A poet cannot help borrowing images and verse shapes from earlier poems. But in adapting Spenser's final hexameter, a major writer like Milton makes an apparently simple formal imitation the locus for revisionary strategies of a highly figurative nature. Spenser's own prosodic choices are always shadowed by larger tropes of time, death, love, and voice, as is evident both in the rhetorical effects that characterize the closure of the Faerie Queene stanza and in the elusive river and echo mythologies that inhabit the refrains of the poet's two marriage odes. These works, in turn, strongly influence Milton's early strophic poetry, especially the Nativity Hymn and the song to Echo from Comas. Milton reinvents the hexameter close in ways that point to his larger poetic ambitions, finding in that metrical scheme a space in which to reflect on, oppose, and translate the deep structures of Spenserian mythmaking.

Whatever the play may have seemed to its immediate audience, to modern critics the Wakefield Mactacio Abel has generally seemed interesting for its realism but not especially successful either as drama or as dramatic sermon. Miss Eleanor Prosser goes so far as to say,

Doctrine remains in this play only by sufferance. But even apart from homiletic considerations, the play is unsuccessful. It has no unity: it leaps from farce to Scripture to farce with neither transition nor dramatic probability. The conflict is poorly established (witness the weakness of Abel and God); the characterization is one-dimensional; motivations are inconsistent (Cain's despair); much of the humor is pointless and simple-minded (Cain's striking Pykeharnes without motivation, just to keep his hand in, or the repeated obscenities that are comic solely by reason of their obscenity); the main interest in the play is irrelevant to the main plot action.

In the months since the emory conference, my relation to disability studies has changed. I attended the conference as a spectator, eager to probe the shape and problems of the field. My PhD is in medieval studies, and I was beginning a project on historical representations of disability, deformity, and miraculous healing. Now, as a member of the MLA's Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession, I am involved in the post-conference evaluatory process and in other disability-related professional initiatives. Each stage of this journey has been informed by a growing awareness of what might in other contexts be articulated as a problem of field identity. When I read the conference title—Disability Studies and the University—and looked through the program, I found myself imagining conversations between the theme and the paper titles. That there was such a difference between what I envisioned and what I saw might be an index of my interpretive skills, but it might also indicate the challenges of defining and recognizing disability studies.

No modern commentary on this changelessly relevant poem identifies its specific occasion as that of a new attempt by dissenters in 1732 and 1733 to repeal the Sacra mental Test Act in Ireland, Such an occasion is, however, suggested or explicitly stated by eighteenth-century transcribers of the poem, including William Collins, William Shen-stone, Ralph Griffiths, and the anonymous author of The Friends (1773), a rare novel in which “The Day of Judgement” first appeared in print. Substantive variants in the early transcriptions, often intensifying the criticism of dissenters, are significant in understanding how the poem was read in the eighteenth century. Jonathan Swift's authorship is corroborated by similarities in other works by him on the same subject in 1732-33, a somewhat later date than that usually assigned for the poem's composition.

In studying the language or pronunciation of any section of the country, it is necessary first of all to trace back the history of the people inhabiting it to the earliest beginnings in order to explain understandingly the dialectical peculiarities of its grammar or pronunciation. I shall, therefore, preface my remarks on the linguistic peculiarities of this region with a brief sketch of its earliest settlements and later development.

The earlier history of Western Virginia, now known as West Virginia, begins a century later than that of Eastern Virginia, or Virginia proper. In 1710 Alexander Spotswood, a Scotchman, was the deputy governor of the Colony of Virginia.

Hauptmann hat es eigentlich vermieden, über sein Schaffen zu sprechen. “Bilde, Künstler, rede nicht!” ein Lieblingswort Goethes, zitierte er mit Vorliebe. Aber in seinem Geleitwort zu Shakespeare-Visionen spricht er von dem Schöpfungsprozess, diesem geheimnisvollen Verlauf des dichterischen Genius: “was wissen wir über den Schöpfungsprozess, der den Visionen und Gestalten Shakespeares ihre besondere Art von Realität, Dauer und Weite gibt? … Es geschehen vielleicht in der Dichterseele Ballungen stürmender Rotation, erzeugen im Verdichten Wärme, Licht und zuletzt das Leben. Dabei ist etwas wie Kampf zwischen Ormuzd und Ahriman.”Sein unablässliges Arbeiten, die regelmässigen Stunden des Diktats, die Produktivspaziergänge, die Visionen der einsamen Stunden sind von Behl, Kästner und Voigt wiederholt beschrieben worden. Hauptmann, der naive Künstler, konnte das schöpferische Geheimnis nicht benennen. Wenn er jedoch beim Diktat auf falsche Pfade geriet, spürte er es bald und brach ab. Selbst beim Vorlesen aus neuen, im Entstehen begriffenen Werken, konnte er plötzlich unmutig aufhören, weil er einen falschen Ton hörte. Andererseits war er der glücklichste Mensch, wenn ihm die Arbeit gelang, wenn beim Diktat wundervolle Verse hervorsprudelten oder die Wucht einer Szene ihn mitriss. Es dichtete in ihm, und er wurde zum Sprachrohr einer inneren Stimme. Seine naive Freude daran war rührend. Ein gequältes “Produzieren” im engsten Sinne des Begriffs war ihm fremd. Seine künstlerische Eigenart, das tief Persönliche und Wesentliche seiner dramatischen Arbeitsweise, ist unlösbar mit dem Werke selbst verbunden und nicht davon zu trennen. Die innere Einheit dieses immer noch nicht zu überschauenden Werkes zu erfassen, bleibt die Aufgabe der Zukunft.

Since Dryden lived in a period when the authority of Aristotle in matters of poetry was gaining rather than losing strength, and since he was both a critic and a writer of serious plays, it was inevitable that he should come to grips with the principle of a tragic catharsis and with the broader problem of the function of tragedy. The passages in which he gave his answer to these problems are well known, but the significance of his remarks in relation to the ideas of his time has not always been understood. Especially, the assumption in recent years that all Neo-Classical renditions of the Aristotelian catharsis are irrelevant because of the strong moral bias of the period has led to the ignoring of quite important differences between the theories of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

How does art cultivate moral reflexivity? Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi, eyewitnesses to the atomic aftermath at Hiroshima, were the first artists to publicly display works showing the effects of nuclear irradiation on the human body. While their work has long been considered antiwar, few attempts have been made to theorize how their compositions structure an ethical response to aggression. Three interconnected zones of representation are explored: the artists' murals, Toshi's testimonials regarding the creation of the murals, and the museum in which the murals are displayed. Bringing Japanese Buddhist traditions for the depiction of suffering (etoki ‘picture explanation,‘ hell screen art) into conversation with contemporary theories of performance (Turner's concept of the “subjunctive mood,” Taylor's notion of “the repertoire”), memory (Kansteiner's “collected memory,” Auron's “pain of knowledge”), and museum studies (Crane's “distortion”), I articulate a contemporary Japanese model of nuclear criticism.

The value of John Donne's poetry has ever been acknowledged to the extent that, together with Spenser and Jonson, he has been conceded leadership in the English Renaissance. Until recently, however, the Dean of St. Paul's has only casually been touched upon as a prose writer of pronounced merit. This neglect Coleridge hinted at when, in his Table Talk, June 4, 1830, he wrote: “Why is not Donne's volume of sermons reprinted at Oxford?” Of all Donne's prose, the sermons seem to me to be most important. Meritorious as they are for content (which does not interest us here), Donne's sermons best display his mature ability as a man of letters, wherefore as a master of English homiletic style Donne deserves his place among the leading writers of his day.

Scholarship has always delighted to render unto Shakspere and Milton individually the tribute which is their natural due. Strangely enough, however, it has neglected the relationships between them. Specifically, no one hitherto, I believe, has undertaken a systematic investigation of the range and quantity of Shaksperian recollection in Milton, much less of the quality thereof. The present paper attempts such an investigation.

This Moment has Been Looming for Three Years Now, Ever since I heard the election results, and the complicated feelings that arose then are still in place. Amazement, first of all, because it's still hard to believe that a translator from SUNY Cortland could stand at this podium. Awe and humility, for sure, because I know something about my illustrious predecessors and how far I am from filling their shoes. A bit of sheer terror, too: I suspect that comes with the territory. But most of all, gratitude, immense gratitude, for the opportunity to collaborate with the extraordinary colleagues that make this huge, multifaceted association work so well. By colleagues I mean in particular the past two presidents and the two current vice presidents, with whom I've worked closely and from whom I've learned so much; the Executive Council members, all stars in their own right who know how to work productively as a team and have fun in the process; and especially our inspiring and gifted leader Rosemary G. Feal and her formidable staff. I can't name them all, but I want to thank them all, to acknowledge and applaud their integrity and intelligence, their creativity and commitment, their people skills and their many other skills that keep this big ship on course. The association is going through hard financial times, as you know, but we're in excellent hands, and I'm confident that we'll emerge from the ordeal leaner, perhaps, but stronger than ever.

Gray's Sonnet on the Death of Richard West has never recovered from the judgment visited upon it by Wordsworth, for whom it neatly demonstrated how Gray “was more than any other man curiously elaborate in the structure of his own poetic diction.” Scholars in recent times have been harsh: “Characteristically Gray wrote in English a stilted sonnet on West's death and put his genuine feelings into the Latin verses that he appended to his philosophical fragment, De principiis cogitandi. Not enough of a romantic to wear his heart on his sleeve, he concealed his emotions in classical Latin.” The following essay may show to what degree, if any, the work is “stilted” and the emotions are “concealed”; more directly, however, it is intended to show what kind of poem Gray was writing, and to consider whether he sought again to accomplish the sonnet's intentions in the Elegy.

The respectable number of books and articles about Shelley within recent years have concerned themselves mainly with the review of a puzzling personality and an inspiring, if not altogether acceptable “message.” At one of those times, the aftermath of a centennial, when authors may be assayed anew, we have contented ourselves with reaffirming, somewhat indifferently, the opinions of the last seventy-five years. This fact seems to argue that the poet's reputation has become stabilized. Although scholars and critics will no doubt continue to add minutiae, it is probably true that our main body of information and opinions concerning Shelley is definitely fixed, for some time to come. And yet in the case of Shelley's principal poem, Prometheus Unbound, there are considerations which indicate that the generally accepted view needs to be revised. These considerations hardly affect the value or the essential meaning of the poem, but they do fundamentally affect the method by which it is commonly approached.

In seinem kleinen Aufsatz, “Über Königliche Hoheit” (1910), sagt Thomas Mann:

Der Fürst, den ich eigentlich im Sinne hatte, ist der, von dem Schiller seinen Karl VII. sagen lässt: ‘Drum soll der Sänger mit dem König gehen, sie beide wohnen auf der Menschheit Höhen.’ Die anspielungsreiche Analyse des fürstlichen Daseins als eines formalen, unsachlichen, übersachlichen, mit einem Worte artistischen Daseins und die Erlösung der Hoheit durch die Liebe: Das ist der Inhalt meines Romans, und, voller Sympathie für jede Art ‘Sonderfall,’ predigt er Menschlichkeit.

Character-writing was of Greek origin. It had its beginnings in the “ of Theophrastus, who lived between 370 and 285 B. C. Popularized by Casaubon's Latin translation of 1592, these Ethical Characters furnished a model of which the English writers were prompt to avail themselves. The first of the English writers to be influenced by Theophrastus was Joseph Hall. His Characterisms of Virtues and Vices appeared in 1608, and was translated into French in 1619. In France it contributed, along with Casaubon's translation, to make Character-writing only less popular than in England. Chief among those who felt its influence was Jean de la Bruyère, whose book, Les Caractères De Theophraste, Traduits Du Grec; avec Les Caractères ou les Mœurs de ce Siècle, was published in 1688. This, in turn, influenced the further development of English Character-writing, particularly in the form that it came to assume in the work of the periodical essayists of the eighteenth century, through which it finally merged into the novel. To point out the nature and extent of this influence of La Bruyère upon the contributors to the Spectator is the purpose of this article.

It Has Been a rare privilege this afternoon to hear these excellent papers describing widely divergent linguistic situations in neighbor nations stretching from the South Seas to the Canadian Rockies in the Far Northwest. The distinguished speakers have given our own Program a new perspective; and their contributions are a generous response to an FL Communiqué which we sent last August to some 160 persons in thirty-five countries, in an effort to tell our foreign colleagues the story of what is happening to languages in the United States. Our situation is of course different from any of those described, but this very diversity can suggest to us valuable lessons.

Although Dr. Johnson is one of our best English critics, he has left much that the world would willingly let die. But alas ! the written word is imperishable, and will every now and then repair its drooping head, in spite of the opportunities of oblivion. Johnson's strictures on the shorter poems of Milton have now for a good while been taken for what they are worth; even his severity with Comus is recognized as more than half perversely irrelevant. I say nothing of Paradise Lost, for no other poem so inexorably demands the willing suspension of disbelief which Johnson was incapable of. But recently his obiter dictum that Samson Agonistes is not a dramatic whole in the Aristotelian sense, having a beginning, a middle, and an end; that “ the intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence, neither hasten nor retard the catastrophe ” has re-entered the listed field. And “ these shifts ” must be “refuted.”