Publications of the Modern Language Association of America May 1980 Toward the Making of Thoreau's Modern Reputation Selected Correspondence of S. A. Jones, A. W. Hosmer, H. S. Salt, H. G. O. Blake, and D. Ricketson edited by Fritz Oehlschlaeger and George Hendrick Some 500 newly discovered and previously unpub- lished letters are available in this volume —the correspondence of freethinker Henry S. Salt, Dr. Samuel Arthur Jones, and Alfred W. Hosmer and two of Thoreau's surviving friends, Ricketson and Blake, who in the 1890s set about reevaluating Thoreau's life and work. “Their findings shifted the critical view of Thoreau from sentimental poet-naturalist to flinty social critic. ... a carefully edited volume. The introduction offers biographic sketches of the five correspondents, sets the stage for their contribu- tions, and evaluates their collaborative efforts. The letters themselves are a happy reflection of the best amateur spirits —independent minds working self- lessly to shatter a false image of a great artist and thinker.” —Library Journal. "... a goldmine of material for the Thoreau scholar.” —Walter Harding, author of The Days of Henry Thoreau. $22.50 still in demand Puritan Influences The in American Shores of Literature America edited by Emory Elliott Nine essays on selected writers whose works reflect fragments of the Puritan vision. Included are pieces on such major nineteenth-century writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson. The contributors write of our Puritan literary heri- tage while treating such key subjects as the con- trasting views of the role of the writer in the community, the nature of literary aesthetic, divine unity, the persistence of philosophical idealism, and the relationships between popular attitudes and political ideology. $12.00 Sherman Paul The growth of Thoreau’s philos- ophy and thought, as revealed in his essays, letters, and journals. "A distinguished study of the mind and art of Thoreau. ... an ‘inner biography' addressing itself to the heroic aspects of Thoreau's life as he tried to live an ‘authentic’ life, where nature could be the means for repossessing the dignity of the individual.” — Virginia Quarterly Review. Paper, $3.95 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS, Box 5081, Station A, Champaign, IL 61820 May 1980 Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Volume 95 Number 3 PUBLISHED SIX TIMES A YEAR BY THE ASSOCIATION The Modern Language Association of America ORGANIZED 1883 INCORPORATED 1900 OFFICERS FOR THE YEAR 1980 President: Helen Vendler , Boston University First Vice-President: Peter Demetz , Yale University Second Vice-President: Wayne C. Booth , University of Chicago Executive Director: Joel Conarroe Deputy Executive Director: Hans Rutimann For the term ending 31 December 1980 Geoffrey H. Hartman Yale University Winfred P. Lehmann University of Texas, Austin Marilyn L. Williamson Wayne State University For the term ending 31 December 1982 Ruth K. Angress University of California, Irvine Walter H. Sokel University of Virginia Ruth H. Webber University of Chicago TRUSTEES OF Gordon N. Ray Guggenheim Foundation, Managing Trustee EXECUTIVE COUNCIL For the term ending 31 December 1981 Barbara Bowen University of Illinois, Urbana James Lawler University of Chicago Marjorie G. Perloff University of Southern California For the term ending 31 December 1983 Paul Fussell Rutgers University Barbara K. Lewalski Brown University Gita May Columbia University INVESTED FUNDS C. Waller Barrett Charlottesville, Virginia Robert Lumiansky American Council of Learned Societies PMLA is issued six times a year, in January, March, May, September, October, and November, by the Modern Language Association of America, 62 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011. Member- ship is open to those persons who are professionally interested in the modern languages and literatures. 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Single copies of the January, March, May, and October issues may be obtained for $5 each; the No- vember (Program) issue for $15; the September (Directory) issue for $25. Issues for the current year are available from the MLA Publications Center. Claims for undelivered issues will be honored if they are received within one year of the publication date; thereafter the single issue price will be charged. For information about the availability of back issues, inquire of Kraus Reprint Co., Millwood, NY 10546; (914) 762-2200. Early and current volumes may be obtained on microfilm from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Purchase of current volumes on film is restricted to subscribers of the journal. OFFICE OF PUBLICATION AND EDITORIAL OFFICES 62 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011 Tel.: 212 741-5588 All communications including notices of changes of address should be sent to the Membership Office of the Association at 62 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011. If a change of address also involves a change of institutional affiliation, the Membership Office should be informed of this fact at the same time. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing office. Copyright © 1980 by The Modern Language Association of America. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 12-32040. Contents • May Editor’s Column............................................................................307 Presidential Address 1979. E Pluribus Unum. Jean A. Perkins . 312 Lying as Dying in Heart of Darkness. Garrett Stewart . . 319 Abstract. As thematic actions, dying and lying divide up Conrad’s narrative in Heart of Darkness between main story and controversial coda. Steeped in the formulas of literary fatality, including the symmetries of ironic reprisal and the summarizing retrospect of last words, Kurtz’s death is modeled on fictional expec- tations so as to secure its dark transmissible import, only for that import to be betrayed by the supposedly beneficent mendacity of Marlow’s lie in the final inter- view with Kurtz’s Intended. Marlow as reader or interpreter of tragic meaning degenerates to Marlow as false author of a euphemizing fiction. The essay traces the complex preparation for Kurtz’s death, including the suicide and murder of earlier surrogates for Marlow, as these scenes establish an interpretive framework by which to assess a coda that becomes, for a narrator repulsed by the “flavour of mortality in lies,” yet another indirect but self-indicting death scene. (GS) My Hideous Progeny: Mary Shelley and the Feminization of Ro- manticism. Mary Poovey .....................................................332 Abstract. As the daughter of two notorious Romantic rebels and as the wife of a third, Mary Shelley was encouraged from her youth to “enrol [herself] on the page of fame,” to prove herself by her pen and her imagination. But since Shelley also wanted to conform to the more conventional feminine model—to be modest, self- effacing, and devoted to a family rather than to a career—she developed a preva- lent ambivalence toward self-assertion. In the 1818 edition of Frankenstein, this ambivalence surfaces in her criticism of the egotistic imagination and in the gro- tesque but sympathetic monster that symbolizes its essence; the 1831 revision ap- plies this judgment more forcefully to her own youthful “transgression.” Neverthe- less, by characterizing the artist as the victim of an uncontrollable destiny, Shelley also sanctions the very self-expression she professes to regret and elevates the dilemma of the female artist to the status of myth. (MP) “Much Depends on the Acting”: The Original Cast of Le Misan- thrope. Roger W. Herzel .....................................................348 Abstract. The printed text of Le Misanthrope is only a partial record of Moliere’s creation. Moliere wrote his plays to be performed, not to be read, and he tailored each role in his plays to the individual talents of the particular actor who would play the role. In the original production of Le Misanthrope, each actor’s perform- ance was part of an intricate web of contrasts and balances. Moliere himself » played Alceste; as in all his plays, his acting style, while unmistakably comic, occupied a middle ground between the grotesque style of one group of actors and the elegant polish of the actor who played Philinte. (RWH) The Context of Browning’s Painter Poems: Aesthetics, Polemics, Histories. David J. De Laura ............................................. 367 Abstract. The neo-Catholic apologist Alexis Rio argued in 1836 that the idealism of medieval art was destroyed in the fifteenth century by a growing “paganism” and “naturalism.” Browning’s refutation in “Pictor Ignotus” of Rio’s defense of the Italian Pre-Raphaelites involved a severe distortion of the historical record. Rio’s thesis was widely debated in the late forties; above all, Charles Kingsley, whose definition of a “Protestant” realism was a direct response to the new ascetic theory, was a source of Browning’s more complex views of the fifties. “Fra Lippo Lippi” answers Rio, though its sensualism is only one component of Browning’s unstable doctrine. Browning’s polemical designs, which led him to play fast and loose with historical fact, explain both the iconoclasm and the conformity of the poem. Elsewhere, Browning’s endorsement of realism was limited by fear of an art that proclaims beauty to be its own self-sufficing end. (DJD) History, Fiction, and the Ground Between: The Uses of the Doc- umentary Mode in Black Literature. Barbara Foley . . 389 Abstract. Although the so-called nonfiction novel is ordinarily seen as a distinctly post-World War it phenomenon, Afro-American literature has from its beginnings relied to a marked degree on the documentary mode. Close scrutiny of Afro- American prose narrative provides the basis not only for revising some common literary-historical generalizations but also for examining the nature of mimesis and historicity, since Afro-American writers have employed a wide range of tech- niques to persuade their readers of the truths proposed in their texts. A considera- tion of the uses of factuality in this body of literature enables us to make broader theoretical distinctions among the kinds of propositions conveyed by various types of fictional narratives and to illuminate the shady borderline between factual and Active discourse. (BF) Report of the Executive Director............................................. 404 Forthcoming Meetings and Conferences of General Interest . 414 Professional Notes and Comment 424 PUBLICATIONS OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA Published Six Times a Year Indexes: Vols, 1-50, 1935; 51-60, 1945; 51-79, 1964 EDITORIAL BOARD Mary Ann Caws , 1980 Hunter College and Graduate School City University of New York Dorrit Cohn , 1981 Harvard University Jackson I. Cope , 1980 University of Southern California James R. Kincaid , 1981 University of Colorado, Boulder Elias L. Rivers , 1981 State University of New York, Stony Brook Larzer Ziff , 1981 University of Pennsylvania Charles Altieri , 1982 University of Washington Sacvan Bercovitch , 1983 Columbia University Leo Braudy , 1983 Johns Hopkins University Victor H. Brombert , 1983 Princeton Udiversity Peter Brooks , 1980 Yale University Jonathan D. Culler , 1982 Cornell University Stuart Curran ,1982 Udiversity of Pennsylvania Andrew Debicki , 1980 University of Kansas Franco Fido , 1983 Brown University Blanche Gelfant , 1982 Dartmouth College ADVISORY COMMITTEE Eric P. Hamp , 1983 University of Chicago Ihab Hassan , 1983 University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Constance B. Hieatt , 1982 University of Western Ontario Paul A. Jorgensen , 1982 University of California, Los Angeles U. C. Knoepflmacher , 1981 University of California, Berkeley John W. Kronik , 1981 Cornell University Wolfgang A. Leppmann , 1983 University of Oregon Martin Meisel , 1982 Columbia University David H. Miles , 1983 University of Virginia Sidney Monas , 1983 University of Texas, Austin Janel M. Mueller , 1981 University of Chicago Neal Oxenhandler , 1980 Dartmouth College Elaine C. Showalter , 1983 Rutgers University J. L. Simmons , 1980 Tulane University Patricia Spacks , 1980 Yale University Catharine Stimpson , 1982 Barnard College Alex Zwerdling , 1982 University of California, Berkeley Editor: Joel Conarroe Editorial Supervisor: Claire Cook Assistant Editor: Irene Zubiel Managing Editor: Judy Goulding Assistant Managing Editor: Roslyn Schloss Administrative and Editorial Assistant: Lisa Wolff Production Manager: Jeffrey Howitt A STATEMENT OF EDITORIAL POLICY PMLA publishes articles on the modern languages and literatures that are of significant interest to the entire membership of the Association, Articles should therefore normally: (1) employ a widely applicable approach or methodology; or (2) use an interdisciplinary approach of importance to the interpretation of literature; or (3) treat a broad subject or theme; or (4) treat a major author or work; or (5) discuss a minor author or work in such a way as to bring insight to a major author, work, genre, or critical method. 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