The centrality of the twenty “Mottetti” to Montale's decisive second book, Le Occasioni (1939), has been noted by such critics as Ettore Bonora and Silvio Ramat. Despite their probings, however, much remains to be done towards an organic understanding of this remarkable series of poems. Since this part of Montale's work relates to much else he has written before and after, I shall not attempt to isolate it from the rest of the Occasioni book, but merely to keep my focus on what is after all a kind of book within the book. A tighter unity prevails among the “Motets” than among the other poems in the volume, both because the former all turn on the constant of love for Clizia in the variations of worldly vicissitudes, and because they match this thematic constancy by a relative constancy of form.

The closing episode of Der neue Menoza involves a lively argument between the representatives of two generations of Germans about the essential purpose of the theatrical experience. A bluff-mannered father, honest and hard-working—a prototype of the “people” in their relatively unspoiled state—likes to go to the puppet theater and laugh at Hanswurst. His educated, super-refined son scoffs at such crude entertainment: “Was die schöne Natur nicht nachahmt, Papa! Das kann unmöglich gefallen … was für Vergnügen können Sie an einer Vorstellung finden, in der nicht die geringste Illusion ist. … Es gibt gewisse Regeln für die Täuschung, das ist, für den sinnlichen Betrug, da ich glaube das wirklich zu sehen, was mir doch nur vorgestellt wird.” Disturbed in his healthy naïveté, the father agrees to test his beloved “Püppelspiel” by the new standards; but he returns home in a fury, roaring, “Du Hund! willst du ehrlichen Leuten ihr Pläsier verderben? Meinen ganzen Abend mir zu Gift gemacht … [sagst] mir von dreimaleins and schöne Natur, daß ich den ganzen Abend da gessessen bin wie ein Narr … gezählt und gerechnet und nach der Uhr gesehen; ich will dich lehren mir Regeln vorschreiben, wie ich mich amüsieren soll.”

The pardoner's lines in the Introduction to the Pardoner's Tale contain the nucleus of nine decades of concentrated debate. Aleslake and drynke represent but two of the elements spinning about the core of controversy. Alestake has led numerous commentators to conclude that the Canterbury caravan halted (in or) at a roadside inn and there heard a revealing narrative from one of their fellows. Partial dissenters concede a momentary pause at the pub but contend the pilgrims retook the road before the Pardoner finished his (Prologue or) Tale. Some opposing critics refuse to concede even a momentary respite. Commentary on drynke has gravitated similarly toward three conflicting forces: Some attribute the Pardoner's self-revelation to drunkenness, others see him as loose-tongued but just lightly tipsy, and still others consider him stone sober throughout.

In the long history of Milton commentary a single axiom has survived for generations as a critical touchstone in the formal analyses of his longer poems. Stated simply it reads: Milton was not a dramatist and his poems are not dramatic. Recently Anne Ferry, Jackson Cope, and Douglas Bush have briefly discussed the danger of treating the terms “drama” and “dramatic” as catchalls. Their mild reproofs of contemporary critics require, I suggest, not just forceful reiteration but a theoretical and historical analysis of the dramatic axiom's use and its effect on Milton criticism. The pertinent questions are: (1) what do Milton's critics mean by “dramatic,” and (2) how do their various definitions control the scope and direction of their criticisms?

The terse comment that Swift's “style was well suited to his thoughts” has been explored and substantiated in various studies. These have dealt with Swift's knowledge of classical rhetoric, his conciseness, his skillful use of maxims, parody, illustrative parallels, sophistry, exaggeration, and similar topics. His puns and metaphors have also received attention. No one, however, seems to have discussed in detail his use of what may be called literalization of metaphor—a distinctive feature of his rhetoric and one that, in some instances, consists of a combination of pun and metaphor, I propose therefore to examine various aspects of the device of literalization as it appears in his prose works.

Theophilus cibber's Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) includes a substantial account of Mrs. Elizabeth Singer Rowe and points out the relevance of this lady and her works to contemporary affairs: “The conduct and behaviour of Mrs. Rowe might put some of the present race of females to the blush, who rake the town for infamous adventures to amuse the public. Their works will soon be forgotten, and their memories when dead, will not be deemed exceeding precious; but the work of Mrs. Rowe can never perish, while exalted piety and genuine goodness have any existence in the world. Her memory will be ever honoured, and her name dear to latest posterity.”

Almost all critics of Vanity Fair have assumed that Thackeray's novel had no very carefully worked out structure and have been content to make rather general comments on the form of the novel: it was loosely improvised along the line of a contrast between Becky and Amelia. J. Y. T. Greig, for example, believes that Thackeray not only lacked Fielding's ability to work out a highly detailed plot but also suffered from the additional handicap of being forced to compose hurriedly for monthly serialization. To Greig, “Vanity Fair is unified and shapely up to and including the episodes of Brussels and the Battle of Waterloo: for although it contains two heroines, the adventures and sufferings of the one are causally related to the adventures and sufferings of the other. It becomes unified and shapely again after Chapter xliii (Pumpernickel), and for the same reason. But in between—roughly 300 pages—the plot of the first and last sections of the book is suspended, and the unity of the novel disappears.”

John bull's other island, Shaw once said, is one of “a group of three plays of exceptional weight and magnitude on which the reputation of the author as a serious dramatist was first established, and still mainly rests.” The other two plays are Major Barbara and Man and Superman. John Bull's Other Island was popular at the Court Theatre from 1904 to 1907 and established Shaw as a great and popular dramatist. Since then, however, this play has not been esteemed as much as Man and Superman and Major Barbara, although I would argue that in humor and insight it is their equal. It has been revived only twice in London in the last forty years—in 1938 and 1947; and it is far less known to the public or to scholarship than are the other two plays. Opinions to the contrary notwithstanding, Shaw's estimate of his play should, I think, be taken seriously. Some critics have seen the play as original in method, as still pertinent to the Irish situation, and as universal in its significance. “Shaw made out of this topical subject a masterpiece,” Reuben Brower has written, “one of his purest and most sustained comedies.” I believe this view can be upheld.

Although literature and philosophy are concerned with many of the same problems, attempts to combine them have seldom been successful; too often the union of fiction and philosophy has produced the hybrid novel of ideas or, more recently, the highly complex symbolic novel, a metaphysical kaleidoscope which creates a Weltanschauung however one twists it. However, at least one modern philosopher-novelist, Iris Murdoch, has succeeded in creating genuine fictional worlds which are enriched but not dominated by her philosophical interests. One of Miss Murdoch's central theses, propounded in her essays and her book on Sartre, is that both contemporary fiction and philosophy fail to set forth an adequate idea of human personality. Across the spectrum of modern thought—in philosophical works like Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind and in novels like Sartre's Nausea—Miss Murdoch finds the same shallow image of man, an image derived from Hume's materialistic behaviorism and Kant's idea of the isolated will. What is needed, she feels, is a better grasp of man's nature and his situation: “we have suffered a general loss of concepts, the loss of a moral and political vocabulary. We no longer use a spread-out substantial picture of the manifold virtues of man and society. We no longer see man against a background of values, of realities, which transcend him. We picture man as a brave, naked will surrounded by an easily comprehended empirical world. For the hard idea of truth we substituted a facile idea of sincerity. What we have never had, of course, is a satisfactory Liberal theory of personality, a theory of man as free and separate and related to a rich and complicated world from which, as a moral being, he has much to learn.” In her novels Miss Murdoch tries to correct the current oversimplified concept of man by delineating with great persuasiveness both the complexity and diversity of human beings and the complicated relationship between the individual and the society; in The Bell the ideas which emerge from a very credible fictional world are concerned with the inadequacy of absolute moral codes, the nature of love, reality, the irrational, and freedom.

Cooper's third novel, The Pioneers, published in 1823, is usually considered to be his most realistic in reflecting actual scenes and events. The Effingham plot is fanciful, but numerous details as well as the general situation relate to family and community history. These factual elements involve all levels of the story: the setting, ranging from a description of Lake Otsego and its environs to such specific landmarks as the Bold Dragoon Tavern (Red Lion Inn) and the manorial hall; several characters, including Judge Temple (based upon the author's father, Judge William Cooper), the first sheriff Richard Jones (in actuality one Richard R. Smith), Major Hartmann, and the French merchant Monsieur Le Quoi (Mr. Le Quoy); and such contributing themes as the struggle over establishing a village church, the manufacture of maple sugar, and the danger of forest roads. Certain improbable details, such as the sheriff's arresting a gang of counterfeiters in the wilderness, are based upon fact toned down in the telling. Cooper apparently alluded to such reminiscent subject matter in his original Preface, which states that the book, in contrast to his first two, “has been written, exclusively, to please myself.” He further called attention to the novel's realism by subtitling it “A Descriptive Tale,” as he explained in a letter of 1822 to his London publisher: “I had announced the work as a ‘descriptive tale’ but perhaps have confined myself too much to describing the scenes of my own youth. … If there be any value in truth, the pictures are very faithful, and I can safely challenge a scrutiny in th[is?] particular.”

Many twentieth-century commentators on Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables—probably the majority of them—have found it necessary to note serious failings in the work. The censures are in a sense as different as the men who registered them, but I think they can be fairly summarized as: (1) objection to the plot as lacking coherent action and to the narrative method as partial cause of this difficulty; (2) objection to the conclusion as being artificial or forced; and (3) objection to the short-sightedness of the author in saying in his Preface and as comment within the story something which the story itself confutes. Structure, conclusion, and theme have all proved problematical.

For the past fifteen years scholars have examined many facets of Mark Twain's “Jumping Frog”: its narrative techniques and some of its textual history, its relation to folklore, American humor, and Clemens' theory of humorous gravity, and its political, regional, and cultural bearings. This article, by focussing on the personal background to the tale, tries to cast light on the imagination that created the famous yarn. It first relates some of the tale's narrative elements—episodes, characters, names—to Clemens' prior experience, especially to some activities reflected in newly discovered examples of his San Francisco journalism of 1864 and 1865. Then it relates the tale to strong emotional currents in his life during the fall of 1865. Finally the article proposes a date of composition for the “Jumping Frog” and a reading of the tale that emphasizes the level of personal meaning.

There is a sentence in the preface to the Harrison Hayford-Merton Sealts version of Billy Budd that has been quoted before and will be quoted again. It is the one in which the editors hope that their “comprehensive scholarly edition will narrow the ground of disagreement and widen that of understanding.” It is doomed to repetition because it allows any critic who cites it a ready-made rhetorical stance: with its sanction he can assume the posture of the reasonable reader and humbly offer himself as mediator between the various opposing critical armies. Then, having established himself as a man of good will and peacemaker, he can do his best to annihilate at least one of the armies, the views of which, it somehow turns out, he rabidly despises.

In his artistic development, William Carlos Williams offers us a series of enactments of the process of slow, laborious birth which he so often made the subject of his verse. When we look at Williams' career, we find long periods of groping experiment which culminate in brief phases of accomplished expression; the volumes Spring and All (1923), The Wedge (1944), and Journey to Love (1955) mark these major phases in his development. But the time of most profound change and growth for Williams was between 1902 and 1914. During that period of his early manhood Williams slowly evolved the identity that would provide the confident impetus for his later stylistic experiments. In evolving his idea of himself, Williams was most importantly influenced by Walt Whitman; the Camden Bard helped the Rutherford doctor both to discover and to affirm his mature identity.

Leo Spitzer's well-known article on Villon's “Ballade des dames du temps jadis,” published in 1940, had an evident double purpose. His sensitive and sensible explication of the ballade was at the same time the occasion for a statement of the need to revitalize medieval studies. Spitzer put it bluntly: “L'interprétation de la littérature médiévale me semble souffrir, dans tous les pays, d'une grande tare: de la carence du sens esthétique.” The treatment of Villon's ballade was then explicitly meant as a model of the new critical approach, and obviously the choice of poet was made with the polemic purpose clearly in mind. Villon is an ideal subject for resolutely “esthetic” explication, and his works on every level demonstrate a poetic craftsmanship which detailed reading can bring out to best advantage.

Can Dominique's life be construed as a success or a failure? The hero not only gives up Madeleine, the woman he loves, but passion in its most idealistic form, by marrying a woman whose name is not even mentioned. Although an encounter between Dominique and his family suggests an idyllic painting, although his marriage brings the rewards of peace and serenity, it can be considered a compromise. Together with his impossible love, Dominique gives up his literary ambition. He thus accepts once and for all the mediocrity of his talents. Denial of both creativity and ambition may strike one as tantamount to resignation and defeat. To this self-imposed restriction in regard to emotion and creative action corresponds significantly a refusal to explore the outer world. Dominique will not leave the community of which, in accordance with family tradition, he has become mayor. He has traced a circle around his existence, as though to ward off danger and risk. Using Dominique's own words, one could claim that he leads a life of refusal, dedicated primarily to the gratuitous obliteration of his faults.

It is all too tempting on first acquaintance with Gide's La Porte étroite to see in it only the pathetically tragic tale of a young girl who believed too wholeheartedly that “virtue is its own reward.” Not too surprising, for this seems to be the reaction Gide intended to elicit. He protested against the view of some critics that he had “evolved” to a more sympathetic moral and religious attitude since 1902 and the publication of L'Immoraliste. He insisted repeatedly that he sought rather to make the work a criticism of a certain furiously deplorable protestantism, a puritanism that curiously evokes Jansenism, a misplaced sense of heroism which he characterizes as a sort of “cornélianisme gratuit.” This last must certainly apply to Alissa rather than to Jérôme.

George Winchester Stone, Jr. What can be added to the four pages of tributes to President—then retiring Secretary—Stone in the June 1964 issue of PMLA? After a year of restoration on a combined Guggenheim and Fulbright in London (1963–64), he became Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University. His part (3 vols.) of the great annals of The London Stage (12 vols.) is now complete. He has continued to be active on the Board of Directors of ACLS. He has been elected a Vice President of the International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures. He is on the Executive Committee and Chairman of the Cultural Committee of the U. S. National Commission for UNESCO. We are particularly fortunate to have had him as MLA President this year while—after 40 years—the MLA moved from New York University buildings. We owe much to him for the ease of the move and the amiability of our new relationship with the University. Vive le grand GWS!