Editor’s Column

T7
I ’ NDINGS do not automatically summon the sense of an
M / ending, and they are not inevitably apocalyptic. As I leave 

the editorship of PMLA, I am inclined to echo neither the words of 
General Douglas MacArthur when he abandoned Corregidor nor 
those of Richard Nixon when he lost the race for the governorship 
of California. For a journal a transfer of editors is a bracing step 
forward, and this retiring editor takes heart from his predecessors, 
whose vigorous examples demonstrate that there is, indeed, life after 
PMLA. Beginnings invite new adventures but also tolerate a touch 
of nostalgia, so I may be insisting on the obvious when I say that my 
editorial role with PMLA has been a unique opportunity. My thirteen 
years of formal involvement with the journal and my service as its 
thirteenth editor add up in my mind to the best of fortune, even if 
in future tallies I may suffer the fate of the thirteenth floor in some 
hotels. The independence that I have enjoyed in tending to the edi-
torial and intellectual dimensions of the journal while a capable col-
league concerned herself with the governance of the association 
confirms the wisdom of the decision to separate those two functions. 
The volatility of both the academic scene and the journal over the 
past seven years has made my experience all the more challenging 
and exciting. Unlike those who guide other journals, PMLAA editor 
is constrained by a democratic structure, but to my satisfaction I 
discovered that the team’s collaborative force ensures the dynamism 
of the enterprise.

At this juncture memories run by kaleidoscopically. Among the 
most piercing, I confess, is the anguish I felt on each of two dozen 
occasions like this one when I could see all thirty thousand of you 
staring back at me through the words on my computer screen, ab-
sorbing their flicker and passing judgment from your sundry vantage 
points. The writer’s audience is not always a fiction, and I realized 
that my task of addressing such a vast and variegated readership was 
the challenge that faced the journal itself. As I return to communion 
with my cozy family of specialists in nineteenth-century Spanish nar-
rative, I relish joining the portion of the world that only reads editors’ 
columns. I depart with a thicker skin, for I discovered that every



initiative one takes, no matter how widespread its endorsement, is 
certain to elicit the censure of some. Even so, I treasure the substantive 
dialogue with those who took the time to express their reservations, 
while the fruitful response that came from the member in Florida 
who cheered our unprecedented publication of an article on the dis-
course of culinary recipes remains in my fancy as the most memorable 
gesture of approval. On the day of the season’s first frost in northern 
New York and in the same mail with the October issue that carried 
her Forum letter, there arrived in my office a box of twenty key 
limes—real key limes.

The meeting of the PMLA Editorial Board is surely one of the 
editor’s richest rewards. After twenty-seven successive gatherings and 
the close discussion of almost five hundred manuscripts, I suffer no 
surfeit of that always invigorating activity. Despite strong intellectual 
disagreements, the moments of tension were rare, and a spirit of 
conviviality marked the deliberations. The rigor of the board’s stan-
dards, the breadth of the members’ expertise, their articulateness in 
expressing their judgments, and their scrupulousness in the dispatch 
of their responsibility were truly admirable. A jaw swollen from a 
painful tooth extraction did not deter one member from spirited 
participation in a meeting, and another came accompanied by her 
one-month-old daughter, who behaved fittingly for the solemn oc-
casion. Even a telephone call announcing the editor’s initiation into 
grandfatherhood interrupted a January session only long enough for 
a round of huzzahs. The Editorial Board of course shapes the contents 
of PMLA, but the journal’s fresh dimensions and new features have 
also emerged from these councils.

Board meetings as well as other PMLA duties have brought me 
into contact with colleagues in different areas whose paths I might 
otherwise not have crossed so easily. I have learned immeasurably 
from these scholars, and I have had the special privilege of bringing 
my discipline into dialogue with theirs. My continuing education has 
also been bolstered by the many manuscripts from other fields that 
pursued me even to Madrid and Middlebury, to Boulder and Berkeley. 
To have read every word that has appeared in PMLA over a long 
span of years—and considerably more that have not—has been an 
unexpected boon to my own work, and I recommend for your benefit 
(and for the good of your students) such forays into strange waters.

In their valedictories, outgoing editors of the journal, reflecting the 
modesty typical of our discipline, have tended to bemoan their failures 
rather than to brandish their successes. William Schaefer, writing in 
1978, lamented the inability of PMLA to attract essays that compelled 
the interest of the entire readership, and he reproached the profession 
for being so fragmented that it had nothing to say to its collective 
self. Perhaps he was expecting too much of the official organ of a 
hydra-headed monster like the MLA; perhaps the problem is that 
too few of us have or take the time to read as expansively as we might.



In any event, while diversification and splintering continue to mark 
the academy and PMLA, I believe that Schaefer’s wishes have been 
answered at least insofar as each number brings some pages that 
address the journal’s entire readership. It may be precisely our dif-
ferences in politics and ideology, our debates around theory and the 
canon, our disparate methods and languages, our undefined roles as 
humanists in the social order that, in an ironic twist, have drawn us 
into communion. The material in PMLA, including the Forum letters, 
traces patterns of productive tension, and the wages of our confron-
tation are a lively collective dialogue. The very battles that have been 
joined in recent issues should come as reassurance to the board mem-
ber who expressed the concern that the institutional protection of 
ideologies may be producing an exclusionary polarization that alien-
ates some members of the profession: such biases as appear in the 
journal are not those of its editorial team but the voices of its con-
tributors in legitimate contention. No one is excluded on ideological 
grounds; the parties draw their own lines. I share the view of another 
colleague on the Editorial Board, who said, “PMLA is remarkably 
fair. It’s the most honorable scholarly enterprise in the profession.”

Joel Conarroe, in his farewell remarks, deplored what he called 
PM LA's “decidedly Anglo-Saxon cast” and the minimal represen-
tation of non-English-language subjects. Two years later, English 
Showalter echoed the sentiment that PMLA did not represent all its 
constituencies. My predecessors’ complaints have been heeded, for 
that imbalance has been redressed at least in part. Certain absences 
do continue to gnaw at me—I count among my failures, for example, 
my inability to attract so important a segment as Chicano culture 
onto the roster—but the contents and backlog lists of most numbers 
now testify to the engagement of many different sectors, and I am 
heartened by the general spirit of involvement. It is important that 
this broadly based collaboration continue and that in some fashion 
the submissions add up to a potent, overarching statement.

I hope that all who peruse this issue of PMLA will agree that it 
meets the aim of offering something interesting and readable to ev-
eryone. This number opens its pages to a wide intercultural exchange 
and, building on the solid ground of PMLA's traditions, takes initi-
atives in tracing fresh paths. Borges’s previously untranslated gem 
about the art of translation mischievously dramatizes the pleasures 
and pitfalls of intertextual dialogues across national and temporal 
boundaries. The coincidental arrival of three fine essays on Chaucer 
written by colleagues dramatically separated from one another by 
rank and methodology provided an opportunity for a cluster that 
Seth Lerer, on short notice, consented to introduce, and I thank him 
for his unselfish cooperation. His characterization of Chaucer studies 
as “willfully omnivorous” applies across the board to current criticism, 
and other fields, too, have taught us, as Lerer puts it, that there are 
many ways of understanding modernity. Several essays then transport



us through the Italian Renaissance, German and British Romanti-
cism, Chinese modernism, and contemporary Latin America and 
Africa in tandem. With neither at a disadvantage, the periphery and 
the center of traditional scholarly attention conjoin in a salubrious 
array of approaches that do justice to the text, to history, to language, 
to gender differences. Revisionary stands challenge the reader in each 
of these studies. The final two essays confront modern literary crit-
icism in encompassing terms. The crossover between literature and 
science has become a pressing issue, and “This Is Not a Universe” 
examines physicists’ link to literary critics in their shared questioning 
of language, of the production of interpretation, and of the structures 
of representation. Some of the same concerns underlie the last essay’s 
examination of the state of deconstruction today, both as a system 
and as an institution. Readers of all persuasions can, finally, turn to 
the closing item in the Forum and delight in the deconstruction of 
deconstruction by a colleague who apparently has already reached 
certain conclusions.

The articles listed in this issue as “forthcoming in PMLA” I be-
queath with pride and pleasure to my successor and to our readers. 
The January number will carry the special-topic section on the idea 
of Europe, along with a short translation from Derrida, and I wish 
to take this opportunity to give thanks to Timothy J. Reiss for his 
work as coordinator of that topic and to Jacques Derrida for his long-
standing interest in our journal. Three further special topics are in 
process, and March will bring a cluster of articles on gender. The 
variety and the quality of the essays in our backlog are a promise of 
delectables that readers have in store. Last year, for the first time 
since the William Riley Parker Prize for an outstanding article in 
PMLA was instituted in 1964, the selection committee saw fit to 
award the prize to two entries. That development is encouraging, 
and the forthcoming essays will make the committee members’ 
choices no easier.

I relinquish my post with confidence in the system and with deep 
respect for the people that make it work. I could not have accom-
plished my charge if the Executive Council’s high regard for the as-
sociation’s journal had not translated, year after year, into full moral 
and material support of the Editorial Board’s initiatives. My debt to 
the council members and to the association officers rests in blue on 
your bookshelves. I am fortunate to have coincided throughout my 
term with Phyllis Franklin, without whose advice, backing, and 
friendship I would surely have foundered. I am also grateful to my 
colleagues and the administration at Cornell University for having 
not only tolerated but supported my investment of energies in PMLA. 
It is the steadfast policy of the editorial staff to delete from the journal 
any strands of acknowledgment extended in their direction. In a final 
appropriation of privilege, I shall fly in the face of that custom of 
modesty and sensitivity as I look in vain for adequate words of ap-



preciation and admiration for those who run and produce PMLA'. 
Judy Goulding and her staff. A recent author made the point pic-
turesquely: “I’ve never had a $ 100 massage, but the experience must 
be comparable to getting edited at PMLA.” Judy Goulding’s efficient 
and tranquil managerial style, her unfailingly sound judgment, her 
sense of order and fairness set the example for the entire operation. 
When a problem arose, I knew I could turn to her for the best solution. 
I shall also miss her staff, whom I respect boundlessly for their ex-
pertise and their unparalleled dedication and to whom I owe a heavy 
debt for having made my tasks easy. Among those who have processed 
hundreds of manuscripts annually, copyedited and proofread accepted 
essays, corresponded with authors, prepared all the peripheral ma-
terial, designed and set the pages, and contended with crises so as to 
deposit each issue punctually in your mailboxes, there are too many 
to name, but you will find them all listed on the mastheads of current 
and past issues. I want to repeat publicly my appreciation of my 
colleagues on the Editorial Board and on the Advisory Committee— 
also listed prominently in the front pages—for their assiduous service 
in evaluating manuscripts and in setting policy for the journal. We 
who make the editorial decisions could not function without the 
conscientious help of our many referees or, of course, without the 
interest and confidence of the authors who send us their work and 
of the readers who find between the covers of PMLA, whatever its 
shortcomings, a moment of insight, of stimulation, of pleasure. My 
thanks go out to all of you.

By the time you see these lines, my successor will be signing letters, 
reading manuscripts, organizing a board meeting, implementing new 
ideas, and writing her first Editor’s Column. Domna Stanton is, for 
reasons that are obvious to those who know her and that will quickly 
become evident to those of you who don’t, an ideal choice for the 
editorship of PMLA. I have worked closely with Domna in the past, 
and my acquaintance with all her sterling qualities, her high standards, 
her efficiency and imagination gives me a sense of excitement about 
the future of the MLA’s journal. With a measure of relief and a mass 
of confidence, I watch the flow of manuscripts shift from one snowy 
college town in the East to another in the Midwest. Like the rest of 
you, I look forward to reading every word that is to appear in her 
PMLA.

JOHN W. KRONIK