That the “solempne” and “greet fraternitee” in whose livery Chaucer dressed the five Burgesses in the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales was probably a craft fraternity and that the Drapers' Fraternity (or Brotherhood of St. Mary of Bethlehem) provides a clear-cut example of the kind of organization he had in mind are conclusions to which this paper will attempt to lead the reader through the ensuing pages. Eighteen lines introduce and describe these worthy citizens:

From the time he enters the first grade until he is at least part way through college, the American student finds himself studying something called “English.” He is required to take more years of it, by far, than of any other subject. If, anywhere along this educational scale, he is asked what he is studying, the answer is most likely to be: English—and Subject x and Subject y and Subject z.

The Appearance of the pastoral name “Amyntas” in the poems of Richard Barnfield and in those of well-known members of the Sidney circle points to a network of interesting relationships not hitherto perceived generally. Barnfield's elaborate and extended references to Amyntas not only reveal some of the influences upon this poet's early compositions but also shed additional light upon the authorship of Greenes Funeralls, a work interesting both for its importance in the Greene-Harvey controversy and for its allusion to Greene's attack upon Shakespeare. Of significance also is the precise nature of Barnfield's connection with the group of writers who, after Sidney's death, attached themselves to Mary Herbert but retained still the spirit of Sir Philip. It is a connection that can be established clearly only if we understand aright the identity of Amyntas and the intention of the poet in employing the name.

In four English works published between 1592 and 1595, Amyntas represents under the guise of pastoral allusion various persons whom the authors desired to praise: “Colin Clovts come home againe,” Pierce Penilesse his Svpplication to the Diuell, The Affectionate Shepheard, and Greenes Funeralls. Amyntas appears also in pastoral poems by Thomas Watson and Abraham Fraunce as an unfortunate shepherd who dies for love, and again in the works of other writers who wish by this method to allude to Watson's work or to Fraunce's. The name is met then in three ways: as a poetic name for an historical personage contemporary to the writer who uses it, as a name appropriate to a shepherd but having no topical significance in the fashionable Arcadian romances of the last two decades of the sixteenth century, and as a reference to poems using the name Amyntas either in their titles or in their subtitles.

The Interlinear gloss of the Vespasian Psalter (in British Museum MS. Cotton Vespasian A. 1) is generally regarded as a Mercian text; indeed, it seems to be our best written record of the one Old English dialect which comes closest of any to being the direct ancestor of the standard language of modern England. Where so important a text is concerned, we should like to know as much as possible about the date, the provenience, and all other matters having any bearing upon our linguistic interpretation of the written symbols. One of the more crucial questions at the present time is whether the gloss is an original work of the ninth century or a ninth-century copy of an earlier (? eighth-century) gloss. It is important that we know whether this text represents the more or less homogeneous dialect of a single period or whether it is a mixture of earlier and later forms.

The report of the “Conference on Basic Issues in the Teaching of English” states clearly the motives for studying “English,” and presents thirty-five interrelated issues (together with their complex implications). The conferees defined an “issue” as an unsettled point on which the possibility of taking opposed positions exists, and on which agreement is likely to be difficult. The mission of the Conferences was to define such issues, to present them as showing the parlous situation into which the teaching of English in the United States has drifted, and to provide a basic “work paper” for concentrating the attention of members of the profession on developing solutions. If no constructive action is taken upon the issues, “English” as a subject will continue to lose definition and become a loose catch-all for assorted topical interests. We will then face the dissolution in the schools of an impressive literary heritage, as well as of achievements in precise organized written expression, so necessary for everyone in our society.

The four-hundred-odd lines of Beowulf1 between the defeat of Grendel and the attack by Grendel's mother contain two brief digressive passages, set with some appearance of symmetry on either side of the longer Finn Episode (1071—1159): a lay by one of HroSgar's thanes, contrasting the glorious deeds of Sigemund with the downfall of Heremod (874-915); and a pair of allusions introduced by the poet through the device of the torque given to Beowulf, concerning a mysterious exploit of Hama and the fatal expedition of Hygelac (1197-1214). The four basic references which make up these two passages seem designed as piecemeal allusions to stories more or less lost to us—a fact that must necessarily deprive us of much that the lines were meant to convey. Yet even allusion, if it is developed at all, is normally developed in the direction of its intended meaning, so that its general drift can sometimes be understood without a full knowledge of its underlying story. In this paper I will try to show that the Sigemund-Heremod and Hama-Hygelac passages are each organized around a clear thematic contrast, closely related to its context in the narrative; that they are meaningfully related to one another, and together express a theme of importance in this part of the poem; and that their significance grows naturally out of the great heroic ideal of sapientia et fortitudo which I believe lies at the heart of Beowulf? Section I will analyze the two passages themselves and their immediate contexts; Section II will explore their relation to the poem and its governing ideal.

This Project, a textbook for college students of beginning Spanish, long talked about, has come a great distance since its inception in May 1956. I report in this paper its present status, and describe the pedagogical philosophy basic to its design. The Working Committee of six has profited all along the way from the valuable help and guidance of the parent Advisory Committee and from numerous special consultants.

Ernst Robert Curtius has described the wonderful harmony of numbers in the Vila Nuova and the Divina Commedia as the end and acme of a long development, where number, from having first served to give form to the outer framework of poetic composition, became ultimately a symbol of the great cosmic ordo. But when Curtius examined the eleventh-century Old-French version of the life of Saint Alexis with the end in view of revealing the patterns of Latin rhetoric which it displays, he did not realize that Dante's great feat of numbers was anticipated there by some 275 years.