The idea for this panel grewout of discussions among Anton Kaes, David Rodowick, and me during our stint as members of the PMLA Editorial Board in 1998–99. We were interested in developing a theme that would build on some of the issues raised in a prior PMLA special topic devoted to globalizing literary studies but that would concentrate more pointedly on the politics of transnational cultural production and the effect of global media on literature, art, and cinema. Working with the assumption that categories of citizenship and local forms of identity have become increasingly mobile, nomadic, and hybrid and drawing on theories of transnational citizenship in philosophy and social theory, we identified a number of interrelated subjects as our focus: the internationalization of aesthetics in a global culture industry; the influence of globally exported mass culture on nation-states worldwide; the consequences of the emergence of “cybernations”— virtual communities defined by electronic and Internet culture; the question of whether the dynamic push for economic and cultural internationalism will produce a return to political nativism and a renewed insistence on cultural difference; the politics of translation, not only across borders but in aesthetic exchanges between literature and cinematic and televisual forms; the shifting tensions between monolingualism and nonstandard language as new, displaced minority cultures emerge as consumers of transnational media and makers of alternative literatures and media; and the relevance of analogies between the borderless cartographies of the new Europe and medieval Christendom to discussions of global cultural production.

Wallace Stevens uses the alphabet as a code to validate the philosophical concerns of his poetry. The alphabet is “murderous” if it represents a sacred and sterile process that assumes a final dispensation as “heavenly script”; the alphabet is “fusky” if it represents an artistic act that continually mediates between the emptiness of things and the imagination to create poetic heavens on earth. Stevens often works with an abbreviated alphabet (ABC, XYZ, etc.) where the letters are “characters” who represent certain relations between the imagination and reality. An understanding of this code informs certain poems where letters play an explicit and major role, such as “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven,” “So-and-So Reclining on Her Couch,” “Connoisseur of Chaos,” and “The Comedian as the Letter C.” The alphabetical code also informs much of Stevens’ other work and accounts for many of the apparent difficulties of his poetry—the curious vocabulary, the fantastic characters, and the exotic topography of his poetic universe.

One present-day student of that fascinating product of English medievalism, The Owl and the Nightingale, concludes his survey of the so-called “modern phase of discussion” of its problems with mingled approval and dissent. Hearty appreciation of the range and resourcefulness of the recent contributions of two American scholars to our knowledge of the sources and background of the poem contends with an ever-deepening conviction of the futility of their arguments in favor of an earlier date and environment than any hitherto suggested. May a persistent heretic in the face of their somewhat differing opinions cite first specific reasons for the rejection of these and then give his own grounds for yet another conclusion?

Three of the riddles in the Exeter Book, usually numbered 1, 2, and 3, are commonly known as the Storm Riddles because of their unusually vigorous and beautiful descriptions of disasters on sea and on land as caused by the uproar of the elements. We owe to Professor Charles W. Kennedy the complete interpretation of riddles 2 and 3. Kennedy, I think, has established two things conclusively: first, that riddles 2 and 3 are actually but one riddle—I shall subsequently refer to it by riddle 2–3—secondly, that the background of the storm riddles is Graeco-Roman cosmological thought. Riddle 2–3 dwells successively on four aspects of the turbulent atmosphere, the submarine storm (R.2, lines 1–12), the earthquake (R.3, lines 1-16), the storm at sea (R.3, lines 17–35), and the thunderstorm on land (R.3, lines 36-66). Lines 67–72 summarize the four themes.

The “Address of the Soul to Its Body” usually referred to as The Worcester Fragments, although it is one of the few known examples of twelfth-century English verse, has almost always been discussed simply as a minor part of the cosmopolitan Body and Soul literature. In spite of Chambers' warning that all evidence about English literature immediately before and after the Norman Conquest is especially precious, it seems not to have been pointed out that this poem is also the central point in a series of documents in English which shows a direct line of influence extending from before the Conquest into the lyric poetry of the thirteenth century.

For any just appraisal of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde it is essential to understand correctly the character of its hero. The whole meaning of the poem will change accordingly if one sees Troilus as either an ideal knight or a neurotic weakling, as a noble courtly lover or as Everyman painfully caught in the snares of Satan. Adherence to either one of these contrasting views has frequently led critics to neglect aspects and entire portions of the poem which would not agree with their adopted view of the hero: the poem is obviously full of ambiguities in characterization as well as in its very plot. In the following I wish to suggest that Chaucer presents (and indirectly evaluates) Troilus simultaneously on two different levels, from which the hero emerges as both strong and weak. This suggestion is based on an analysis of a seemingly insignificant commonplace Chaucer uses at least three times in Book iv: the conflict between reason and desire.

Ritson in a letter to Scott, dated July 2, 1803, writes: “I have put into Mr. Longman's hands at his own request, for the opinion of some critic he is used to consult, my ‘Life of King Arthur.’” Again, in a letter of August 16, 1803 to his nephew, Joseph Frank, editor of his correspondence, he says: “I will give you .... all of my late publications, if you have not got them already; then, such as are to come: ‘the Life of King Arthur,’ which I have finished, etc.”. (Letters, II, 247 f.). Ritson died September 23, 1803. From the editor's advertisement to King Arthur we learn: “The curious work now offered to the world was prepared for the press by Mr. Ritson, with a view to immediate publication, a short time before his death.” Thus, the date of composition is clearly 1803. The book marks the culmination of Ritson's researches into the history and literature of the middle ages; it was the fruit of mature experience in a life devoted to scholarly investigation.

In her last essay, “House of the One Father” (1941), Mary Antin, most famous for her immigrant autobiography, The Promised Land (1912), questioned her “divorcement” from Jewish life and found herself

It is well known that the performance in August, 1624 of Thomas Middleton's allegorical play A Game at Chesse, dealing with the Spanish marriage, caused a furore in London theatrical circles, and that the king (then on a progress), learning of it through the Spanish ambassador, ordered its suppression. No attempt, however, has been made to collect the references which this public satire would naturally occasion in the news-letters and private correspondence of the day. Of the allusions given below from these sources, five (nos. 1, 5, 8, 13, 14) have not been noticed before by students of the drama and two (nos. 3, 7), although previously known, are given accurately for the first time. Nos. 2, 6, 9-12, although they have already been correctly printed, are here summarized (within brackets) for the convenience of the reader and included in the series, in proper chronological sequence.

Among Dickens' full-length novels, Barnaby Rudge has been the awkward stepchild, impossible to ignore and difficult to love. Compared to Nicholas Nickleby and The Old Curiosity Shop, its predecessors, it is not remarkably rich in either comic invention or moving pathos. It does not glow with the high spirits of Pickwick or the warm, compassionate tolerance of David Copperfield: its best humor is edged with satire, and the pathos is often rather thin and forced. Nor, despite the crowds that swarm through its pages, does its world seem free or spacious: there is, for Dickens, an almost tight-lipped unwillingness to deviate from the intricate and rather grim progression of the story. This may be partly accounted for by the mode of publication: Dickens seldom felt at ease in the short weekly installments which did not leave space to “play around [the story] here and there, and mitigate the severity of . . . your sticking to it.” Some have thought that Dickens' imagination was constricted by subject matter he had systematically “researched” from written documents, even though some of the freest and most vigorous writing occurs in the passages based on history. Whatever the reason, Barnaby Rudge is a rather forbidding and at times even arid book, disturbing rather than reassuring despite the happy ending: in feeling as in technique, it is akin to such later “dark” and comparatively unpopular novels as Hard Times and Our Mutual Friend. But I think it is both richer and more firmly and meaningfully organized than many critics have allowed.

I may as well begin by confessing that I make this report somewhat selfconsciously. For one thing, I am pensively aware that it is my last report to you as Director of the Foreign Language Program. But in addition I seem to have acquired some notoriety as a scolder of language teachers, and it's a nice question whether I should stay in character or make my valedictory a flattering if slightly insincere performance. Some of my good friends have warned me that language teachers, like professional educators, are unusually sensitive to criticism, and they have advised that, while honesty is supposed to be the best policy, I need not be too generous with it. Beyond this wellmeant counsel my own natural impulses are to close four years of work for the advancement of language study in America by having all foreign language teachers as my friends. I put only one thing ahead of such advice and such impulses, and that is the good of the cause for which I shall continue to work until next summer, and on which it is now my duty to report candidly.

What do we tell our students? the question implies a range of assumptions, most obviously the simple hope that such a conversation might even take place. Imagine a student dropping by during office hours or approaching us after class to ask for our thoughts on the choice of a major. Or consider a different scenario: the faculty member struggling to find the right tone in order to strike up a conversation with a student about his or her academic plans. Certainly such discussions take place, certainly teachers and students talk about educational goals, and certainly a teacher's advice can at times be important for a student. Yet all this reassurance cannot disguise the fragility of the situation. For it is equally certain that the question overstates the frequency, significance, and ramifications of these sorts of exchanges. Parental pressure plays a larger role in the real decision making than does a teacher's advice. (Perhaps there is a journal somewhere for parents of college students with a discussion on “Choosing the Right Major: What DoWe Tell Our Children?”) Many of us have spoken with students who plea their interest in selecting a literature major but find themselves compelled by their parents to choose something allegedly more practical. I for one have rarely met students passionate about a major in business but whose families heartlessly forced them to study literature.

In a day when psychiatry, easy divorce, and the “lie-detector” are integral parts of our civilization, it can hardly be inappropriate to recall to the scholarly public the history of Seleucus, Antiochus, and Stratonice. This story, which affords interesting parallels to our own epoch, has appeared at intervals in most of the theatres of western Europe, and in Spain, at least, its recurrence would seem to form an interesting example of literary Strömungen.

Whether reflecting the social theme in a drama alive to contemporary issues, or reacting to the jaded taste of a theatrical clientele, or probing individually for the most effective delineation of man's tragic plight, the Jacobean dramatists explore a view of life more somber and pessimistic than their Elizabethan counterparts.

John Ford represents the culmination of this basic dramaturgical trend. In 'Tis Pity She's a Whore he creates central figures whose affection, if unrighteous, is also intensely sincere and whose aberrant conduct must be weighed against the treachery and hypocrisy of the society whose morality the lovers have rejected. The anagnorisis as well as the protagonist is doubled, and the spectator is left to choose between the wisdom of Annabella's Christian repentance and Giovanni's stoic insistence on the sanctity of private values. The result is a fundamentally pessimistic view of life in which man's challenge is the ambiguity of moral values constantly frustrating his search for a meaningful life.

Characteristic of the Italian Language is the modern use of the conditional perfect instead of the present. This interchange of tenses is not permitted by either of her two living sister languages, French and Spanish. Nor does English admit such constructions: we are not allowed to say, for example, “He said he should have done it tomorrow,” but must say, “He said he would do it tomorrow.” In Italian on the other hand, there are numerous examples of this construction as the following quotations will illustrate:

Instead of being essentially Platonic, as generations of critics have contended, Shakespeare's sonnets embrace a fundamentally economic idea of value. Their claims to certainty and to permanence refer to human systems rather than to transcendent absolutes. In this respect they resemble Wittgenstein's final writings, collected as On Certainty. Basing their own predicted endurance on their continued utility through time and social change, the sonnets sketch a pragmatic account of human continuity and a nonessentialist idea of human nature. This description of their literary process also suggests why they now seem peculiarly canonical.

This essay explores the significance of history in Hawthorne's fiction. Hawthornean romance, despite its extensive use of history, emphasizes its distance both from a real world and from ordinary historical discourse. The world, it seems to argue, is more like fantasy than fact, more like story than history. Nonetheless, Hawthorne's historical fictions remain carefully researched, meticulously detailed. The Hawthornean world, so highly subjective, so complexly encoded and symbolic, never dissipates into the fantasy that seems to narrate it. What prevents the evaporation of reality into dream, according to Hawthorne, what ensures the distance between the perceiving self and the world, and hence what restrains the imagination from engulfing a reality that is largely at the mercy of the individual's perceptual authority, is historical consciousness. Hawthorne's historical romances are about a historical imagination that is also a moral imagination.

Recently, a gifted undergraduate came to me with some urgent questions: Should he major in literature? And if he did, what practical benefits might he realize? I asked one question: “Are you in love?” By this I meant, “Are you in love with literature?” Then I inquired, “Does your heart skip a beat when you encounter your love? Do you ache when the two of you are separated? Do you resent anything that intrudes on you and your love?”

(Read under the title “Main Types of Literaturwissenschaft: A Critical Survey and a New Approach,” at the Fifty-first Annual Meeting, in Philadelphia, 1934. —Ed.) A MODERN humanism would be a mode of life controlled by an active aspiration to adjust present conditions to the highest interests and values of personality. It would be three-fold, involving (1) the physical-biological organism, (2) the powers finding expression in letters and the arts, and (3) the social, ethical, religious, political and economic beliefs, theories, interests, and circumstances by which personality is affected. The principle of integral unity—which is the central theme of this essay and the ultimate measure of the reality, validity, and value pertaining to the ideal of humanity here projected—demands an unremitting endeavor to combine and harmonize those three main parts of personal being. Culture is an ultimate personal unity of values.

Unless and until the Modern Language Association changes its (unwritten) law that the presidency is usually a consolation prize bestowed upon an elder statesman, presumably because he or she has managed to live long enough to become emeritus (not for any merit, but by automatic fiat of the Board of Trustees), the presidential address will lead to reminiscence. We who no longer teach are particularly dangerous. All our academic lives, we have had captive audiences who could not choose but hear our auditions. Now that no one longer receives credit for listening to us, younger generations rightly avoid us ancient mariners, as in my youth I tried to duck American or Canadian relatives who wished to refight the Civil or the Boer Wars.