Though scholars have long recognized the influence of the antifeminist tradition on the Wife of Bath's Prologue, they have overlooked its possible impact on the fate of Jankyn's “book of wikked wyves.” Fansler noted “a rather curious literary precedent” in Marie de France's “Li Lais de Gugemar,” which described a painting of Venus committing Ovid's Remédia Amoris to the flames. A closer parallel to the scene in which Dame Alisoun “made him brenne his book anon right tho” exists, however, in several of the “Eastern” versions of the legend of the Seven Sages, or Books of Sindibad.

The Pope-Philips controversy, and particularly the place in it of Gay's Shepherd's Week (1714), has been studied from many points of view by George Sherburn, William H. Irving, Hoyt Trowbridge, and J. E. Congleton. Sherburn has, in his felicitous manner, guided us through the convolutions of conflicting personalities and animosities both political and literary which effected the quarrel. Irving has suggested that the connection of The Shepherd's Week with the quarrel existed only in Pope's fertile imagination, since Gay's poem primarily burlesqued Virgil, not Philips; and Trowbridge, in answer to Irving, has demonstrated that Gay was quite aware of Philips' Pastorals in writing his own. Finally, Congleton has discussed the whole controversy against a background of neoclassical and rationalistic French and English critical theory of pastoral poetry. None has indicated, however, that Thomas D'Urfey's reputation for the writing of songs and ballads influenced both the quarrel and The Shepherd's Week.

A year ago last summer, when I was privately digesting the fact that I had been nominated to the presidency of the Modern Language Association of America, I happened to be sitting at the daily luncheon table with a group of teachers, some of whom were just returning from a meeting of one of the learned societies in the social sciences. The subject turned on presidential addresses and some excellent wit was broken on their demerits. For understandable reasons I kept silence while the conclusion was being arrived at that presidents were elected too late in life. There was bound to be disappointment on the part of younger men when some veteran of the profession of whom they had heard much delivered himself of commonplaces entirely unworthy of his position and of his better self. At this point one member of the group, whose own lectures are a theme of admiration, made the suggestion laughingly that every scholar who gave any promise of being ultimately chosen by his colleagues to such an office be required to write a presidential address in his younger years against the day when his talent might be required of him on an occasion like the present.

Es Erscheint an der Zeit, der Aufnahme von Thomas Paines Schriften in Deutschland einmal nachzugehen. Sie standen seinen deutschen Zeitgenossen nicht nur in deren eigener Sprache zur Verfügung, sondern gewannen für sie eine Bedeutung, die im allgemeinen bisher unbeachtet geblieben ist.

Um dieser Bedeutung gerecht zu werden, muß die Untersuchung auch die Aufnahme unter den Deutschen in Amerika mit einschließen; denn die Wechselbeziehungen waren mannigfaltig. Sie erstreckten sich zuweilen rückwirkend auf das amerikanische Geistesleben, ja sogar—wie es vereinzelte Anhaltspunkte deutlich machen—auf Thomas Paine selbst. Als Friedrich von Gentz zur Jahrhundertwende in seinem Hislorischen Journal den Unterschied zwischen der französischen und der amerikanischen Revolution herausstellte und dabei Paines europäischen Radikalismus scharf verurteilte, traf er einen Ton, der den gemäßigten John Quincy Adams, seinerzeit Minister Plenipotentiary der Vereinigten Staaten in Berlin, so begeisterte, daß dieser von dem Essai sogleich anonym eine englische Übersetzung anfertigte und nach Philadelphia zum Drucken sandte. Wieweit sich Paine eines deutschen Widerhalls auf seine Schriften bewußt war, läßt sich genau nicht bestimmen; jedoch ist gewiß, daß sein Kontakt mit Deutschen und mit Deutschland enger war, als man bisher annehmen konnte. Seine eigenen Schriften sind irreführend, wenn er in der American Crisis mit einem Zukunftsbild von den Gefahren einer Besetzung Amerikas durch die “Hessen” aufwartet oder sich in den Rights of Man eines solchen erinnern will, der ihm berichtete, deutsche Untertanen äßen Stroh, wofern es ihr Fürst nur beföhle. Die Söldnertruppen waren schwerlich die einzigen Deutschen seines Umgangs in Amerika, und gar in Paris gab es neben dem Preußen Anacharsis Clootz genug, durch die er sich über deutsche Verhältnisse unterrichten konnte. Hier traf er Georg Forster und Carl Friedrich Cramer, und es ist wahrscheinlich, daß er von den vielen anderen Mitgliedern der deutschen Kolonie doch wenigstens die persönlich kannte, die auch in der englischen verkehrten. Jedenfalls wird die Übersetzung der einen oder anderen seiner späteren Schriften geradezu vor seinen Augen stattgefunden haben. Ja schon bei der ersten deutschen Ausgabe von Common Sense in Philadelphia hatte er möglicherweise seine Hand mit im Spiel; denn das Vorwort läßt darauf schließen, daß den Herausgebern der anonyme Autor wohlbekannt war. Eine deutsche Antwort auf Common Sense blieb schon in Amerika nicht aus; den einzigen Beweis aber, daß er nicht ganz im unklaren über die deutsche Aufnahme seiner Schriften war, liefert Paine erst viele Jahre später in Europa. In seiner Vorrede zu einer Neufassung der Rights of Man erklärt er nämlich 1794: “The Chancellor at Berlin, or the Judges at Vienna shall not punish unfortunate individuals for publishing or reading what tyranny may be pleased to call my libels upon their different States.” Er beschließt jetzt ausdrücklich: “I write for the world at large.”

When Joseph Trapp, early in the eighteenth century, delivered his lectures on science as a subject for poetry, he was enthusiastic about the possibilities but pessimistic over the scientific poetry of his time. “The same age that shew'd a Boyle, a Halley, and a Newton,” he said, had not been able to produce a Virgil. Nothing is more suitable to the dignity of a poem, he continued, “than to celebrate the works of the great creator” or to the variety of poetical subject matter “than to describe the journeys of the heavenly orbs, the rise of thunder, and other meteors, the motion of the earth, and the tides of the sea; the attractive force of the magnet, the impulsive motion of light, and the slower progression of sound; and innumerable other wonders, in the unbounded storehouse of nature.”

At the outset of his first pamphlet . Martin Marprelate announces his discovery of a novel use for the critical precept of decorum personae. The announcement deserves a place among the significant critical declarations of English literary history, for it contains the vital principle of a satirical method which was to develop profound and disturbing implications in Martin's own work, influence the evolution of the Elizabethan novel in an important way, and, in the hands of Andrew Marvell nearly a century later, be adapted surprisingly to what may be called the “pacification” of satire.

The female husband (published 12 November 1746) is an anonymous pamphlet so obscure and so nearly pornographic that its few acquaintances have passed it by, almost in complete silence. I know of only four copies, one each in the British Museum, the Bristol Public Libraries, the Huntington Library, and the library of Charles B. Woods, of the State University of Iowa. It purports to be the biography of one Mary Hamilton, who was in fact tried for fraud at Taunton, Somerset, on 7 October 1746. It has long been acknowledged, on external evidence, as Henry Fielding's. But among themselves scholars remain skeptical. The pamphlet has remained in limbo, listed for immortality but ignored, not quite accepted and not quite damned. I hope to demonstrate beyond all doubt that The Female Husband is Fielding's, and to suggest that this pamphlet, though of slight literary worth, is an interesting exhibit of Fielding at work upon meager journalistic fact, a somewhat discomforting glimpse of the comic moralist trying to sustain his principles and his comedy within recalcitrant material.

In recent works on eighteenth-century drama and theatrical practices, Aaron Hill's Zara has received passing attention because of its notable longevity. The play did make theatrical history of a sort in that it was one of only three which were presented for more than twenty consecutive years during David Garrick's tenure at Drury Lane as manager (1747–76). Zara, with its twenty-three consecutive seasons, was surpassed only by Hamlet and Benjamin Hoadly's Suspicious Husband in unbroken performance, both of the latter, having achieved twenty-nine consecutive seasons. But mere longevity and consecutiveness of performance cannot force the play upon the attention of today's students of the history of the drama. What perhaps can, however, is the hitherto unrecorded fact that for a considerable portion of its history in Garrick's theater and for years afterward it was not Hill's play but Garrick's own adaptation that was popular. Furthermore, it is an adaptation which sheds interesting light on Garrick's dramatic methods and increases his stature as a careful reviser of older plays.

Dans ses salons et essais critiques, Diderot établit volontiers des comparaisons entre les tableaux de contemporains qu'il se propose d‘évaluer et les chefs-d‘œuvre des grands maîtres du passé qui avaient traité des thèmes similaires. Et ces fécondes confrontations iconographiques entre les écoles et les styles les plus divers font partie intégrante de ses méthodes critiques.

Parmi les noms de peintres fameux qui reviennent sous la plume du Philosophe, il en est un qui, bien que moins fréquemment évoqué qu'un Raphaël ou un Rubens, réapparaît cependant dans des contextes extrêmement significatifs. En effet, devant les toiles et gravures de Rembrandt, Diderot a été amené à formuler quelques-unes de ses observations les plus pénétrantes. L'art de ce peintre—si éloigné de la vision idéalisée des statuaires antiques et des Italiens de la Renaissance, ainsi que de la verve joyeuse d'un Rubens et du fini précieux, du réalisme minutieux de la plupart des Hollandais—l'a forcé pour ainsi dire à remettre en question nombre de notions sur des aspects importants de la peinture. Nous verrons que, malgré les grands changements de style qui ont renouvelé et quelquefois bouleversé les arts plastiques depuis l'époque où Diderot rédigeait ses Salons, ces problèmes esthétiques sont toujours actuels et concernent le praticien aussi bien que l'amateur éclairé. D'autre part, la manière dont le plus génial des salonniers du dix-huitième siècle a vu, senti et compris le style si original et anti-académique de Rembrandt est révélatrice, dans une large mesure, des tendances, des goûts etdes partis-pris de son temps.

If, as Professor Adams complains, Milton's Comus has been “overread,” the chief reason is that we are still trying to find out what the masque means. In spite of the wide acceptance given to Professor Woodhouse's theological interpretation of the work, critics keep twisting the dials, trying to sharpen the focus. The difficulty is that none of the adjustments tried so far brings the whole narrative into focus at once.

Early in the year 1771 Lessing manifested a lively interest in the Scottish moral philosopher, Adam Ferguson. He was eager to obtain a certain work of Ferguson's, and his patience was taxed for several weeks until the book arrived. When he finally had it in his hands, he quickly leafed through it and was delighted with what his cursory examination revealed. His comments, occasioned by this first glance through the volume, have given rise to a number of conflicting opinions.

Three weeks ago this evening, Edward R. Murrow, on his televised “Small World” program, asked two distinguished poets if they could cite any instance of a poem directly affecting history. The distingished poets had no answer, I am sorry to say. They had a chance, literally, to tell the world; but, in the language of baseball, they muffed it. Yet there is a wonderfully clear instance of a poem directly affecting history—making history, indeed—and this is the subject of my paper.

Jean Philippe Rameau (1684–1764) is generally recognized as the greatest French musician of the eighteenth century. His achievements in theory and practice were considered outstanding by his contemporaries, friend and adversary alike, and posterity has not altered this opinion. After what would ordinarily amount to a lifetime as a church organist, Rameau propounded in 1722 and 1726 his famous principle of the basse fondamentale, which he expanded and defended in more than twenty-five books, articles, and pamphlets in the course of his career. After one failure (Samson, 1732), he conquered the operatic stage with Hippolyte et Aricie in 1733 and dominated it with his more than two dozen other operas until his death. His heavy-handed discipline exerted upon the singers, the dancers, and especially the orchestra of the Royal Academy of Music worked an enormous and radical improvement in performance. Few musicians in any time can lay claim to greater practical accomplishment in the service of their art.

Das stück hat eine tiefe Anlage und sein Kern dürfte nicht gleich anfänglich vorspringen.“ Thus Stifter writes in reference to Der Nachsommer to his publisher and friend Heckenast on 28 January 1855. A year and nine months later, Stifter, who was then engaged in correcting proof, made the following confession in a letter to Heckenast of 20 October 1856:

Nur Ihnen getraue ich mir zu sagen, was ich jezt sage: ich glaube, dass das gegenwärtige Buch eine Tiefe haben soll, die in neuer Zeit nur von Göthe übertroffen ist. Wenn dieser Saz unter die Litteraten käme, sie steinigten mich. Ich kann mich irren; aber die lezten Correcturbögen haben mich selber, wie ernste Ruhe und Tiefe ergriffen, was mir noch bei keiner Correctur geschah. (xviii, 336)

Self-adulation was not one of Stifter's failings as an artist, nor was ambition, in its usual sense. He does confess, however, to a “Thatenergeiz” which he defines in a letter to Heckenast of 6 March 1849 as the impulse “die menschliche Bildung wesentlich zu fördern.” How intense is this impulse is revealed in his statement: “Mein Gott, ich gäbe gerne mein Blut her, wenn ich die Menschheit mit einem Ruke auf die Stufe sittlicher Schönheit heben könnte, auf der ich sie wünschte” (xvii, 323). This ambition, “ein tiefer heiliger Drang” (xviii, 224), social rather than selfish, is indeed so strong, even compelling, that one may recognize in it the force which led to Stifter's achievements as artist and man of practical affairs as well as the cause of his frustrations, disappointments, and miseries. For Stifter, satisfaction with any of his writings could spring only from a realization that artistic form and ethical content were in perfect partnership: “Der höchste Ruhm die höchste Freude wäre mir die, zu wissen, dass ich auch nur einige Steinchen zu dem Baue dieses Reiches auf der Erde gelegt habe, dass ich die Zahl der Herzen vermehren geholfen habe, welche das lieben, was ich liebe, und mit reinerem Sinne nach Oben schauen.”

Paradise lost, in spite of all the critical and scholarly acknowledgements that it is a “typical” seventeenth-century epic, has not often enough been seriously considered in the context of the Restoration, when, of course, it appeared. The audience that read it was also reading Dryden. And while it was obviously not a “party poem” in the way that Absalom and Achitophel was, it certainly was not detached from its age. In his own way, Milton was responding to contemporary events and issues with something of Dryden's hardness of mind and spirit. Indeed, certain aspects of Paradise Lost may appear in an altogether new perspective when we consider how closely Dryden used Milton's epical material in his own small epic. We may, to pursue one aspect in detail, even turn up a plausible model for Satan.

Mark Akenside produced two versions of his best-known poem, The Pleasures of Imagination, which appeared in 1744 and consists of three books. The second version, with its slightly altered title, The Pleasures of the Imagination, was unfinished at his death in 1770. We have, however, two complete books of it and portions of two others. The revised version of Book I was printed in 1757 for circulation among Akenside's friends; Book II of the later version appeared in a similar fashion in 1765. Not much attention has been given by critics and commentators to the differences between the two versions of the poem. They have contented themselves with observing merely that such differences exist. But it is clear that Akenside took pains with his revision, and the changes he made reflect both an increase in his poetic powers and his intense involvement with the political and cultural history of his time. He is not only a capable poet, he is that valuable thing, a “representative figure.”

Some fifteen months have passed since I last reported directly to you on the progress of the Foreign Language Program at our unseasonable September meeting in Wisconsin. At that time I had been Director of the FL Program just one month, after five years as a staff member. Today I report again, although extraordinary circumstances have persuaded me to vacate the directorship, temporarily at least. I am called upon for an evaluation of the FL Program from its inception in 1952 to the present. Lest you think a post-mortem is implied, I hasten to state emphatically that the FL Program is a continuing and organic function of the MLA, indeed, of the entire profession of teachers of modern foreign languages, and, I venture to add, of all elements in American society with an interest in strengthening education.