Much has been written about Stein's politics ever since it was revealed, in 1996, that Stein had translated many of Philippe Pétain's speeches (Burns and Dydo, “Gertrude Stein”; Van Dusen). If some critics accuse Stein of collaboration with Vichy France, others defend her by pointing out contradictory evidence regarding her behavior during the war years. Barbara Will, in Unlikely Collaboration; Gertrude Stein, Bernard Fay, and the Vichy Dilemma (2011), casts Stein in the role of pro-Vichy thinker whose support of Pétain was “heartfelt and dogged” (118). In addition to translating Pétain's speeches, Stein was a close friend of Bernard Fay, who, as head of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, was an official high up in the administration of Vichy France. Charles Bernstein, Edward Burns, and Joan Retallack take up Stein's defense in jacket2's online dossier Gertrude Stein's War Years; Setting the Record Straight (2012). They argue that no conclusive evidence ties Stein explicitly to Vichy France (Burns) and highlight the irony in some of her statements—for instance, that Hitler deserved the Nobel Peace Prize (Bernstein, “Gertrude Stein”; Retallack). Furthermore, Stein published her writing in both the Vichy-sponsored magazine Patrie (“Fatherland”) and the anti-Nazi and anti-Vichy journals Confluences, Fontaine (“Fountain”), and L'arbalète (“The Cross-Bow”) during the war years (Burns and Dydo, “Three Lives”; Burns). She sympathizes with the French maquis in her postwar memoir Wars I Have Seen and writes about the inner workings of the Resistance in her play In Savoy; or, Yes Is for a Very Young Man (Wagner-Martin).

Ecocritical thought presents serious challenges for political readings of crime fiction and noir, notably in French and American cultural contexts, and these challenges merit a broad examination. How does the Anthropocene change our relation to the frames of intelligibility and the definitions of violence found in crime fictions? The scalar problems introduced by the cosmological perspectives of ecological awareness suggest the need to redraw the frontiers of noir, to imagine new green-black readings that transform our understanding of what counts in and as a noir novel.

In an article reviewing Werfel's collected poems from the Catholic point of view, Cornelius Schroeder, a Franciscan, maintains that despite constant references to God in his poetry Werfel does not experience any real religious faith. It is Schroeder's contention that Werfel does not succeed in finding a solution to the conflict between nature and spirituality which is so prominent in his poetry:

Als geistiger Mensch kommt er nicht hinweg iiber die Zwiespältigkeit von Natur und Geist, kommt er nicht los von der Qual, in welche die Geburt für die Erde den Geist gestiirzt hat.

In his masterly study of le Sentiment de l'Amour dans I'CEuvre de Pierre Corneille, M. Octave Nadal makes one reservation regarding Polyeucte. After rooting the spiritual adventure of the martyr in the climate of conjugal love where both blood and spirit stir, M. Nadal acknowledges nonetheless a certain ambiguity in the psychology of the hero. He goes so far as to say that in Polyeucte's speeches one could easily find “des formules” which deny the heroism and grandeur of human love at the same time that “l'action même du martyr ne tend jamais qu'à les prouver et à les consacrer.” M. R. Chauviré and M. Raymond Lebègue have made similar observations.

T. S. Eliot's most recent play, The Confidential Clerk, received short shrift in New York after triumphs in Edinburgh andLondon.lt would be too much perhaps to say that the play was “snuffed out by the reviews,” but it certainly came up against as unsympathetic a row of reviewers as any great dramatist has had to face. A leading journalistic critic wrote that The Confidential Clerk “represents a deliberate attempt to be ordinary. Unfortunately, Eliot has succeeded.” When he indicated in a lecture at Harvard University several years ago that, like Shakespeare, he hoped gradually to reduce dramatic verse to the level of colloquial speech before attempting elaborate embroidery of it, Eliot could not have expected his words to fly back in his face in precisely this way. Mrs. Guzzard's ringing lines seem especially apropos here: “Wishes, when realized, sometimes turn / Against those who have made them.” At any rate the apparently simple language (some have called it “unpoetic”) and farcical plot devices of the new play seem to have turned aside extensive serious critical consideration. For a play that comes to grips so forcibly with such compelling issues as the spiritual loneliness and inarticulateness of modern men and women, freedom of the will and predestination, cultural integration, and the place of the arts in life, it has been curiously underrated. The Confidential Clerk, while closely linked with Eliot's previous plays, is in so many ways a new departure as to reward close study. As a matter of fact, much of its poignancy and plangency eludes one when the play is viewed for the first time merely as a stage piece. Probably no other play of Eliot's calls for such total immersion.

The best parts of Robert Y. Turner's article “Dramatic Conventions in All's Well That Ends Well (PMLA, lxxv, Dec. 1960) concern the denouement of that play. He acutely points out that it is Bertram, with his agonies and perplexities, not Diana, who ”holds the center of the stage“ during her long series of paradoxes; he shows how Shakespeare has added details to his source which prolong and intensify Bertram's distress; and he relates this distress to that of other similar heroes as well as to that of earlier comic butts. I should like, however, to question a number of other points in this article and thereby to challenge as unproved what I take to be its main thesis: that in All's Well Shakespeare ”produced a comedy more of an age than for all time“ because he chose there to follow a contemporary vogue for ”prodigal son comedies“ whose conventions ”have lost their savor.“

Like eyes that looked on Wastes—
Incredulous of Ought
But Blank—and steady Wilderness—
Diversified by Night—

Just Infinites of Nought—
As far as it could see—
So looked the face I looked upon—
So looked itself—on Me—

I offered it no Help— Because the Cause was Mine—
The Misery a Compact
As hopeless—as divine—

Neither—would be absolved—
Neither would be a Queen
Without the Other—Therefore—
We perish—tho' We reign—
—Emily Dickinson, poem 693

Herman Melville, Anne Carson, and Emily Dickinson. These authors' bits of language just claimed me as I stared at some books on my office shelf, and I'm not sure exactly what to make of these passages except that I like them. So I'm listing them for you. You might also like them. I like many things, and in no particular order. For instance, here's what I “liked” one day, not long ago, on Facebook: a picture of the word Puppies! scrawled on a sidewalk; a New York Times story about the disorganization of the bicentennial of the War of 1812 (that war has a huge, nearly comical significance in my adopted country of Canada—did you know that Canadians burned down the White House?); an audio clip of Justin Bieber, featuring Busta Rhymes, singing “Little Drummer Boy”; my friend and colleague Jordan Stein's “vegan homo Thanksgiving” photo album; a posting by my “friend” “Emily Dickinson”; numerous updates about and images of the November 2011 pepper spraying of protesting students on the University of California, Davis, campus. I could go on and on, which is probably one of the reasons I, and millions of others, go on and on Facebook. Disorderly is the right word, but the likes are not quite random. People have generated these items, these virtual objects of interest, for rapid public consumption and, with the ubiquity of the “Like” button, for rapid public response. They (we) put stuff out there in part because we're showing off our preferences, or if not our preferences (even though they will be acknowledged with our liking) then at least things that interest us and (we hope) others. It's hard to know exactly what liking something on Facebook means because a like is nearly the same thing as an acknowledgment, something that says, “Yes, I clicked on this item, and it did not displease me.” And often people complain in comments that they wish there were variations on the “Like” button (“I want to express my anger with this piece of information—I wish there were a ‘Hate’ button”). Whatever our motivations or the nature of our interest in what we curate for the world on Facebook, these objects for consumption often go under the heading of like; so, like it or not, we're reading for like—we're doing a little like reading.

The Pastorella cantos of The Faerie Queene have been referred by scholars to various possible sources and analogues, including Ariosto, Tasso, Dorastus and Fawnia, Daphnis and Chloe, the Arcadia, the Greek romances, and the Diana. To these titles I now must add The Mirrour of Knighthood, parts 4 and 5 and sections of part 2.

Three-quarters of a century has elapsed since the mediæval epic literature of France first attracted the attention of scholars. This interval has been marked by an uninterrupted succession of texts discovered and edited. The value of these texts to the student of language is great; their value to the historian of politics and society is considerable; but their literary bearing has not been sufficiently emphasized. To this day the general public has but a vague idea of the character and significance of that national epic of which the Chanson de Roland is the highest expression and which Léon Gautier strove so bravely to render popular. The mediæval literature of France has not yet completely recovered from the reputation of vulgarity given to it by the Renaissance.

The Revenger's Tragedy was long regarded as the work of Cyril Tourneur, but in recent years scholars have vigorously denied his authorship. Though this discussion has demonstrated the weakness of the case for Tourneur, it has not thus far resulted in establishing general agreement as to the true author of the play.

It is a pleasure to meet with the professional group that is involved in the most basic and important human cultural activity. Language was a human invention—perhaps the most important of all time. It is not only the principal means of communication within a linguistic or cultural group, but also the means by which each culture is transmitted from one generation to the next. As such it has been a major if not essential factor in the advancement of human civilization.

“Uriel” is a poetic summary of many strains of thought in Emerson's early philosophy. Most interpretations of the poem have, however, emphasized its biographical significance. Stephen E. Whicher, for instance, has used the poem to illustrate the shock felt by the sanguine transcendentalist at the unfavorable reception of his Divinity School Address. But “Uriel” is important not simply because the “stern old war-gods” who “shook their heads” may be Andrews Norton and the Harvard Divinity School faculty, or because the “seraphs” who “frowned from their myrtle-beds” were the budding young powers of New England theology, assembled in 1838 at their “holy festival.” To be sure, one of the poem's highlights is its trenchant and witty satire of what Emerson called, in his Address, “historical Christianity.” That false faith, however, was but one manifestation of a pernicious mode of perception and discourse which the author found throughout history and contemporary thought. The poem was inspired not by a local animus but by a comprehensive, “meter-making” philosophical argument. It was probably composed early in 1845, well after the immediate animosities of the controversy over the Address had fallen into perspective. From that distance, Emerson generalized the biographical incident into a clash of opposing philosophies.

M. Etienne, in his study of the sources of Victor Hugo's first novel, Bug-Jargal, suggests that a kinship clearly exists between this, as well as earlier French stories of Negro characters, and Mrs. Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave. He is led to this conclusion because of certain indications of the popularity of Oroonoko in France during the eighteenth century, and because of the recurrence in French literature of the noble, romantic Negro. This very just inference as to the importance of Oroonoko is worthy of elaboration and emphasis because in this early English novel we can find the substance and technique of much of the littérature négrophile of the eighteenth century, a period in which the Negro emerges from his despised condition and takes on heroic qualities and possibilities; and also because this English story, of which the purpose might well have been didactic, written by “the first literary abolitionist … on record in the history of fiction,” as Swinburne called Mrs. Behn, was to have far-reaching consequences in French humanitarian thought.

One of the notable changes in English literature during the eighteenth century is a growth in altruism. It is a change which involves not only a breaking down of the old aristocratic indifference to the lower classes of society during the Restoration, but the establishment of a new ethical theory; literature displayed a broader human interest and assigned a new reason for its sympathy. It is usually assumed that the difference is due principally to the influx of French philosophy. This assumption at least minimizes the importance of a development which had taken place in the literature of England itself before the general interest in Rousseau. (The change, especially in poetry, is to be traced largely, I think, to the Characteristics (1711) of Lord Shaftesbury, whose importance as a literary influence in England has never been duly recognized. It has long since been established that his system of philosophy constitutes a turning-point in the history of pure speculation, especially in ethics; it has more recently been shown also that he is responsible for many of the moral ideas which inform the popular literature of Germany from Haller to Herder. But his influence upon the popular writers of his own country has received scant notice.

This essay combines a consideration of the two-decades-long publishing strategy of Goethe's last major prose work, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1808–29), with a reading of specific formal features unique to the final version of the novel. In doing so, it argues that Goethe's use of print and narrative work in concert to form what we might call a particular media imaginary–to reimagine the printed book not according to emerging nineteenth-century criteria of sovereignty, nationality, and permanence but instead according to values more in keeping with the technological capabilities of print media, such as transformation, diffusion, and connectivity. In his vigorous engagement with the material manifestations of his work as a key site of literary work, Goethe offers us an ideal place to explore the productive intersections that the disciplines of book history and literary history are opening up today. (AP)

In two passages of his recent book on Thomas Wolfe (1947), Herbert J. Muller has briefly, but incisively, dealt with the time concepts of Wolfe and Proust. He points out that while both writers depended upon sensory impressions to recall the past, Wolfe lacked the keen subjective analysis of Proust and stayed closer to the actual experience that produced his memories. Wolfe's interest was in fixity and change as they are in real life, while Proust “aspired to the realm of Essence or Being, where change is mere appearance” (p. 75). It is important, I believe, that these distinctions be made, for Wolfe, unlike Proust, was no philosopher and would without question have been confused by an array of Bergsonian metaphysics. While outwardly the time concepts of Wolfe and of Proust seem somewhat alike, a closer examination reveals that these concepts are in many respects different. But no distinctions were made, for instance, by Mary M. Colum in her article on “Literature of Today and Tomorrow” (Scribner's, Dec. 1936, p. 102), which stated that Wolfe's work might well be described as “Remembrance of Things Past”—that “like Proust he tells us of his struggles with Time elements.” And Joseph Warren Beach, in American Fiction 1920–1940 (1941), while acknowledging that Wolfe could not have accepted fully the implications of Proust's theories, found that Wolfe and Proust had had a common psychological experience. “It is found in the recall by means of present sensations or impressions of closely similar impressions received in extreme youth” (p. 192).