Northrop Frye's recent criticism confronts the contemporary problem raised most powerfully by the Vietnam War—can we find a telos or definition of man on which we can ground our moral reactions and our visions of human development. Frye establishes this telos by an analysis of origins. Contained in a civilization's statements of “concern,” in its imaginative treatments of its own condition, one can find an underlying structure of desire which defines the ends of man. This structure and the recurrent images it produces then can serve as the middle terms people use to justify and value their actions. Frye shares his treatment of mediation with contemporary Hegelians like Sartre, Lukács, and Ricoeur, but grounds his absolute in tradition rather than in ideal absolutes or posited evolutionary patterns. Frye's idea of mediation also provides an ethical model for literary criticism: the critic tries to combine literature as product and as cultural possession by interpreting his materials as projections of imaginative desire. Furthermore, we can use Frye to criticize the relativist denial of origins in structuralist critics like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.

The concept of Romania, considered by Curtius to be the only context permitting a true comparative literature, is basically a product of the Romantic movement's national and historical consciousness, its search for indigenous roots. It is an inadequate context for the study of modern literatures, and also the wrong kind of context because it emphasizes study of origins and derivations. Any context that defines literature by a place, by geographical or linguistic units, probably fosters bad pedagogy, criticism, and literary history. It makes us teach literature as an institution and as information, and leads us to neglect the human function of literature. While we should renovate literary history (for literary utopianism only reinforces the autotelic status of much literary study), we should direct our attention to the structures of literature as a whole, of consciousness and the imagination, and place man's fiction-making within the range of his other image-making activities. The teaching of literature—a peculiar activity whose very possibility is open to question—should be centrally concerned with the question, what is literature? Studies should be organized to direct attention to the elementary functions of the fiction-maker.

Many in the profession, though apparently comfortable, feel demoralized. The prospect of unalienating work impelled many of us to become teachers of language and literature. The humanities, we assumed, would make the world a better place. Yet the assumption by an intelligentsia that the life of intellect will improve humanity is a self-serving ideology. We teach our subjects in institutions that are part of a rationalized arrangement for the profitable use of knowledge. Our profession is part of that rationalization process. Thus there is a contradiction between the profession's humanist ideology and what we actually do. This knowledge has led many to be demoralized. We know that we do not control our conditions of work. Therefore our labor is alienated, and we are an intellectual proletariat. We should struggle against these conditions in an organized fashion. But the attempt to change the nature of our profession, our departments, and our schools can be effective only within the context of the larger struggle to change the role culture plays in a capitalist society. Ultimately such cultural transformations involve the struggle to transform the society as a whole. It is a struggle we cannot escape.

Previous commentaries have emphasized the correlation between this piece and the host of motifs and problems that Franz Kafka never tired of treating. While this method seems mandatory in an overall account and has led to stimulating insights as well as aberrations on various levels of symbolic interpretation, a close analysis of “The Burrow” on the primary level, granting the given data of its non-Euclidean geometry, is attempted for the first time. Outstanding features include a demonstration of the unique quality of the recital as the synchronous coexistence of a ninety-minute monologue in the form of an emergent or progressive present with a life span of many years extending from maturity to senility. The progressive derangement and deterioration of the hero are analyzed, and his persecution mania is correlated with manifestations of a repressed, abnormal libido that allows inferences regarding a traumatic experience of his youth. Finally, it is shown on inner grounds of both a formal and a material nature that the piece is complete, allowing of no meaningful continuation.

Goethe's Tasso is approached from a fresh angle by an examination of certain recurrent epithets, notably “klug,” “schön,” and “edel.” By comparing in detail passages in which these adjectives occur, and by adducing evidence as to Goethe's usage outside Tasso, new light is shed upon the kernel of the drama, which may be seen as a contest between sets of relative values with the author ambiguously refraining from committing himself to an overriding judgment. The observation that the play is centrally concerned with the act of judging character, illustrated by Goethe's stress upon “kennen” and “erkennen,” makes it possible to penetrate beyond the conventional view of Tasso as an artist drama to the insight that it presents the complex confrontation between two modes of self-consciousness or ways of being. Through the technique of vocabulary analysis within a context of dramatic argument certain recalcitrant problems of Tasso criticism, such as the vexed question of the denouement and the exact nature of Antonio's reversal, are freshly illuminated and the ambivalence and relativity of the various moral and social ideals is conclusively demonstrated. At the same time Goethe extracts from this contest of epithets a tentative positive vision of “Seelenadel.”

The clashing and contradictory responses created by a pathetic tale such as Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale are best explained by the opposition of tragic (and therefore involving) elements found in the narrative events and comic elements found in the distancing style, in the faintly comic story, and above all in the happy Christian ending. Man of Law's Tale is not a Shakespearean tragedy but what may be called a tragedy of victimization, prototypes of which may be found in the Saint's life and in late classical romance. This opposition between emotional involvement and distancing is manifested in various ways, not the least of which is the metrical form of Man of Law's Tale. All this fits in well with what might be called the contempt of the world tradition which advocates a distancing from this world for the sake of an ultimate happy ending in heaven. It is no accident that a major source for Man of Law's Tale is Innocent III's De contemptu mundi.

When Garcilaso refers to the death of Isabel Freyre, representing her as the nymph Elisa, who “estaba entre las hierbas degollada” (eclogue m.230), the poet's commentators, morally repelled by this brutal image, suggest changing the term degollada “beheaded, with her throat cut,” or to understand it as desangrada, “dead by bleeding,” since this meaning seems more appropriate to the death at childbirth of the poet's beloved Isabel. Although this view is still current today, a stylistic analysis of the passage shows that Garcilaso—more interested in emotional intensity than in historical accuracy—wrote degollada with the then primary meaning of “decapitated.” This interpretation is corroborated by a close look at the poet's sources—the death of Eurydice and decapitations of Orpheus (Virgil, Ovid, Poliziano) and Issabella (Ariosto)—as well as by Camões' imitation of Garcilaso's beheaded nymph in his decapitation of Inés de Castro. The bloody truculence of this image is otherwise understandable in a tormented and violent Garcilaso who, in spite of being traditionally considered as a “dulce y blando” poet, very often chose to associate beauty and love with cruelty. (In Spanish)

Recent linguistic studies, particularly the extension of structural analysis to the syntactic component of language and improved typological analysis, have made possible an increased understanding of Proto-Indo-European and the early Indo-European dialects. The new insights permit us to account for syntactic constructions such as the placement of relative clauses, adjectives, and genitives; the use of prepositions in VO, postpositions in OV languages; comparative constructions of the order STANDARD PIVOT ADJECTIVE in OV, ADJECTIVE PIVOT STANDARD in VO languages. As an illustration of a further pattern which can now be explained, the absolutes in the early dialects are examined, and accounted for as constructions that may arise in ambivalent languages. Besides contributing to an understanding of syntactic phenomena, current linguistic theory assists us in achieving further knowledge about Proto-Indo-European and further insights into the development of the Indo-European languages.

A study of two motifs—prodigality and time—may help to reveal some of the meanings of The Merchant of Venice. Scornful of generosity, Shylock sees Bassanio and Antonio as prodigals, and thus he resembles somewhat the self-satisfied elder brother of the parable of the Prodigal Son. Bassanio's prodigality is in harmony with time; he does not calculate, as Shylock does, but acts intuitively, and because his wants are “ripe” he reaps a reward. Two examples: though he plans to attend a masque, to the audience's surprise he suddenly seizes the moment and departs for Belmont when the wind changes; at Belmont, in contrast to Morocco and Aragon, who offer reasons for their choices, Bassanio offers no reason for choosing as he does, except that the lead casket “moves” him. Such uncalculated responses to the present moment are fruitful, in contrast to the usurer's calculations about the future, and especially in contrast to the usurer's practice of risking nothing while (in Elizabethan terminology) “selling time.”

The prologue to Winesburg, Ohio, in which an old writer attributes their gro-tesqueness to fanaticism, oversimplifies the characters' twisted lives, but it is hardly irrelevant or at variance with the substance of the novel. The grotesques' fanatical quest for the ideal, their unwillingness to relinquish their dreams in face of the facts of experience, is at the core of all the novel's issues—its social, sexual, and mythic content—which form a philosophical whole. Yet Anderson sympathizes with his characters, for their fanaticism derives from the depths of their being and from a valid, human desire for spiritual fulfillment. The prologue also bears vitally upon the resolution of the novel's major theme— George Willard's growth into a writer; it can be said, in fact, that the prologue brings the theme to a close. For, by the end, George has undergone a transformation of character similar to that of Dr. Reefy, whom Anderson identifies with the old writer of the prologue, and thereby comes to share the old writer's vision, which is born of the grotesque but ultimately transcends it. Indeed, symbolically at least, George is the old writer. Winesburg is his story.

A comparison of the text of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy with its sources shows the latter to have undergone substantial alterations apparently wrought unconsciously by the author's memory. These alterations run to type: figures are exaggerated and extraordinary events are made more extraordinary. Sometimes figments are created by the fusion of two remembered names, or the elements of two stories, into one. The resulting distortions and figments often exceed their originals in literary charm, but the effect is never to falsify or misrepresent the meaning of the original.

The treatment of esthetics by Schiller influenced the conception of esthetics in Hegel's lectures. The notion of appearance (Schein) acquired a fundamental importance in Hegel's esthetics. Schiller had made it possible for “appearance” to be made the cornerstone of an esthetic system by enlarging its importance and rescuing it from the negative valuation given it by the logic of rationalism and the analytical metaphysics of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Hegel could thus base his definition of the beautiful upon “appearance.” On this definition of the beautiful is based the dialectical and historical method of Hegel's theory of the arts. (In German)

The poems of Fêtes galantes by Paul Verlaine have marked visual and musical aspects with which criticism often deals by comparing the subject matter and style of the poems with those of paintings by Watteau and music by Debussy. It is more rewarding to study similarities of basic artistic form in these works about the Rococo dream world; in particular, the visual and spatial imagery shared by Verlaine and Watteau helps elucidate Fêtes galantes.The vague, ambiguous, and shifting impressions sought by Verlaine are created visually by Watteau as the latter varies sharp delineation with hazy blending. The paintings tend to have either detached foreground figures or a merging of figures into a misty background. Verlaine uses these effects of detachment and merging in virtual space, verbally rendered, and coordinates them with the recurrent themes of his suite of poems. A visualized pattern along a time line results as he shifts from one effect to the other in individual works and in the total composition. Much of the musicality of the work is thus produced through visual and spatial imagery in sequence. Increased understanding of Ver-laine's creation of artistic form suggests the need for study of the relationships between this form and the contents of the poems.