You have heard three excellent talks on this, the final session of a three-day meeting that will doubtless seem, to some of you, to have begun three weeks ago. Your arches are fallen, your ears are tired, your lungs are filled with convention hotel air, carefully preserved from one annual meeting to the next, wafted from New York to Chicago to Philadelphia. You have reached the point where, in the memorable words of William Riley Parker, the seats are making more impression on the audience than the speeches. You are ready for a foreign-language funny story, and I happen to have one, which I read in the October number of the Newsletter of the Montana FLTA. Mrs. Smith is complaining to Mr. Jones, the principal of her son's school: “Mr. Jones, my Johnny is an intelligent, conscientious boy. He studies hard and he gets good grades in all his subjects, except one, French. He tries and tries, Mr. Jones, but my Johnny simply can not learn that language!” Mr. Jones: “How fortunate, Mrs. Smith, that your Johnny was not born in France!”

Some conception, explicit or implied, of the relationship between art and nature is basic to the writer's as well as the critic's view of his own function. But because of the fundamental nature of our own bias in this matter we find it difficult to recover the attitude toward art and nature held by a writer of an earlier period. In the case of the Renaissance, and specifically of Spenser, much of our difficulty stems from now widely held views of art and literature as a spontaneous, vital, organic flowering forth of nature conceived in its ideal potentiality, of literary insight as a synthesizing vision in which the aesthetic and the moral blend, of imaginative creation as the opposite of deliberate contrivance, “cold” artificiality, and external ornament. In accordance with such views, C. S. Lewis, in his discussion of the Faerie Queene in The Allegory of Love, speaks of the “exquisite health” of Spenser's imagination; he says that “most commonly” Spenser understands Nature as “unimpeded growth from within to perfection, neither checked by accident nor sophisticated by art”; he claims that with insignificant exceptions Spenser “uses art to suggest the artificial in its bad sense,” employing the central episodes of the Bower of Bliss and the Garden of Adonis to develop a crucial antithesis of sterile, deceptive, sinister artifice and fruitful, naive, genuine nature. I would like to show that Spenser's attitude toward deliberate artifice is considerably more positive, or at least ambivalent, than Mr. Lewis claims and that Spenser is much less consciously aware of art and nature as polar oppo-sites than a modern reader is likely to expect.

Michelangelo Buonarroti's influence upon baroque sculpture is now widely recognised by historians. Ever since that morning in 1506 when he and the Sangalli, father and son, watched the white Pentelic marble of the Laokoön emerge from the farmland of Felice de Freddis near the Baths of Titus, Michelangelo's restless mind found authority in antiquity for a revision of his aesthetic canons. In this agonising group Michelangelo found justification for moving beyond the symmetry, restraint, and proportione divina of the Donatellian mode of sculpture, the static scientism of Da Vinci's painting, and the Vitruvian rules of architecture—even though he paid lip service to those rules and even recited them to popes. Whereas Michelangelo did not acknowledge this influence in writing, or apparently in speaking, his contorted and anguished Haman (1511–12) on the spandrel of the Sistine Vault was an admission of the influence of this Rhodian group —just as El Greco's newly-restored Laokoön in Washington acknowledges it as the one work of art which initiated European baroque. Moreover, the anguishes of the Vatican Laokoön and the expressions thereof were to parallel those tensions—visible even in his death mask—of Michelangelo's own soul and to leave an imprint upon his poetry. Laokoön, it should be remembered in view of his impact upon European baroque, was a militant, ritualistic priest.

Since its initial vogue during the lifetime of Shakespeare The Rape of Lucrece has received short shrift from the general public and little more attention from critics and scholars. This relative neglect has done much to obscure the actual importance of the poem; for, quite apart from its intrinsic merits as poetry, The Rape of Lucrece constitutes one of the most explicit and illuminating documents which bear upon Shakespeare's development, and especially upon his coming of age as an artist. Written almost certainly during the year immediately preceding its registration on 9 May 1594, and hence in the interval between Shakespeare's apprentice experiments in the theater and his mature dramatic achievements with the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the poem provides unique information about Shakespeare at a crucial point in his career. Frankly advertised, moreover, as a serious poem on a serious theme, it bears every evidence of having been undertaken by its author as a premeditated and highly self-conscious bid for recognition as a serious literary artist. Indeed, in the deliberate thoughtfulness of its conception and the conscientious care of its execution The Rape of Lucrece is one of the most laborious and studied works of art that Shakespeare ever produced. And as such, it affords a revealing index to the kind of thinking imposed on its creator at the time, and by the process, of its creation.

This three-part survey of modern foreign language certification requirements and practices, made under a contract with the United States Office of Education authorized under the National Defense Education Act of 1958, utilizes information supplied by Education Department officials on the state and municipal levels. The qualifications here reported and analyzed relate only to the foreign language concentration and do not include academic degree and professional education requirements except in the case of the certification of teachers of foreign languages in the elementary schools (FLES) when the secondary school certificate is especially endorsed for FLES by the addition of training in professional education. Inquiries concerning other information about conditions of certification may be addressed to the Certification Officers listed in this report. The total and wholehearted cooperation which I received from them in conducting this study is gratefully acknowledged.

Under their number 1881, Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins listed ten manuscripts which contain the romance of Titus and Vespasian written in couplet form. Since the publication of the Index, however, at least two more manuscripts of this work have come to light, the Earl of Derby (Knowsley Hall) codex and another recently acquired by the Pierpont Morgan Library. The present investigation concerns the latter manuscript, for which the following description may be supplied:

M 898, collection: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Manuscript on vellum (5 5/8 ⋉ 3 7/8 inches). Collation: a-m8 n5, wanting al = 100 leaves. 20 lines. Written (black ink with chapter headings or résumés in red, and rubrication in blue) in England in the fifteenth century. Bound in nineteenth-century brown morocco by F. Bedford. With the book-plate of Sir Henry Hope Edwardes (his library was sold at Christie's, 20 May 1901).

Relationships between verse content and. music in the love songs of the Provençal troubadours are not easily defined. One is tempted to seek in these cansos an expressiveness corresponding to our own acceptance of the term and to consider the melodies, like those of a modern art song, to be largely inspired by meanings and emotions of the texts. But it is not at all certain that the establishment of a close sentimental rapport between words and music was an objective overtly recognized and desired by the troubadours: if there were poet-composers who on occasion projected through melody the spirit of a poem, this was by no means a universal occurrence. Authoritative opinion on the subject is difficult to form because so little troubadour music has been preserved. All the more important then to examine carefully the evidence we do possess. Worthy of particular attention are the poets whose melodies remain in sufficient quantity to permit evaluation of individual attitudes and techniques. Such a poet is Peirol, troubadour from Auvergne, who flourished during the Golden Age of Provençal song, cultivating chiefly the love poem. His works provide material of genuine interest, often neglected where it might prove most illuminating. Despite the comparatively large number of melodies, relationships between verse content and music in his cansos have never been studied. To investigate these relationships will therefore be the aim of this paper.

One of the most disturbingly dramatic, and least admired, scenes in Shakespeare is that in which Prince John of Lancaster subdues the rebels in 2 Henry IV. His strategy, unheard of in any other general in Shakespeare's plays, is not to win in open field by plain force but by legalistic subtlety to trick the rebels into an armistice. He agrees, ostensibly, to all the provisions of redress demanded by the Archbishop, Hastings, and Mowbray; the leaders drink amicably in the sight of their armies; the rebel troops are dismissed; and then with a chilling suddenness John arrests the leaders for high treason and commands his army to “pursue the scatter'd stray.” To cap this dubious triumph, John piously rejoices, “God, and not we, hath safely fought today.”

The importance of Gawin Douglas' Eneados, the first English translation of the Aeneid, has been acknowledged since the sixteenth century. In 1530 David Lindsay wrote of Douglas' “worthy workis . . . And, speciallye, the trew Translatioun / Off Uirgill,” and forty years later Barnabie Googe ranked the Scots poet's translation above that of his English successor, Surrey,

The Noble H. Hawarde once,
That raught eternall fame, With mighty style did bring a pece
Of Virgil's worke in frame, And Grimaold gave the lyke attempt,
And Douglas wan the Ball, Whose famous wyt in Scottysh ryme
Had made an ende of all.

Special interest in the German word Ehre was aroused forty years ago when Gustav Ehrismann dealt with Middle High German ere as one of the three cardinal virtues of the age of chivalry (“Die Grundlagen des ritterlichen Tugendsystems,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Alter-tum, LVI, 1919, 137–216). Since then this word has been repeatedly discussed by scholars, e.g., by E. R. Curtius (who opposed Ehrismann's views), Elisabeth Karg-Gasterstädt (in her detailed semantic study of the word in Old High German), Friedrich Maurer (in his investigations of the word in Middle High German), Eduard Neumann, and others. The same topic has also been dealt with in several dissertations, e.g., by Hildegard Emmel and by Frederik Mos-selmann.“ Recently monographs by Hans Reiner and by George Fenwick Jones have dealt with the concept of honor.

A study of the significance of the mistakes in Twelfth Night, like the study of any important aspect of Shakespeare's art, must be made upon several levels, for mistakes by the protagonists are both a part of the superficial fabric of the plot and a subtle means of revealing underlying themes that often manifest themselves only indirectly below the surface action. This is not to say that the artificial devices of disguises and mistaken identities, all timeworn devices, are nothing more than a mere plot framework for the profundities that lie beneath. Rather, as Miss Bradbrook expresses it, there is an “interdependence of the natural and the artificial, the human and the literary.” The ridiculous mistakes that control the plot are therefore like Freudian slips which incite their superficial laughter and at the same time reveal subconscious patterns of human behavior. It is these slips, the mistakes of all the leading characters, that we must follow into the thematic material of the play, for it is on this level that they become of most interest.

This report is the result of the first of a series of investigations on the current status of foreign languages in elementary and secondary schools and in institutions of higher learning in the United States. It is a part of the Statistical Research Project of the Modern Language Association of America under a contract from the United States Office of Education, authorized under the National Defense Education Act of 1958. Subsequent reports will present data for 1959 on foreign languages in the elementary schools, in public and independent secondary schools, and in colleges and universities.

Saint-Evremond has earned a place in the history of seventeenth-century dramatic criticism as a fervent admirer of Corneille and a hostile critic of Racine. His strong affinity for Molière is less well-known, because he wrote very little about him. Not considering himself a professional author, he never felt the need to give full expression to his opinions on literature, or on any subject. In his youth he was primarily a railleur; as literary criticism, his first work, La Comédie des académistes, is a pungent satirical attack on pretension, triviality, and excessive concern with minutiae of vocabulary and technique. The satirical impulse remains present, in a more subdued form, in most of his later works. He probes into the weaknesses of ancient and modern literatures more frequently than he celebrates their merits. His discussions of authors he particularly admires, Montaigne, Voiture, Malherbe, Cervantes, are very brief. Most of his critical essays are directed against aberrations in judgment, insufficiencies, and misconceptions. Dissertation sur Alexandre, Sur les caractères des tragédies, A un auteur qui me demandait mon sentiment d'une pièce où l'héroïne ne faisait que se lamenter, Discours sur les historiens français, Sur nos comédies, De la comédie italienne, Sur les opéras, Observations sur le goüt et le discernement des français—all these are essays emphasizing various weaknesses in modern literature and taste. Réflexions sur nos traducteurs and Du merveilleux qui se trouve dans les poèmes des anciens are equally critical of certain aspects of ancient literature, while De la tragédie ancienne et moderne is an attack on both. It is true that a large part of his criticism of the drama deals with Corneille, whom he admired more than any other author, but his defense of Corneille often takes the form of an attack against the corrupt modern taste which has turned against him. His searching and critical mind preferred to contradict a generally accepted opinion, to reveal the hidden weaknesses of a universally admired work, rather than to define the qualities of the authors it enjoyed.

In 1934 Mr. Padelford issued, as a newly recovered work, The Axiochus of Plato, which Cuthbert Burby had published in 1592 as a translation by “Edward” Spenser. Later Mr. Freyd and Mr. Swan maintained that the translator was Anthony Mundy. This problem, arising long after my own book on Mundy appeared, has led me to scrutinize any possible connection between the two poets. Although they had many opportunities for becoming acquainted, attention focuses upon a friend whom they may have had in common—one Edward Knight. In 1579 that writer, heading his verses “Ε. K., Gentleman,” prefixed them to Mundy's Mirrour of Muta-bilitie, registered 10 October. A book by Knight, The Trial of Truth, was registered 13 November. Can he have been Ε. K., the mysterious editor of Spenser's Shepheardes Calender, registered 5 December?

The ghost in Hamlet is essential to the plot of the play and to an understanding of both the problem of Hamlet and his character. Therefore it is not surprising that it has engaged the close study of critics who offer various and conflicting interpretations.

Boccaccio's first work of importance is the Filocolo, a long rambling romance in prose, built around the well-known medieval legend of Florio and Biancofiore which it grieved the author to see relegated to the “fabulosi parlari degli ignoranti.” Boccaccio, that is, wished to ennoble the popular legend by giving it a literary and artistic dignity that it lacked in the oral tradition and in the French and Italian sources available to him. The very choice of the story is significant, for in its basic design it represents a theme that Boccaccio was to treat with predilection and consummate art in later works such as the Ninfale Fiesolano and several tales of the Decameron: the natural or instinctive love that attracts two young people of the opposite sex and the persistence of their love against the obstacles erected by an unsympathetic law or by class-conscious relatives concerned with preserving the distinctions created by social and economic position. In the Filocolo, however, this simple outline serves only as the nucleus or skeleton of a story of epic dimensions, for Boccaccio creates such Odyssean adventures for his separated lovers as to make for a seemingly endless and chaotic unfolding in which Virgil, Ovid, and Dante are only the most obvious and persistent influences.