most Biblical proper names is obscure. Alliterative passages in Gothic shed no light on the problem; rather, it is the evidence for primary word stress that serves to identify the alliteration.

Bertha's warning to Walther that her narrative not be taken for a Mdrchen provides a clue to an “intrinsic” Freudian psychological reading of “Eckbert,” a work which, like a dream or a fairy tale, has a “latent” as well as a “manifest” level. Bertha's narration is interspersed with compulsive confessions that point to her own repressed awareness of the symbolic meaning of her acts. On its latent level, her story is that of a narcissistic child's failure to attain the norm of productive social adaptation explicitly prescribed for her in the world of the work. Only in the fantastic “Waldeinsamkeit” does she approximate, briefly, “normal” socialization. Her theft of the jewels and killing of the two animals, in the context of her psychosocial and sexual development, is her definitive rejection of what they represent–the possibility of a productive life as wife and mother. The incestuous marriage symbolizes the fruitless union of two narcissistic characters who in the other love only themselves. Approached on a level other than that of logical causality, the story appears to have an inner coherence not previously appreciated.

As the only stable element of Milton's universe in Paradise Lost and the theological if not the dramatic center of the poem, heaven deserves more attention than it usually receives. Although Milton drew heavily upon the Biblical New Jerusalem, his heaven is unusual in being far more pastoral than the heaven of Revelation. Insofar as it resembles the New Jerusalem, heaven suggests the regality and power of God. The victory of the Son in his jeweled chariot, the best illustration of omnipotence in the poem, reflects the spirit of Protestant commentators on the final victory of Christ in Revelation. In its pastoral aspect heaven embodies the bliss and repose of the angels and foreshadows the sabbatical rest of the saints. The tradition of a pastoral heaven, entwined with the tradition of the earthly paradise, was transmitted primarily by medieval hymns and vision literature and by the Renaissance pastoral elegy. Milton's heavenly paradise offers the consolation of a bliss which resembles that of Eden and also a higher, festive joy arising from the continual praise of God. Heaven may be less engaging than Eden, but it is the image of the true city and the true paradise toward which the human drama moves.

The inability of readers to identify themselves with the hero of Paradise Regained, far from being an obstacle to the success of the poem, is an essential part of the central conflict within the poem. For Christ, although created as both God and man, moves closer to the divine as the action of the poem progresses. In doing so, Christ renounces the hope of redeeming this world in human or secular terms. He must do this to fulfill his role as the Son of God; but the reader regrets this necessity. Consequently there is a tension throughout the poem between the divine and the human nature of Christ. The reader is asked to accept the uncomfortable fact that Christ's redemption of the world must be made in divine not in human terms. To gain eternal life for us He must die to the life of this world. The truth of this Christian paradox is assumed by Milton; but Milton recognizes that this Christian truth conflicts with our human desires for a victory within this world. And it is this conflict between the divine and the human that provides the emotional center of the poem.

Upon Appleton House is a poem in which superficial sprightliness and subterranean portentousness, a variety of rhetorical stances, and a loose, episodic structure apparently conspire to create disunity. But a unifying principle is supplied by the formulaic topos of the locus amoenus. As this convention developed from Homer through the Elizabethans, it took on potentially ambiguous connotations of refection, generation, and eroticism. Marvell systematically exploits these connotations, making of the Fairfax estate a double microcosm which reflects a disorderly world and his own uncertain relation to it. The confusion is further mirrored in Marvell's deployment of the topos. As rhetorical device, its impact should normally be synchronous, so that its elements strike the reader as a unit, not as a sequence of terms successively qualifying one another. But Marvell breaks the unit down, anatomizes it, taking its topographical elements (garden, grass, shade, water) serially and discontinuously. Gradually, however, the locus reasserts its mythic totality. As it does, Marvell also traces a historical movement back through the development of civilization to the first locus amoenus, Eden, and a rhetorical movement from critical objectivity to devotional subjectivity. These movements come to a focus in the figure of Maria Fairfax, whom Marvell, as poet-priest, adores as summarizing the virtues of Appleton House, now become the emblem of a reordered cosmos, a refuge from the corrupting processes of time and change. The vision cannot last, as Marvell implies by sustaining the mocking extravagance of his language right through to the last, ambiguous lines. The unity is only poetic, conceptual, rhetorical. But a unity it is, sung out of confusions, with the locus amoenus as its major chord.

Lamb's Shakespearean criticism unfortunately survives as an injunction not to perform the plays. This is an oversimplification of a carefully reasoned critical opinion. An assessment of all of his Shakespearean criticism demonstrates that it is derived from an awareness of the limitations of the London theater of Lamb's time and of its audience, and by extension, of the limitations inherent in transforming any script into performance. Relying on clumsy scenery in enormous theaters, having to please an audience that did not easily distinguish between art and life, allowing star-system actors to employ melodramatic techniques (e.g., exploiting a certain comic self-dramatization inherent in some Shakespearean heroes and villains), working from freely cut or “improved” texts of Shakespeare's plays–all helped convince Lamb (1) that “the plays are made another thing by being [thus] acted,” and (2) that no foreseeable production could extract all the imaginative richness available to a reader of an uncut text.

The Mill on the Floss, like Sophocles' Antigone, illustrates George Eliot's belief in the recurring conflict between the individual moral vision and social convention. The central problem in Antigone, she wrote, lay between “reverence for the gods” and “the duties of citizenship: two principles, both having their validity, are at war with each.” Whenever man's moral vision collides with social convention the opposition between Antigone and Creon is renewed. Her words seem applicable to the dominant conflict in The Mill. An honorable but unimaginative person, Tom Tulliver clashes with his sister Maggie when she refuses to abide by conventions which seem inhumane or hurtful to those she loves. As Antigone espouses a higher law by burying Polynices in defiance of Creon, so Maggie espouses a higher law in opposing the vengeance against Wakem. Although Tom and Maggie are both partly right in their quarrel over Maggie's secretly seeing Philip Wakem, Tom, like Creon, is foolishly overconfident in crediting his conventional honor, which is simply no measure of the case. The conflict between Maggie and her brother is further aggravated by the tendency of the practical-minded Tom to domineer over his imaginative and (to him) inconsistent sister.

ON A recent exam, I gave my students the following problem: Of the two passages below, the first describes the opening of the gates of Hell; the second, the opening of the gates of Heaven. Point out how the sounds help to indicate the manner of the opening of each. On a sudden op'n fly, With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate Harsh thunder. Heaven op'n'd wide Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound On golden hinges moving.

A ? LEAST eleven steps have been taken to try to meet the problems and alleviate the tensions that revealed themselves at the 1968 annual meeting. That meeting itself has become something of a cause célèbre, resulting in massive correspondence with the Executive Council and Secretariat, meetings about MLA and the problems of the profession on dozens of campuses, and a spate of articles in the journals and the public press. All of this seems to me useful. No one would deny that we have problems, and I am heartened by the thought that so many people are thinking and writing about them. What concerns me is how this ferment can be translated into productive action. The steps we have taken this year have been largely to improve communication and to explore ways of adding new dimensions to the MLA concern. Inevitably even these steps, combined with the proposal for a dues increase, have led to unhappy letters from members that speak of the MLA as empire building, of its departure from its original purposes, of its increasing amorphousness, and of its politicization. The number of resignations does not yet constitute an important threat, but the feeling they reflect and the fact that among them appear a few of our distinguished members are a cause for concern.

THE Managing Trustee, Mr. Gordon N. Ray, has asked me to present to you the Report of the Trustees on the status of the MLA endowment funds at the end of the 1968–69 fiscal year. At the close of that period (31 August 1969) the market value of our securities stood at $248,274, compared with $264,763 the year before. The Trustees have approved the actions of the United States Trust Company in the management of the funds.1