Classical artifacts, particularly busts and statues, play an important part as image, symbol, plot element, or even character, in a large number of “Gothic” (i.e., romantic horror) contexts. Eighteenth-century neoclassicism provides “classically” serene artifacts to contrast with “Gothic” ones in, for instance, Poe and Hawthorne. But medieval tradition provides the Venus statue story, where the statue itself is the focus of Gothic horror, in Eichendorff, James, Merimee, Gautier, and others; this, especially in the subtler artist parables, is the key nineteenth-century usage. For the twentieth century, statues become “Dionysian,” classical yet fearful, as in Forster and Lagerkvist. More recently, statues represent a frivolous, melodramatic terror, or else mere emblematic pageantry. In contemporary poetry, however (Rilke, Plath, Seferis), the wheel has in a sense come full circle; classical statues are serious emblems of art and of the artist's obligation to put together the maimed and shattered fragments of a personal and “classical” tradition.

In a period of few jobs, low morale, and powerlessness, teachers of English and modern languages—at all levels from elementary through graduate school—need to reexamine the value of their work. Central to understanding the crisis of the profession is the historical separation of the study of literature from the teaching of literacy. The separation rationalizes the profession's hierarchy and defines its practice in the classroom. Thus literature becomes a luxury and the teaching of skills empty of literary power. That our curriculum needs revision follows quite naturally, moreover, from the knowledge that more than 70% of our undergraduate majors are women and from the evidence that the curriculum from elementary school on is male-biased and thus distinctly harmful to at least half the population. Whether we choose to renew our responsibility for teaching meaningful literacy, or to work cooperatively as literature teachers within interdisciplinary programs, we will also need to reevaluate and change the canon of literary study, especially to include those who have been traditionally bypassed: women, minorities of both sexes, and working-class people. For all these, literature and literacy can provide courage and skills necessary for survival and growth.

Contemporary usage of the term “picaresque” has blunted its usefulness as a literary concept. What once referred to the historically identifiable genre of la novela picaresca in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature is now applied whenever something “episodic” tied together by an “antihero” needs a label. One way to reconcile these extremes is to approach the problem from the wider perspective of narrative types in general: a modal approach, which can account both for a specific kind of narrative whose exclusive preoccupation is an exploration of the fictional world of the picaresque and for a primitive fictional possibility which may be part of much fiction outside that genre. The modal perspective leads next to generic awareness, which yields the strict attributes of the genre—the “total picaresque fictional situation”—some of which are: (1) dominance of the picaresque mode, (2) panoramic structure, (3) first-person point of view, (4) the picaro figure, (5) the picaro-landscape relationship, (6) a gallery of human types, (7) parody, and (8) certain basic themes and motifs.

That The Winter's Tale has a double plot has long been noted, but no one has yet fully explored the nature and extent of iteration in the two parts of the play. Structural parallels between Acts i-iii and Acts iv-v are reinforced by repeated statements of motifs common to both parts of the play and by the variation in the second half of motifs important to the first. The dramatic evidence of Hermione's death is substantial, particularly in m.ii and nr.iii, and later details (those in v.ii and v.iii) come too late to qualify the dramatic as well as thematic import of Hermione's loss. These later details must, therefore, stand as alternatives rather than as explanations. The second half of the play thus forms an alternative to the first, with Hermione's fate of central importance in pointing up their contrasting natures. Each part of the play makes a statement of the possibilities for gain and for loss within society, and the statement of neither is complete without the other. Together, they suggest limits as well as possibilities.

Insisting that the “Me” is the center and meaning of all experience and that reality is indistinguishable from the self, Whitman turns to the phrenological concept of the soul as the agent that makes the physical self susceptible to the spiritual and the infinite. He insists that it is the soul's office, literally, to translate the sensuous data apprehended by a physiologically endowed man perfectly attuned to the universe into the spiritual truths that are integral in the mystic union of all Being. So closely does Whitman identify robust health with spiritual awareness that this forms the basis of his materialistic monism, arguing that the body and the soul are merged into an indivisible One. Since the body is the soul, the sensible is in fact the suprasensible, and matter is mind, dualism presents no problem. Instead of the two principles, in Whitman a single identity is achieved when the active soul “charges” the surrounding universe and perceives the ideal in the actual. Major phrenological ideas also inform Whitman's unique equalitarian transcendentalism, his sensual mysticism, and his poetic catalogs where the persona, fusing with a cumulative imagery, signals his union with the larger Oneness where all contradictions are resolved.

Schiller's subtitle, “Ein republikanisches Trauerspiel,” creates serious difficulties of interpretation. His four principal historical sources give little basis for regarding the conspirators or the conspiracy as “republican” in the sense of “antimonarchical.” The play itself likewise disregards the republican motif. A study of the vocabulary shows that such politically emotional words as Republik, Freiheit, Burger, Volk are infrequently used and are likely to bear a neutral or negative-ironic meaning. Schiller's two later versions, the Mannheim stage version and the Leipzig/Dresden manuscript, show no conspicuous change in his use of such terms. The play belongs rather among contemporary dramas generalizing about freedom than to the category of sociopolitical Tendenzdrama, and concerns Republik in the older sense of res publica rather than in the modern meaning. Not Rousseau, but Plutarch as translated by G. B. von Schirach, most strongly influenced Schiller in theme, incidents, traits of character, and perhaps political attitude. The play appears as a conflict among three strong personalities—Fiesco, Verrina, and Andreas Doria—-for power within the state; and Doria, representing the essence of the state, may be the real “hero.”

Literary historians and critics from the nineteenth century to the present have attributed Friedrich Spee's descriptions of nature to his personal experience. Except for a few instances of biblical influence, these passages are variations of the topos locus amoenus with many of its less common classical features: the park-orchard-garden varieties of landscape, typical epithets, and catalogs of trees and plants. In the Trutznachtigall, the section with the largest pattern of the topos are the laudes, commonly considered to be derivations of the Psalms, while the eclogues (“Arcadia”), a genre traditionally associated with the topos, has only a few samples of it. Rather than being a rigid formula the topos becomes an elastic pattern whose size and components Spee tailors to the individual poem, providing at the same time a distinct diction and a variety of formulations. This may be one reason why Spee, who is in every respect a poeta doctus, has been mistaken for a Pre-Romantic poet.

Moralist literature of seventeenth-century France can be characterized by a human dialectic in which the author is in dialogue with himself or with an aspect of his personality, or in which there is a dialogue between the moi and autrui or between moral principles. In La Rochefoucauld's case, there is a stylistic withdrawal, an absence of intervention of the person of the author which allows for an imaginative interplay between the various personae in the style of the Maximes. This tendency creates an imaginary framework that supports an extended and more dramatic development of personification. In the successive versions of any given Maxim personification is generally sharpened, and what emerges from the overall literary texture of the Maximes is a veritable dramatis personae of extraordinary diversity and vitality. By dramatizing moral values in their multifaceted, contradictory nature, the moraliste tries to resolve the paradox inherent in them, while at the same time allowing moral ideas the freedom to remain paradoxical.

From Goethe's Wilhelm Meister through Keller's Grüner Heinrich to Rilke's Malte, the hero of the German Bildungsroman develops from unselfconscious adventurer in the outer world to compulsive explorer of the world within. This transformation in the hero—from “picaro” to “confessor”—implies a change in the concept of Bildung: the “self” no longer accumulates, but must be re-collected. Wilhelm Meister's unreflective nature aligns him directly with the picaresque hero; essentially, he does not develop. In Keller's novel the hero develops precisely by narrating his picaresque past. Through his confessional notebooks, Rilke's hero, Malte, attempts to overcome the “sickness” of his fragmented self by recollecting his childhood. This transformation of the literary hero in the nineteenth century mirrors in turn the historical rise of alienated, self-conscious man. Beyond Maire the Bildungsroman can only move on to parody, to the anti-Bildungsromane of Kafka, Mann, and Grass, in which both types of hero are parodied.

Absalom, Absalom! achieves mythic significance and universality through Faulkner's deliberate use of parallels between Thomas Sutpen's attempt to found a dynasty in the Old South and the attempts of ancient Hebrew rulers to establish their kingdoms. The choice of title for the novel, as well as numerous analogies between Faulkner's plot and incidents in the prophetic books of the Old Testament, particularly n Samuel, indicate that Faulkner intended the biblical accounts of dynastic failures to illuminate and strengthen his theme. In attempting to find reasons for the failure of Sutpen to establish his Southern dynasty, critics have advanced four tenable theories. One theory finds Sutpen's innocence the principal reason for his failure; another sees hubris as the cause of failure; still a third contends that the socioeconomic injustices of the pre-Civil War South, magnified in the character of Sutpen, account for the failure. The fourth and most tenable theory, considered too briefly by critics, indicates that the very concept of dynasty is so basically flawed that failure is inherent in the design itself; or, more broadly still, that men erroneously persist in the mythic hope that they can establish permanent dynasties, though historically none has succeeded.

The Franklin's Tale, which has caused much disagreement among critics of Chaucer, may best be understood in the light of Chaucer's own writings, particularly The Merchant's Tale and three short lyrics, “Truth,” “Gentilesse,” and “Lak of Stedfastnesse.” The relationship between the characters and events of the two Tales dramatizes a moral ideal that operates throughout The Canterbury Tales and is given explicit expression in the lyrics. It may be summed up as “gentilesse,” which consists, in the Knight's words, of “Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie.” In a variety of contexts, this standard operates throughout Chaucer's writings. An understanding of it puts The Franklin's Tale into clear perspective, identifies its true theme, answers its critics, accounts for its apparent absurdities, inconsistencies, and contradictions, and reveals its suitability to its teller.

Numerous entries in Gide's Journal attest that for him Les Caves du Vatican was to represent a break with the tradition of La Porte étroite. He is especially concerned that the novel's language be liberated from the orthodoxy imposed by current usage. Hence, in Les Caves there is what appears to be an unusually high incidence of extravagant names, exotic nouns, foreign words and phrases, argot, rare words, and lexical and semantic neologisms. This phenomenon has been either neglected or misunderstood, and can be explained only in correlation with Gide's systematic overturning in Les Caves of the standard narrative conventions of the Realist-Naturalist tradition. Gide realized that the revolution in thinking about language which was occurring around him could play a role in freeing the novel from the existing restrictions of the public's expectations. By his esoteric vocabulary he forces the reader to remember that the novel's “story” is the author's invention and the characters his playthings. That fact, forgotten since Balzac but now reestablished, restores to the novelist the creative freedom he needs. It is on that level that the significance of Les Caves du Vatican is to be found.

Lord Weary's Castle conveys Robert Lowell's sense of historical destruction during and immediately after World War ii. Efforts by Lowell to relieve his despair by integrating it with Catholic belief, with Classical themes, with his knowledge of European and American history only succeed in confirming the apocalyptic view. The religious poetry in particular seeks a redemptive state beyond the poet's consciousness of war and violence, but usually results only in confirming the sense of destruction. The nervous, insistent rhythms of the poetry are themselves expressions of Lowell's compulsion to deal with violence and aggressive intrusions on man's consciousness. Finally, no religious or stylistic allegiances, no awareness of history, enable Lowell to transcend the obsession with war. Throughout the book, the poetry expresses pity for the victims of military aggressions. In Lord Weary's Castle, Lowell is disturbed by American military aggression from colonial Indian battles to World War ii; it is a distraught sense of American experience that would continue to haunt his poetry in the following decades. In this insistent consciousness of war, Lowell's poetry touches on our deepest concerns.