Northrop Frye's recent criticism confronts the contemporary problem raised most powerfully by the Vietnam War—can we find a telos or definition of man on which we can ground our moral reactions and our visions of human development. Frye establishes this telos by an analysis of origins. Contained in a civilization's statements of “concern,” in its imaginative treatments of its own condition, one can find an underlying structure of desire which defines the ends of man. This structure and the recurrent images it produces then can serve as the middle terms people use to justify and value their actions. Frye shares his treatment of mediation with contemporary Hegelians like Sartre, Lukács, and Ricoeur, but grounds his absolute in tradition rather than in ideal absolutes or posited evolutionary patterns. Frye's idea of mediation also provides an ethical model for literary criticism: the critic tries to combine literature as product and as cultural possession by interpreting his materials as projections of imaginative desire. Furthermore, we can use Frye to criticize the relativist denial of origins in structuralist critics like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.

Recent linguistic studies, particularly the extension of structural analysis to the syntactic component of language and improved typological analysis, have made possible an increased understanding of Proto-Indo-European and the early Indo-European dialects. The new insights permit us to account for syntactic constructions such as the placement of relative clauses, adjectives, and genitives; the use of prepositions in VO, postpositions in OV languages; comparative constructions of the order STANDARD PIVOT ADJECTIVE in OV, ADJECTIVE PIVOT STANDARD in VO languages. As an illustration of a further pattern which can now be explained, the absolutes in the early dialects are examined, and accounted for as constructions that may arise in ambivalent languages. Besides contributing to an understanding of syntactic phenomena, current linguistic theory assists us in achieving further knowledge about Proto-Indo-European and further insights into the development of the Indo-European languages.

The prologue to Winesburg, Ohio, in which an old writer attributes their gro-tesqueness to fanaticism, oversimplifies the characters' twisted lives, but it is hardly irrelevant or at variance with the substance of the novel. The grotesques' fanatical quest for the ideal, their unwillingness to relinquish their dreams in face of the facts of experience, is at the core of all the novel's issues—its social, sexual, and mythic content—which form a philosophical whole. Yet Anderson sympathizes with his characters, for their fanaticism derives from the depths of their being and from a valid, human desire for spiritual fulfillment. The prologue also bears vitally upon the resolution of the novel's major theme— George Willard's growth into a writer; it can be said, in fact, that the prologue brings the theme to a close. For, by the end, George has undergone a transformation of character similar to that of Dr. Reefy, whom Anderson identifies with the old writer of the prologue, and thereby comes to share the old writer's vision, which is born of the grotesque but ultimately transcends it. Indeed, symbolically at least, George is the old writer. Winesburg is his story.

The poems of Fêtes galantes by Paul Verlaine have marked visual and musical aspects with which criticism often deals by comparing the subject matter and style of the poems with those of paintings by Watteau and music by Debussy. It is more rewarding to study similarities of basic artistic form in these works about the Rococo dream world; in particular, the visual and spatial imagery shared by Verlaine and Watteau helps elucidate Fêtes galantes.The vague, ambiguous, and shifting impressions sought by Verlaine are created visually by Watteau as the latter varies sharp delineation with hazy blending. The paintings tend to have either detached foreground figures or a merging of figures into a misty background. Verlaine uses these effects of detachment and merging in virtual space, verbally rendered, and coordinates them with the recurrent themes of his suite of poems. A visualized pattern along a time line results as he shifts from one effect to the other in individual works and in the total composition. Much of the musicality of the work is thus produced through visual and spatial imagery in sequence. Increased understanding of Ver-laine's creation of artistic form suggests the need for study of the relationships between this form and the contents of the poems.

The poet's struggle for communication is a common theme in five of René Char's early poems, “Cesoir” (1923), “Jouvence” (1923–25), “Sillage” (ca. 1925), “Prêt au dépouillement” (ca. 1925), and “Sur le volet d'une fenêtre” (1923–25). Char passes from “mutisme” to meaningful dialogue; he learns first to see, then to listen, and, finally, to hear. Many of his mature poems will repeat this triple apprenticeship, and they are quoted to show Char's continuous concern with the necessity for dialogue. By implication this article tries to disprove Barthes's definition of modern poetry, and hopes to lead into wider considerations of the object of contemporary poetry.

The presence of syncopation in certain words in the Libro de Alexandre (lazrar, menestral, ofrecer, sabroso, sombra, etc.) and its absence in other words (avellana, eredad, eredar, etc.) support the Castilian origin of the poem and discredit the theory of western or Leonese authorship. The preservation of the etymological medial -d- in such words as porfidia, piedes, and vidieron is also dialectically significant, since the trait is particularly evident in other documents of the area of La Rioja. Similarities between the alterations introduced into Berceo's MSS and those found in the Alex are constantly stressed, since only through a clear understanding of the problems of transcription of medieval codices can we hope to clarify the question of regular meter in mester de clerecía of the thirteenth century. Scribes were capable of completely eradicating such forms as piedes (in O), udió, udién, and meydía (in both P and O). This type of obliteration has tended to confuse many critics, who are prone to base their ideas concerning the language and versification of the Alex on the MSS as they observe them, without attempting any critical analysis or reconstruction.

Though the development of novelistic prose in medieval Castilian literature has been traditionally associated with the encyclopedic works of Alfonso el Sabio and those of his nephew, Juan Manuel, author of the Conde Lucanor, the stylistic differences between these two writers are sufficiently important to indicate the existence of a transitional period characterized by the absorption of classical rhetoric into the mainstream of religiously oriented didactic literature. An analysis of the critically neglected works of Sancho IV, second son of Alfonso and guardian to the young Juan Manuel, reveals the intermediate stages in the transformation of impersonal Alfonsine historical narrative to the highly anecdotal mode of Juan Manuel and subsequently affirms Sancho's role in Castilian letters while stressing Juan Manuel's clear genius for synthesizing the major literary currents of his age. (In Spanish)

The fact that Georg Trakl's poetry frequently contains allusions to Hölderlin, Rimbaud, the Bible, and to various additional authors is well known. The presence of Büchner's Lenz and of some other texts in Traum und Umnachtung has, however, not yet been recognized. Some twenty-two specific passages from Lenz, adapted and modified in various ways, occur in the second section of Traum und Umnachtung. In addition, Trakl paraphrases texts by Nietzsche in the first section and cites Hölderlin in the third; the last section comprises most of the major themes from Trakl's own work. The concentration of allusions to a specific author in single sections of Traum und Umnachtung suggests that Trakl's use of citations is conscious. Such a recognition does not involve an “intentional fallacy”: the author's intention, in incorporating allusions and quotations into his work, is comparable to his intention in choosing a certain kind of form. Both citations and forms can be identified with the proper training: a work of literature containing conscious allusions (Zitatendichtung)must be treated as a literary form in its own right, in which even simple, apparently descriptive phrases no longer refer to objects or experiences, but to the tradition of poetic language. (In German)

The focal dimension of Dostoevsky's creative effort in his later period is his compelling esthetic and metaphysical concern with ultimate violence, particularly in its doctrinaire or ideological aspect. The act of murder is seen as a “crime of reason,” an outgrowth of modern man's autarkic intellect. It is this “crime of reason” in accordance with his metaphysical esthetics that Dostoevsky constitutes as the transgression but also a potential felix culpa leading through suffering and expiation to ultimate rebirth. Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov each present an individuated version of this archetypal scheme. Raskolnikov emerges at the end of Crime and Punishment on the threshold of “a new life.” In The Possessed, Stavrogin's potentially “positive” performance perverts itself into “a quest for damnation.” Dmitri Karamazov undergoes spiritual regeneration even though falling short of complete redemption. In thus restating the timeless relevance of the archetypal pattern of rebirth through sin and expiation, Dostoevsky brings a mythical perspective to his vision of the Russia of his time.

Though not a wholly successful work, the Stanzaic Morte Arthur is more coherent, more serious in intent, than is usually acknowledged. Dramatically and thematically organized in terms of the opposition between Launcelot and Gawayne, the work is best described as “tragedy of consequence.” Launcelot's adultery with Gaynour is ostensibly the root cause of the destruction of Arthur's realm, but the poet transfers the principal blame to others, above all to Gawayne. He achieves this by (a) distinguishing the adultery itself from its revelation to Arthur; (b) depicting the illicit love as favorably as possible; and (c) creating an implicit duality in the characters of Launcelot and Gawayne. The two undergo a reversal of primary roles by which Gawayne becomes the aggressor and Launcelot the placator. As the hero, Launcelot comes to embody the wiser course of action— withdrawal from worldly conflict—which leads him, eventually, to the priesthood. Confusion, however, results from the viewpoint of the narrator, who seems so indiscriminately generous with his praise that he contradicts the obvious implications of the course of events. This difficulty is resolved when one understands that the narrator's compassion transcends, not contradicts, the rigorous justice of events.

Laurence Sterne's “Fragment in the Manner of Rabelais” was first published seven years after Sterne's death. A collation of that edition with the holograph MS preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library reveals that the text is bowdlerized, with no pretense to accuracy or integrity. Moreover, all subsequent reprintings of the fragment, including the standard editions of 1904 and 1927, merely copy this inaccurate text. The edition presented here represents, then, an effort to provide the first true text of Sterne's Rabelaisian fragment. In addition, the Introduction makes use of several canceled passages to argue that the fragment should be dated one year earlier than previously supposed (1759 rather than 1760); if correct, this new date suggests that the fragment was Sterne's first creative attempt after his success with the Political Romance. As such, it deserves a significant place in the Sterne canon.

Book v of The Ring and the Book affords us a view of Guido Franceschini very different from that provided by his second monologue. This difference is accountable to the Active rhetorical method that Guido employs in confronting the judges at his murder trial. In Book XI, having failed in his attempt to prolong life through fiction, Guido resorts to what he calls a more “voluble rhetoric” of the soul, thus becoming accessible to us for the first time in the same way that we see the other speakers in the poem. An analysis of Guido's fiction in Book V, especially his rendering of Caponsacchi, Pompilia, and himself, as the hero, heroine, and wronged husband, respectively, of popular medieval and renaissance literature reveals a conception of art as deception, contrary to Browning's informing belief in art as a means of arriving at truth by heightening rather than distorting reality. A comparison of Book XI with the earlier monologue indicates that, in addition to making plain the enormity of his villain's evil nature, Browning uses Guido's second monologue as an implicit repudiation of what he considers to be the specious theory of art that Guido relies upon in Book v.

T. S. Eliot not only changed his beliefs radically during the course of his life; he also set himself, as a continuing theme in certain of his major poems, to explore the painful and difficult process of subjective change itself in its relation to the will. Prufrock and The Waste Land ask whether change is possible, with differing answers; most of the 1927–31 poems explore change as it is being subjectively experienced; the later poems and plays remain concerned with the theme but more perfunctorily. Though scarcely touched upon in his prose writings, this process of inner change, individual not social, is a major unifying theme in Eliot's poetry.