In one form or another, the issue of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes is forever recurring in French literature. Whether the various forms of literature, and in particular poetry and the drama, shall follow the models offered by classical antiquity or shall resolutely draw their inspiration from contemporary civilization, is a question that has more than once caused passionate argument and unloosed floods of eloquence. The problem rose again toward the middle of the last century. It has been customary to say that there was at that time a reaction against the romanticists (i. e. the moderns) resulting in the establishment of the Parnassian school whose spirit was largely classical. That, however, is not the whole truth. At the time when Leconte de Lisle, Ménard, and others were struggling for recognition as poets, there existed also a group which, far from condemning the romanticists as too modern, considered them not sufficiently modern, and called for a reform in French poetry through a utilization of modern industry as a source of inspiration. The contrast between this group and the Parnassians is even more striking than that between either of them and the romanticists. The chief object of this article is to show how the suggestion of a rapprochement between poetry and modern industry came to be made, and to relate the controversy which followed. The latter centered in a book little known today: Les Chants Modernes by Maxime Du Camp. The secondary object of this paper is, therefore, to place Les Chants Modernes in their true historical light.

Persönlichkeiten der Geschichte mit einander zu vergleichen, könnte als ein schon methodologisch verfehltes Unterfangen bezeichnet werden, da ja jede geschichtliche Erscheinung als Individuum ein Einmaliges und Besonderes darstellt. Und doch schließt der Begriff Individuum Verwandtschaft oder Gleichgerichtetheit in Wesentlichem und Unwesentlichem nicht aus. Eine Vergleichung kann daher als gegenseitige Aufhellung oder auch Beleuchtung des einem aus dem andern neue Gesichtspunkte der Charakteristik aufzeigen, vorausgesetzt, daß zur Vergleichung ein gemeinsamer psychologischer oder geistiger Grund und Boden vorhanden ist. In diesem Sinne mag der nachfolgende Versuch aufgefaßt werden. Wenn dabei in unserer Fragestellung der Name Keller dem Goethes vorangeht, so wird damit natürlich nicht eine Wertordnung ausgedrückt, sondern eine Messung des späteren Dichters an dem sozusagen absoluten Maßstab des früheren.

The mystery in Hamlet is a ghost that has haunted the minds of many a generation of scholars and critics. Perhaps the full secret of this mystery was to be known only by Shakespeare himself, even as that other secret was told only to Hamlet by the ghost on the platform at Elsinore

Si La renommée de Ramuz a dépassé les frontières de sa petite terre, le Pays de Vaud (Suisse), dont il nous donne une description si typique dans sa Lettre à Grasset; si tant d'articles de journaux, en France, en Belgique, en Suisse, ont été publiés sur l‘œuvre de cet auteur; si, sous la direction de Marcel Péguy, les Cahiers de la Quinzaine lui ont consacré un cahier tout entier; si plusieurs de ses romans ont été traduits en allemand, en anglais, en tchèque, en suédois; si la critique littéraire parle d'un style ramuzien; si enfin il y a un cas Ramuz, c'est que le poète dont nous traitons a réussi à intéresser un public d‘élite par l'originalité de sa conception esthéthique, par la vigueur et le pittoresque de son style et surtout par l'intensité de la vie qui anime les personnages et les choses de ses romans.

Es ist bekannt, daβ der ältere Nietzsche mit den schärfsten und bittersten Gegnern Martin Luthers gehört, die bis heute gegen ihn und die deutsche Reformation auf den Plan getreten sind. Weniger bekannt scheint zu sein, daβ der junge Nietzsche, der Verfasser der Geburt der Tragödie, der Bildungsanstaltenvorträge und der unzeitgemäβen Betrachtungen, für den deutschen Reformator und sein Werk warme, ja wärmste Worte der Verehrung gefunden hat. Plötzlich und scheinbar unvermittelt wendet sich dann der Nietzsche des Menschlichen-Allzumenschlichen gegen den eben noch öffentlich gepriesenen Luther und verbrennt, was er, wenn auch nicht angebetet, so doch emphatisch gelobt und gutgeheiβen hatte. Zweifellos ist nun das Sonderproblem des Umschwungs in Nietzsches innerer Einstellung zu Luther nur ein Teil des Allgemeinproblems des groβen Wandels überhaupt, der sich in Nietzsches Denken seit etwa der Mitte der siebziger Jahre bemerkbar macht. Ohne diese wesentlichen Zusammenhänge des hier zu behandelnden Spezialproblems mit der Gesamtwandlung Nietzsches aus den Augen zu verlieren, hat es dennoch etwas ungemein Verlockendes, den Sonderfall ‘Nietzsche-Luther’ aus dem ganzen Problemkomplex einmal behutsam herauszulockern, ohne ihn vollständig herauszulösen. Es wäre sogar nicht ausgeschlossen, daβ bei solch induktivem Vorgehen möglicherweise neues Licht auf die m. E. immer noch nicht befriedigend beantwortete Grundfrage nach den tieferen Ursprüngen des zweiten Nietzsche fiele. Wie konnte es geschehen—so soll das vorliegende Individualproblem formuliert werden–-, daβ aus dem Lutherverehrer in kurzer Zeit ein Lutherfeind wurde? Wie schon angedeutet, ist dies nur ein Teil und zwar ein dem Nichtfachmann wohl kaum in die Augen springender Teil der Gesamtfrage, wie aus Nietzsche dem Metaphysiker und Kunstjünger der wissenschaftlich-theoretische Mensch wurde, aus dem Wagnerverehrer der Wagnerfeind. Was unsere Spezialfrage angeht, so ist vorerst unter Heranziehung aller Tatsachen genau zu untersuchen, wie sich das Lutherbild des jungen Nietzsche eigentlich entwickelt hat und wie umfassend und tiefgehend es wirklich gewesen ist. Mit andern Worten, es soll festgestellt werden, welcher Art der Luther war, den der frühe Nietzsche verehrte und bald darauf verwarf.

Flaubert's representation of the 1848 revolution in L'éducation sentimentale brings irony and the sublime into a relation of simultaneous opposition and dependency. An uncertain irony constructs the revolution as an aporia: as both an impoverished imitation of 1789 (a cliché) and a tragic modern apocalypse. Particularly in the famous Fontainebleau episode, where the rhetorical violence of irony is enacted in the analogy between the awesome turbulence of nature and the chaos of a nonteleological historical process, irony gives rise to the affects of fear and transport characteristic of the sublime. And the turn from an uncanny irony to the countermode of self-empowerment is set in motion by the same fear of death that haunts the novel's historiographical intertext, the Micheletist cliché of resurrection. But while the Micheletist sublime constructs a version of historical and ontological truth, the Flaubertian sublime transforms meaninglessness itself into power. Reified as ideology, that power would be neither inflexible nor monolithic, for it emerges and recedes repeatedly in the context of a self-interrogating and fundamentally ironic narrative. (VKR)

The problem we are proposing to discuss is the result of a peculiar carelessness of Montaigne in his chapter on Friendship in his Essais, Book I, 28. He begins by noting that a painter,1 commissioned by him to decorate some of the large panels of his study with pictures, daubs fanciful designs, “crotesques”, around the central pieces. So, remarks Montaigne, his thoughts here are mere figures without any other purpose than to enshrine a great piece composed by his friend, Etienne de la Boétie. This gem is a little essay called by its author Discours de la servitude volontaire, but soon renamed Le contr'un by those who read it. Montaigne then relates that it was written by La Boétie in his early youth (later specified as eighteen) and circulated among appreciative readers who relished its spirited defence of liberty against tyrants. Hence the name of Contr'un. Montaigne insists that it is beautifully composed and if its author had lived and undertaken a long work of reflection, he would have created something memorable that would have made him comparable to authors of antiquity. But this Discours and a Commentary on the Edict of January2 are all he has available now, since he has already published all the other MSS left him by his friend's bequest.3 Montaigne admits that he has a special fondness for the Contr'un because it furnished the means of their first awareness of each other even before they met, thus opening the door to the perfect friendship between them. This relationship was so extraordinary that its like will not be seen more than once in three centuries.

The early Elizabethan conception of a line of poetry is best illustrated by Puttenham, who compares it to a day's journey in which the traveler rests twice, at noon and at night.” The end-stopped line which results from this conception gives increased importance to the rime; indeed, Puttenham considers it the equivalent of classical “currantnesse” of foot, which “passed the whole verse throughout, whereas our concordes keepe but the latter end of every verse.” Rime is even placed above meter: “your concordes containe the chief part of Musicke in your meetre.” The preference is clearly for rich heavy rimes, with an echo. For this reason monosyllables are most desirable; since “in them, if they finish the verse, resteth the shrill accent of necessitie, and so doth it not in the last of every bissilable, nor of every polisillable word.” Rime is not merely good or bad; it has its own decorum: some words an i figures are suitable for one style but not for others, and the same is true of “concord and measure.?” Thus rimes which fall on the last syllable are “sweetest and most commendable”; those falling on the penultimate syllable are “more light and not so pleasant”; and those upon the antepenultimate syllable are “most unpleasant of all, because they make your meeter to light and triviall, and are fitter for the Epigrammatist or Comicall Poet.” ? Light endings are for light verse; even Daniel seems to agree with this opinion when he says that feminine rimes are “fittest for Ditties.”

To students of the classics the Roman practice of declamation has long been known as an influence on Roman satire and drama and on the early Greek romance. Apparently this rhetorical exercise is less well known to students of English drama, for in the standard histories and editions there is little to be found on the subject. Yet the controversia, the most important form of declamation, affected English drama early and late. A Renaissance imitation of a controversia furnished the plot of the earliest surviving secular play in English, Henry Medwall's Fulgens and Lucrece (1497?), and some of the Roman originals provided the most fashionable dramatists of the Jacobean era with plots for a number of plays. Of these, Massinger and Field's The Fatal Dowry (1618-19?), whose source has not previously been identified, is an unusually fine example of the transformation of controversia into drama. The early interlude and the later tragedy, examined side by side, reveal much of the operation of this special branch of classical rhetoric. I shall suggest that the controversia gave much more than plots to the English playwrights—that it influenced literary theory, method, and style.

Friedrich Vogt fasste seine Ausführungen über Carl von Kraus' bahnbrechendes Reinmarwerk wie folgt zusammen (AfdA. 40 [1921], 126 f):

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, W. H. Auden and the authors of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, ask themselves, in independent reflections, why attempts to free thought from oppressive schemata result in more-insidious forms of oppression: as clerical establishments go into decline, modernity creates new forms of mythological consciousness. For all three authors, the emergence of fascism in the early part of the twentieth century is proof of this and gives urgency to their inquiries into enlightenment. For all three, Voltaire is a pivotal figure, for his struggle against the unity of apologetic discourse and ruthless power allows them to discern an element of enlightenment that survives the most rigorous critique of its oppressive tendencies. This essay examines Horkheimer and Adorno's fragment “For Voltaire” alongside Auden's poem “Voltaire at Ferney” and shows how the latter both anticipates and reveals the limits of the former.

Gianlorenzo Bernini's single surviving playscript offers a satire on Bernini's own fame as a creator of scenic stage marvels as well as a satiric analysis of his younger painter-playwright rival from Naples, Salvator Rosa. But Bernini's play also raises general issues about the relations of amateurs and professionals in the leveling context of carnival, about the effect of printing on a subgenre of the improvisational scenarii of the commedia dell' arte as printed texts established a popular reading audience in seventeenth-century Rome, and about the concept of “popular” in the relations of class and genre implicit not only in Bernini's satire but in much of the seventeenth-century generic mixing that took place far outside the exemplary conditions of the Roman commedie ridicolose.

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.

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.

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.

In the academic study of cinema, as in other kinds of academic discourses, one of the most commonly encountered questions these days tends to be some version of the following: Where in this discipline am I? How come I am not represented? What does it mean for me and my group to be represented in this manner? What does it mean for me and my group to have been made invisible? These questions pertain, of course, to the urgency and prevalence of the politics of identification, to the relation between representational forms and their articulation of subjective histories and locations. This is one reason the study of cinema, like the study of literature and history, has become increasingly caught up in the study of group cultures: every group (be it defined by nation, class, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation), it seems, produces a local variant of the universal that is cinema, requiring critics thus to engage with the specificities of particular collectivities even as they talk about the generalities of the filmic apparatus. According to one report, for instance, at the Society of Cinema Studies Annual Conference of 1998, “nearly half the over four hundred papers (read from morning to night in nine rooms) treated the politics of representing ethnicity, gender, and sexuality” (Andrew 348).' Western film studies, as Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams write, currently faces its own “impending dissolution […] in […] transnational theorization” (Introduction 1). How did this state of affairs arise?

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.