The comedias of the Golden Age in Spain present a field of investigation that seems to be inexhaustible. The dramatic productions of that unbelievably exuberant period are so numerous that no one can hope to read them all. Even to try to keep up with the research based upon them is a task of the first magnitude. These plays have been studied from the point of view of sources, dramatic technique, versification, style, dates of the plays, authorship, and much, much else.

My topic for this afternoon has been announced as “The Ends, Means, and Accomplishments of the NDEA Modern Foreign Language Institutes.” That is indeed the topic I shall speak on, but before I come directly to it, I should like to deliver a message. The message I want to deliver is a simple one, and it is brief. It consists of only three sentences.

The trouble with allegory is that it has become a fashionable current preoccupation and people like to be for it or against it. Polemics always tend to vulgarize issues, critical problems get lost among the involvements with “positions,” scholarship becomes a device for finding proofs in history for tightly held hypotheses, and argument becomes a form of rhetoric. But an even worse consequence of such controversial constriction is that it puts literary studies in a straightjacket. There is an important truth in that account of Western literary criticism in the Middle Ages which sees it primarily as a working out and extension of Augustinian doctrine, with the problems of Christian allegory at its center, and there is sufficient evidence in history to support and enlighten that view. Those, on the other hand, who are uncomfortable with allegory and find this view somehow less than satisfactory for the reading of certain texts may accept the allegorists' description of the tradition generally but at the same time justify their dissidence by pointing out (1) that there were other forms of allegory in the Middle Ages, which such a statement of tradition does not adequately consider, (2) that not all literary pieces were formed by their authors under the influence of that tradition, whatever interpreters afterwards may have done in reading them, and (3) that, in any case, even the Christian doctors most learned in the allegorical art did not claim that it could operate uniformly in all its variety everywhere or in every piece. On the contrary, they were the first to warn against such an assumption. Yes, say the proponents of allegory in response, but we don't make so rigid a claim as you imply; we are aware that not every medieval poem can be read by all the kinds of interpretation at once; some pieces obviously intend no more than the simplest sort of old-fashioned moralizing. And so it goes, pro and con, in secula seculorum.

In terms of its effect on subsequent literary-theory and practice, the proposition that actions constitute the true subject of poetry is the most important aesthetic principle advanced in Laokoon. At the opening of the sixteenth chapter, Lessing attempts to derive this proposition deductively by arguing:

Doch ich will versuchen, die Sache aus ihren ersten Gründen herzuleiten.

It is no longer necessary to say that Benedetto Croce and several other critics have praised the works of Salvatore Di Giacomo. The poet, who wrote in the mellow and musical Neapolitan dialect, deserves such literary attention. However, his use of the dialect has unfortunately deprived Di Giacomo of the greater renown he would have received had he used the official Italian language. This is paradoxical because from the late Quattrocento through the early Seicento not only Italian literati but also European scholars, poets, and musicians collected, imitated, and set to music the semi-popular poems known as villanelle napoletane written in the Neapolitan dialect. Later these Neapolitan villanelle came to be called villanelle alla napoletana, or simply napoletane, attesting to the fact that they had become a tradition. For over a century ballads, songs, strambotti, rispetti, and madrigals were composed alla napoletana throughout Europe in the poetical mood and dance rhythm developed primarily by the villanelle songs of Naples.

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?

“Alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall” (Essays I, “Circles”). “Motion or change, and identity or rest are the first and second secrets of Nature: Motion and Rest” (Essays II, “Nature”). La résonance et le fond sont pascaliens; mais Emerson, très attentif aux accidents de la compensation, pourrait aussi bien répondre que ce n'est pas dans Pascal, c'est en lui-même qu'il trouve tout ce qu'il y voit.

The concentration of allegory in the air in the Middle Ages was heavy. Readers and hearers were exposed to it from various sources, and many probably followed simple allegories on the literal and on the figurative levels as naturally as we understand editorial cartoons. An audience at a morality play followed the physical actions and the speeches of actors, knowing that the characters were personifications of virtues and vices, and other abstractions. No one expected such characters as Lechery, Pride, Gluttony, or Good Deeds, Goods, Kindred, and the like, to be rounded human beings. Homiletic allegories and spiritual and moral interpretations of scriptural texts were heard from the pulpit; no doubt, most of the congregation got the point. A deeper meaning than the literal sense on the surface was sought in poems which were true allegories, such as The Romance of the Rose, Piers Plowman, and The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, and it was taken for granted that it would be found. The author usually made sure that his primary intention, the allegorical thrust of the work, was rather evident. Modern readers may interpret minor details or symbols in different ways, but there is seldom room for disagreement on main points.

In many respects Danlons Tod represents a radical departure from the drama of its time. Yet it, like any other work of art, is not without predecessors, nor did it arise in an intellectual vacuum. Much has been said, for example, about Lenz's influence on Biichner's view of art and on the structure and content of his dramas. Furthermore, one of the names most commonly linked with Biichner's is that of Christian Dietrich Grabbe, his contemporary. In their search for a relationship between these two iconoclastic forerunners of modern drama, most scholars turn to Grabbe's Napoleon. We know from Biichner's correspondence with Gutzkow that he was indeed acquainted with Grabbe's panoramic picture of the still present forces of the Revolution. Although he never admitted any indebtedness to Napoleon, there are nevertheless many obvious similarities linking the two plays, particularly in the mass scenes. Yet the protagonists of the two dramas have very little in common. The following study will, however, endeavor to show that there are just such important points of comparison between Danton and the protagonists of another, often unjustly neglected drama by Grabbe: Don Juan und Faust. These similarities, while themselves not conclusive proof of a direct influence of Grabbe's only “Ideendrama” on Biichner's more intellectual portrayal of the French Revolution, will show that Dantons Tod and Don Juan und Faust, as dissimilar as their subjects are, reflect a common approach to an acute intellectual problem of the time.

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.”

These words of Nietzsche say much about Gogol. They suggest his keg-like belly, the contradictions and evasions of his letters, his cunning and depth, and above all, those “ gaps and black holes in the texture of his style” which Nobokov describes in his study, in a chapter called, “Apotheosis of a Mask.” But he had other ways to hide his fragile gift—there is a certain dissimulation in the very generes he chose: his greatest comedy ends in “living statues” and he calls his novel a poema.

If indeed noteworthy progress toward maturation in Giraudoux studies has been registered over the past ten or fifteen years, the deeper significance of much of his work remains to be fully appreciated. All too often, critics call Giraudoux précieux without having understood the special meaning he associated with this term; we are still influenced by the opinions of two generations who treated Giraudoux variously as a “chevalier de l'illusion,” or a “magicien optimiste,” while others spoke of the “jardins de Giraudoux” and his “éternel printemps.”Not until 1950 or thereabouts, when Antoine Adam wrote of the “Dureté de Giraudoux,” was criticism beginning noticeably to orient itself toward Giraudoux's pessimism and to find that therein lay one of the deepest currents of his life and art.