{"title":"A Study in Paradox: Matthew Arnold's The Scholar-Gipsy","authors":"H. Nebeker","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1971.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1971.0021","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1971-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122385876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Conrad's The Secret Sharer has received its share-perhaps, indeed, more than its share-of explications and commentaries. Almost without exception, however, criticism has concentrated upon the ethical and metaphysical dilemmas faced by Leggatt and the unnamed captain who narrates the story, overlooking the related question of how the story works, not what it means. This short essay will attempt, by a general analysis of the nautical background of the story and a close reading of its puzzling conclusion, to call attention to this often ignored aspect of Conrad's art and to suggest another perspective for interpretation of his writing. It is important to recall one fact about Conrad's life which, though known, is not usually assigned primary importance in interpreting his art: the fact that for better than fifteen years he spent his life at sea, and for many of those was in command of merchant vessels. That the colorful and often bizarre life he saw in his years at sea forms the anecdotal basis for his fiction has long been recognized; but that to this anecdotal basis he brings the perspective of many years of successful command has not been sufficiently emphasized.' As a result, the pervasive image of "the sea" in Conrad's writing is often interpreted as though it stands rather straightforwardly in contrast to "the land," and speculation about the meaning of Conrad's fiction has often assumed this implied polarity as basic to the symbolic structure of his writing. Without question, the sea and the land often do stand as implied opposites in Conrad's work; yet one wonders whether this polarity is so basic to his art as it is, say, to Melville's, and whether an interpretation based entirely upon it does not betray something of a landsman's expectations toward the significance of Conrad's symbolism. It might be noted in this context that Melville himself did not have Conrad's depth of experience with the sea, and that in addition his attitude toward his nautical material is more bookish and habitually more second-hand than Conrad's.2 In addition to using it as a foil for the land, Conrad also visualizes the sea as a place of testing, and his plots therefore often revolve around problems of command decision. Moreover, as in many other forms of adventure romance, Conrad's discussion of moral or ethical superiority is often presented in terms of the metaphor of competence in action; in his sea
{"title":"The Legacy of the Secret Sharer","authors":"J. K. Folsom","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1971.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1971.0023","url":null,"abstract":"Conrad's The Secret Sharer has received its share-perhaps, indeed, more than its share-of explications and commentaries. Almost without exception, however, criticism has concentrated upon the ethical and metaphysical dilemmas faced by Leggatt and the unnamed captain who narrates the story, overlooking the related question of how the story works, not what it means. This short essay will attempt, by a general analysis of the nautical background of the story and a close reading of its puzzling conclusion, to call attention to this often ignored aspect of Conrad's art and to suggest another perspective for interpretation of his writing. It is important to recall one fact about Conrad's life which, though known, is not usually assigned primary importance in interpreting his art: the fact that for better than fifteen years he spent his life at sea, and for many of those was in command of merchant vessels. That the colorful and often bizarre life he saw in his years at sea forms the anecdotal basis for his fiction has long been recognized; but that to this anecdotal basis he brings the perspective of many years of successful command has not been sufficiently emphasized.' As a result, the pervasive image of \"the sea\" in Conrad's writing is often interpreted as though it stands rather straightforwardly in contrast to \"the land,\" and speculation about the meaning of Conrad's fiction has often assumed this implied polarity as basic to the symbolic structure of his writing. Without question, the sea and the land often do stand as implied opposites in Conrad's work; yet one wonders whether this polarity is so basic to his art as it is, say, to Melville's, and whether an interpretation based entirely upon it does not betray something of a landsman's expectations toward the significance of Conrad's symbolism. It might be noted in this context that Melville himself did not have Conrad's depth of experience with the sea, and that in addition his attitude toward his nautical material is more bookish and habitually more second-hand than Conrad's.2 In addition to using it as a foil for the land, Conrad also visualizes the sea as a place of testing, and his plots therefore often revolve around problems of command decision. Moreover, as in many other forms of adventure romance, Conrad's discussion of moral or ethical superiority is often presented in terms of the metaphor of competence in action; in his sea","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1971-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133121237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Search for the Absolute in Hemingway's \"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place\" and \"The Snows of Kilimanjaro\"","authors":"S. Bluefarb","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1971.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1971.0013","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"183 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1971-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115722595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Anthropological View of the Teaching of Literature","authors":"J. H. Fisher","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1971.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1971.0003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1971-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125788370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
One of the commonest delusions of beginning writers is that a short story or novel is merely the concrete, dramatic recollection of experience, and if these beginning writers are moderately literate, they will argue that art springs from memory and autobiographical experience. They are, of course, partly correct. For example, Charles Nolte, commenting on his play, "End of Ramadan," admits that it is partly autobiographical-"everything you write is."' It is equally true, however, that art is design, a symbolic construction in which literal experience is shaped and selected for thematic purpose. The writers most frequently cited for transmuting autobiography into art are Thomas Wolfe and Samuel Butler. It is widely believed that both writers did little more than alter surnames and place names, and then, mysteriously as from Aaron's furnace, sprang forth those golden calves, Look Homeward, Angel and The Way of All Flesh. Of the two, it is urged that Butler had less consciousness of design and purpose and hence more reliance upon autobiography than Wolfe had. Therefore, the stronger case for the necessity of conscious artistry can be made from an examination of The Way of All Flesh. In this novel, characters are rigidly patterned to objectify values which serve as tensions in a carefully controlled fiction world; this means that they are stripped of the chaotic richness and ambiguity of actual people in order to dramatize the forces which give coherent structure to the novel. Theobald Pontifex is usually identified as the most sustained autobiographical figure in The Way of All Flesh. He has been seen as a very thinly disguised version of Samuel Butler's father, Canon Thomas Butler. It must be admitted that certain qualities of Canon Butler do appear in Theobald. Much Butler criticism has concentrated on the biographical parallels to the neglect of Butler's careful structuring of his fictional world and the patterning of his characters. For example, Butler's close friend and biographer, Henry Festing Jones, claims that the boyhood of Ernest Pontifex "is faithfully drawn from Butler's own childhood, Theobald and Christina being portraits of his father and mother as accurate as he could make them, with no softening and no exaggeration.'"2 Geoffrey Keynes and Brian Hill, editors of Butler's notebooks, tell us: "Butler's father and mother have achieved an unenviable immortality as Theobald and Christina Pontifex in The Way of All Flesh. His sisters' less amiable characteristics are reflected in Charlotte Pontifex in the same book."3 According to Philip Henderson, Canon and Mrs. Butler
新手作家最常见的错觉之一是，短篇故事或小说仅仅是对经历的具体的、戏剧性的回忆。如果这些新手作家有一定的文化水平，他们会认为艺术源于记忆和自传式经历。当然，他们在一定程度上是正确的。例如，查尔斯·诺尔特(Charles Nolte)在评论他的戏剧《斋月结束》(End of Ramadan)时承认，它在一定程度上是自传——“你写的所有东西都是自传。”然而，同样正确的是，艺术是设计，是一种象征性的结构，在这种结构中，文字体验是为主题目的而形成和选择的。托马斯·沃尔夫和塞缪尔·巴特勒是将自传转化为艺术的最常被引用的作家。人们普遍认为，两位作家只不过改变了姓氏和地名，然后，神秘地从亚伦的火炉里跳出了那些金色的牛犊，《望家，天使》和《众生之路》。在这两个人中，有人认为巴特勒对设计和目的的意识较弱，因此比沃尔夫更依赖自传。因此，有意识艺术的必要性可以从对《众生之道》的考察中得到更有力的证明。在这部小说中，人物被严格地塑造成客观化的价值观，这些价值观在一个精心控制的小说世界中充当紧张关系;这意味着他们被剥夺了真实人物混乱的丰富性和模糊性，以便将赋予小说连贯结构的力量戏剧化。西奥博尔德·蓬蒂费克斯通常被认为是《众生之路》中最持久的自传体人物。他被看作是塞缪尔·巴特勒的父亲托马斯·巴特勒牧师的翻版。必须承认，佳能巴特勒的某些品质确实出现在西奥博尔德身上。许多对巴特勒的批评都集中在传记的相似之处，而忽略了巴特勒对虚构世界的精心构建和人物形象的塑造。例如，巴特勒的密友兼传记作者亨利·费斯汀·琼斯(Henry Festing Jones)声称，欧内斯特·庞蒂费克斯(Ernest Pontifex)的童年“忠实地取材于巴特勒自己的童年，西奥博尔德(Theobald)和克里斯蒂娜(Christina)是他尽可能准确地描绘他父亲和母亲的肖像，一点也不柔和，一点也不夸张。”’”巴特勒笔记本的编辑杰弗里·凯恩斯和布莱恩·希尔告诉我们:“巴特勒的父亲和母亲在《万物之道》中以西奥博尔德和克里斯蒂娜·庞蒂费克斯的身份获得了令人羡慕的不朽。在同一本书中，他的姐妹们不那么和蔼可亲的特点也反映在夏洛特·庞蒂菲克斯身上。据菲利普·亨德森、佳能和巴特勒太太说
{"title":"Autobiography and Artistic Sensibility in Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh","authors":"J. Yarbrough","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1971.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1971.0027","url":null,"abstract":"One of the commonest delusions of beginning writers is that a short story or novel is merely the concrete, dramatic recollection of experience, and if these beginning writers are moderately literate, they will argue that art springs from memory and autobiographical experience. They are, of course, partly correct. For example, Charles Nolte, commenting on his play, \"End of Ramadan,\" admits that it is partly autobiographical-\"everything you write is.\"' It is equally true, however, that art is design, a symbolic construction in which literal experience is shaped and selected for thematic purpose. The writers most frequently cited for transmuting autobiography into art are Thomas Wolfe and Samuel Butler. It is widely believed that both writers did little more than alter surnames and place names, and then, mysteriously as from Aaron's furnace, sprang forth those golden calves, Look Homeward, Angel and The Way of All Flesh. Of the two, it is urged that Butler had less consciousness of design and purpose and hence more reliance upon autobiography than Wolfe had. Therefore, the stronger case for the necessity of conscious artistry can be made from an examination of The Way of All Flesh. In this novel, characters are rigidly patterned to objectify values which serve as tensions in a carefully controlled fiction world; this means that they are stripped of the chaotic richness and ambiguity of actual people in order to dramatize the forces which give coherent structure to the novel. Theobald Pontifex is usually identified as the most sustained autobiographical figure in The Way of All Flesh. He has been seen as a very thinly disguised version of Samuel Butler's father, Canon Thomas Butler. It must be admitted that certain qualities of Canon Butler do appear in Theobald. Much Butler criticism has concentrated on the biographical parallels to the neglect of Butler's careful structuring of his fictional world and the patterning of his characters. For example, Butler's close friend and biographer, Henry Festing Jones, claims that the boyhood of Ernest Pontifex \"is faithfully drawn from Butler's own childhood, Theobald and Christina being portraits of his father and mother as accurate as he could make them, with no softening and no exaggeration.'\"2 Geoffrey Keynes and Brian Hill, editors of Butler's notebooks, tell us: \"Butler's father and mother have achieved an unenviable immortality as Theobald and Christina Pontifex in The Way of All Flesh. His sisters' less amiable characteristics are reflected in Charlotte Pontifex in the same book.\"3 According to Philip Henderson, Canon and Mrs. Butler","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"218 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1971-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116468898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The relationship between Dürrenmatt and Brecht is of considerable interest, not only for the individual merits of the writers involved, but also because of the often problematical relationship between teacher and student, or master and acolyte. Sooner or later each student or son has to sever the ties or stay forever in Zeus's thigh. Several perceptive essays have been written on Dürrenmatt's relation to Brecht, foremost among them Hans Mayer's "Dürrenmatt und Brecht oder die Zurücknahme."1 Dürrenmatt's own remarks on this subject are rather inconclusive. To be linked to Brecht as a post-Brechtian playwright is as meaningful (or usually as meaningless) as the customary linkage established by critics of the nineteenth century between writers of that epoch and Goethe. Emil Staiger, for example, has examined the relationships of contemporary writers to their precursors (and Brecht is already a "precursor" only fourteen years after his death). Staiger recognizes the afemina of contemporary literary artists, yet regrets the fact that modern authors so often resort to parody in order to reduce the great writers of the past to relative harmlessness. As he puts it: Wir dürfen ihnen unsere Achtung und Bewunderung nicht versagen, selbst dann nicht, wenn sie, um sich ihr schweres Geschäft zu erleichtern, die grossen Meister der vergangenen Zeit schmähen und ihre Werke kritisch oder, was noch bedenklicher ist, in Parodien, wie sie an der Tagesordnung sind, unschädlich machen zu müssen glauben."2 Staiger appears to feel that the modern writer, or any writer for that matter, resorts to parody because he feels threatened. Parody does not necessarily produce this veritable emasculation, but if one follows Staiger's argumentation, it is easy to see how parody could be used and is used to render a writer of the past innocuous, not for the reading public as a whole, but for the writer himself, who may feel trapped or endangered through a literary father-son relationship. Dürrenmatt's Die Physiker reflects Brecht's Leben des Galilei in subject matter and title. Brecht's Galileo faces the choice of either intellectual and physical freedom (in Venice) or the freedom to devote his time to research, unencumbered by financial worries (in Florence). Brecht himself faced this dilemma between East and West. Möbius, the physicist/hero of Diir-
伦马特和布莱希特之间的关系是相当有趣的，不仅因为所涉及的作家的个人优点，而且还因为经常有问题的师生关系，或师傅和助手。迟早，每个学生或儿子都必须切断联系，否则就永远留在宙斯的大腿上。关于伦马特与布莱希特的关系，已经写了几篇敏锐的文章，其中最重要的是汉斯·梅尔的《伦马特与布莱希特的关系》。1 . renmatt自己在这个问题上的评论是相当不确定的。将布莱希特作为后布莱希特的剧作家联系起来，就像19世纪评论家将那个时代的作家与歌德联系起来一样有意义(或者通常毫无意义)。例如，埃米尔·斯塔格(Emil Staiger)研究了当代作家与其前辈的关系(而布莱希特在去世仅14年后就已经是一位“前辈”)。斯泰格承认当代文学艺术家的女性地位，但遗憾的是，现代作家经常诉诸拙劣的模仿，以使过去的伟大作家相对无害。正如他所说的那样:Wir drfen ihnen unserere Achtung and Bewunderung nicsen glauben, selbst dhnen unsertung, wenn sie, um sich ihr schweres Geschäft zu erleichteren, die grossen Meister der vergangenen Zeit schmähen and ihre Werke kritisch oder, noch bedenklicher ist, in Parodien, wie sie and der Tagesordnung sind, unschädlich machen zu mssen glauben。斯泰格似乎觉得，现代作家，或者任何作家，因为感到威胁而诉诸模仿。模仿并不一定会产生这种真正的阉化，但如果一个人遵循斯泰格的论点，就很容易看出模仿是如何被使用的，并且被用来使过去的作家变得无害，不是为了整个读者，而是为了作家自己，他可能会因为文学父子关系而感到被困住或处于危险之中。伦马特的《物理学家》在题材和标题上反映了布莱希特的《伽利略的生命》。布莱希特笔下的伽利略面临着选择，要么是智力和身体的自由(在威尼斯)，要么是全身心投入研究的自由，不受经济担忧的阻碍(在佛罗伦萨)。布莱希特自己也面临着东西方之间的两难选择。Möbius, Diir-的物理学家/英雄
{"title":"Adventurers and Cosmonauts: Dürrenmatt's Parody of Brecht?","authors":"Hart L. Wegner","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1971.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1971.0018","url":null,"abstract":"The relationship between Dürrenmatt and Brecht is of considerable interest, not only for the individual merits of the writers involved, but also because of the often problematical relationship between teacher and student, or master and acolyte. Sooner or later each student or son has to sever the ties or stay forever in Zeus's thigh. Several perceptive essays have been written on Dürrenmatt's relation to Brecht, foremost among them Hans Mayer's \"Dürrenmatt und Brecht oder die Zurücknahme.\"1 Dürrenmatt's own remarks on this subject are rather inconclusive. To be linked to Brecht as a post-Brechtian playwright is as meaningful (or usually as meaningless) as the customary linkage established by critics of the nineteenth century between writers of that epoch and Goethe. Emil Staiger, for example, has examined the relationships of contemporary writers to their precursors (and Brecht is already a \"precursor\" only fourteen years after his death). Staiger recognizes the afemina of contemporary literary artists, yet regrets the fact that modern authors so often resort to parody in order to reduce the great writers of the past to relative harmlessness. As he puts it: Wir dürfen ihnen unsere Achtung und Bewunderung nicht versagen, selbst dann nicht, wenn sie, um sich ihr schweres Geschäft zu erleichtern, die grossen Meister der vergangenen Zeit schmähen und ihre Werke kritisch oder, was noch bedenklicher ist, in Parodien, wie sie an der Tagesordnung sind, unschädlich machen zu müssen glauben.\"2 Staiger appears to feel that the modern writer, or any writer for that matter, resorts to parody because he feels threatened. Parody does not necessarily produce this veritable emasculation, but if one follows Staiger's argumentation, it is easy to see how parody could be used and is used to render a writer of the past innocuous, not for the reading public as a whole, but for the writer himself, who may feel trapped or endangered through a literary father-son relationship. Dürrenmatt's Die Physiker reflects Brecht's Leben des Galilei in subject matter and title. Brecht's Galileo faces the choice of either intellectual and physical freedom (in Venice) or the freedom to devote his time to research, unencumbered by financial worries (in Florence). Brecht himself faced this dilemma between East and West. Möbius, the physicist/hero of Diir-","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1971-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122801125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The subject of the place of culture in college foreign language instruction continues to be discussed widely by theorists and teachers, in professional journals, and in scholarly groups. This meeting's emphasis on theory and practice offers an important opportunity to assess our problems with today's compelling realities in view. I propose to examine the following aspects of our theme: the goals of current programs, the relationship between language study and university structure, and the nature of instructional personnel. On the basis of these considerations a proposal for language programs with cultural content will be offered. I shall leave to others the task of studying what culture as related to language is, first, because we now have a considerable body of iUuminating discourse on the subject; and second, because the matter of how culture can be integrated into our programs is more critical than the precision with which we formulate definitions. Nelson Brooks' article, 'Teaching Culture in the Foreign Language Classroom,"1 is very useful for the task of defining culture and understanding why its various components constitute important correlatives of language study. His five categories (biological growth, personal refinement, literature and the fine arts, patterns of living, and the sum total of a way of life) comprise suggestive lists of logical adjuncts to language comprehension. But no matter how valid and promising his proposals may be, they can have no practical meaning if we do not place them in the concrete context of today's university. Brooks illustrates convincingly that there are many important aspects of culture related to language besides literature. Yet we find that at least in most universities, virtually the only cultural values purposefully integrated into programs are literary. This phenomenon may be explained by considering who studies languages in college and why. Except in a few mainly private universities which require foreign language proficiency as an entrance requirement, it is a fact that the immense majority of those engaged in college language work do so at the beginning or intermediate levels. They study languages because they must do so, and very few continue beyond the minimal required levels. It is in the context of these elementary and intermediate "required" courses that the seemingly eternal polemic concerning "language versus lit-
{"title":"The Place of Culture in Foreign Language Instruction: A Practical View","authors":"T. A. Sackett","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1970.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1970.0021","url":null,"abstract":"The subject of the place of culture in college foreign language instruction continues to be discussed widely by theorists and teachers, in professional journals, and in scholarly groups. This meeting's emphasis on theory and practice offers an important opportunity to assess our problems with today's compelling realities in view. I propose to examine the following aspects of our theme: the goals of current programs, the relationship between language study and university structure, and the nature of instructional personnel. On the basis of these considerations a proposal for language programs with cultural content will be offered. I shall leave to others the task of studying what culture as related to language is, first, because we now have a considerable body of iUuminating discourse on the subject; and second, because the matter of how culture can be integrated into our programs is more critical than the precision with which we formulate definitions. Nelson Brooks' article, 'Teaching Culture in the Foreign Language Classroom,\"1 is very useful for the task of defining culture and understanding why its various components constitute important correlatives of language study. His five categories (biological growth, personal refinement, literature and the fine arts, patterns of living, and the sum total of a way of life) comprise suggestive lists of logical adjuncts to language comprehension. But no matter how valid and promising his proposals may be, they can have no practical meaning if we do not place them in the concrete context of today's university. Brooks illustrates convincingly that there are many important aspects of culture related to language besides literature. Yet we find that at least in most universities, virtually the only cultural values purposefully integrated into programs are literary. This phenomenon may be explained by considering who studies languages in college and why. Except in a few mainly private universities which require foreign language proficiency as an entrance requirement, it is a fact that the immense majority of those engaged in college language work do so at the beginning or intermediate levels. They study languages because they must do so, and very few continue beyond the minimal required levels. It is in the context of these elementary and intermediate \"required\" courses that the seemingly eternal polemic concerning \"language versus lit-","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1970-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127665129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although numerous literary critics have examined Poe's "Ligeia," some at considerable lengths, no single scholar has yet presented an interpretation which does justice to its complexity of technique and meaning. Poe himself once observed in a letter to Griswold that "Ligeia" was the "loftiest" of his tales, requiring for its composition the "highest imagination."1 Criticism of "Ligeia" can be roughly grouped into two categories: the traditional view which interprets the story as a literal tale of the supernatural, and the psychological view which interprets the story as happening on both the literal and psychological level. D. H. Lawrence, for example, took "Ligeia" to be a presentation of Ligeia's reincarnation in Rowena, whose body she obtains by supernatural murder.2 Of the more recent critics, James Schroeter perhaps best represents those who continue to take the traditional literal view that "Ligeia" is intended to be no more than a simple tale of supernatural reincarnation.3 Schroeter remarks that if Poe had intended it to be something more, he would have presented a factual story simultaneously with the supernatural one. What Schroeter fails to understand is that Poe does precisely that. Apparently Schroeter has been misled by the deceptively simple surface of a highly structured story which functions on both an imagined and a factual level. Schroeter's misreading is understandable because in a number of other stories, for example, "The Sphinx" and "The Premature Burial", Poe directly demarcates the imaginary level from the real. But in "Ligeia" Poe's approach is sophisticated; he leaves the reader to differentiate between imagined and factual events on the basis of clues subtly disclosed throughout the story. In contrast, in stories of ratiocination such as 'The Purloined Letter," Poe not only discloses the clues, he divulges their meaning. In "Ligeia," however, the reader is on his own. Since the clues in "Ligeia" are revealed unobtrusively, it is not surprising that many readers continue to interpret the story simply as a literal account of supernatural events; such a reading, however, is particularly difficult to justify because Poe has indicated in "The Philosophy of Composition" that he attempts to remain "within the limits of the accountable-of the real."' On the other hand, some critics have perceived the multilevel structure
{"title":"Poe's Ethereal Ligeia","authors":"Jack L. Davis, June H. Davis","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1970.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1970.0017","url":null,"abstract":"Although numerous literary critics have examined Poe's \"Ligeia,\" some at considerable lengths, no single scholar has yet presented an interpretation which does justice to its complexity of technique and meaning. Poe himself once observed in a letter to Griswold that \"Ligeia\" was the \"loftiest\" of his tales, requiring for its composition the \"highest imagination.\"1 Criticism of \"Ligeia\" can be roughly grouped into two categories: the traditional view which interprets the story as a literal tale of the supernatural, and the psychological view which interprets the story as happening on both the literal and psychological level. D. H. Lawrence, for example, took \"Ligeia\" to be a presentation of Ligeia's reincarnation in Rowena, whose body she obtains by supernatural murder.2 Of the more recent critics, James Schroeter perhaps best represents those who continue to take the traditional literal view that \"Ligeia\" is intended to be no more than a simple tale of supernatural reincarnation.3 Schroeter remarks that if Poe had intended it to be something more, he would have presented a factual story simultaneously with the supernatural one. What Schroeter fails to understand is that Poe does precisely that. Apparently Schroeter has been misled by the deceptively simple surface of a highly structured story which functions on both an imagined and a factual level. Schroeter's misreading is understandable because in a number of other stories, for example, \"The Sphinx\" and \"The Premature Burial\", Poe directly demarcates the imaginary level from the real. But in \"Ligeia\" Poe's approach is sophisticated; he leaves the reader to differentiate between imagined and factual events on the basis of clues subtly disclosed throughout the story. In contrast, in stories of ratiocination such as 'The Purloined Letter,\" Poe not only discloses the clues, he divulges their meaning. In \"Ligeia,\" however, the reader is on his own. Since the clues in \"Ligeia\" are revealed unobtrusively, it is not surprising that many readers continue to interpret the story simply as a literal account of supernatural events; such a reading, however, is particularly difficult to justify because Poe has indicated in \"The Philosophy of Composition\" that he attempts to remain \"within the limits of the accountable-of the real.\"' On the other hand, some critics have perceived the multilevel structure","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1970-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115769877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Periodically, die value of die liberal arts language requirement is questioned and sometimes reduced or abolished, followed by serious consequences. This seems to be as inevitable as the seasons. Foreign language study in America has always been a sometime affair (now emphasized, now neglected), in spite of the Army Service Training Program of World War II and die new methods which grew out of it. Paul A. Miller, Assistant Secretary for Education of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, has said that foreign language study is often no more than a casual nod to convention and that language at the graduate level is for most a shallow charade. Mr. Miller is persuaded, however, that competence in one or more of the major world languages other than one's own is the key prerequisite in the curriculum, and our present curriculum must be carefully articulated and planned in anticipation of the coming revolution in international education.1 This comment alone, expressing the concept that the education of modern man will be incomplete unless it includes the integrated experience of a foreign culture, plus the fact that in many institutions of the nation die requirement of foreign language for the undergraduate degree is being reduced or abolished, are enough to motivate us to reassess the part tiiat languages play in die liberal arts curriculum. We should be reexamining our philosophy, our course offerings, and our methods, and making known our belief in those values. Naturally, when the foreign language requirement is removed from an institution's curriculum, enrollment figures in foreign languages may tend to plunge downward, and teachers may be urged to move elsewhere, if not out of the profession. Then the nation may be caught unprepared when an emergency arises, having discarded sometiiing of value.
周期性地，文科语言要求的价值受到质疑，有时被降低或废除，随之而来的是严重的后果。这似乎是不可避免的季节。尽管第二次世界大战期间有陆军服役训练计划，并由此产生了许多新方法，但在美国，外语学习一直是一件偶尔发生的事情(时而被重视，时而被忽视)。卫生、教育和福利部的助理教育部长保罗·a·米勒(Paul a . Miller)曾说过，外语学习通常不过是对传统的一种随意的认同，研究生阶段的语言学习对大多数人来说是一种肤浅的伪装。然而，米勒先生相信，掌握一种或多种除母语以外的世界主要语言的能力是课程设置的关键先决条件，我们目前的课程必须仔细地阐述和规划，以预见即将到来的国际教育革命单是这句话就足以促使我们重新评估语言在文科课程中所扮演的角色。这句话表达了这样一个概念，即现代人的教育如果不包括对外国文化的综合体验，将是不完整的，再加上在国家的许多机构中，本科学位对外语的要求正在减少或取消。我们应该重新审视我们的哲学、我们的课程设置和我们的方法，并让人们知道我们对这些价值观的信仰。自然地，当一所学校的课程取消了外语要求后，外语专业的入学人数可能会大幅下降，教师们可能会被敦促去其他地方，如果不是离开这个行业的话。那么，当紧急情况出现时，国家可能会毫无准备，因为它丢掉了一些有价值的东西。
{"title":"Liberal Arts Language Requirement: Theory And Practice","authors":"D. Wirtz","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1970.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1970.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Periodically, die value of die liberal arts language requirement is questioned and sometimes reduced or abolished, followed by serious consequences. This seems to be as inevitable as the seasons. Foreign language study in America has always been a sometime affair (now emphasized, now neglected), in spite of the Army Service Training Program of World War II and die new methods which grew out of it. Paul A. Miller, Assistant Secretary for Education of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, has said that foreign language study is often no more than a casual nod to convention and that language at the graduate level is for most a shallow charade. Mr. Miller is persuaded, however, that competence in one or more of the major world languages other than one's own is the key prerequisite in the curriculum, and our present curriculum must be carefully articulated and planned in anticipation of the coming revolution in international education.1 This comment alone, expressing the concept that the education of modern man will be incomplete unless it includes the integrated experience of a foreign culture, plus the fact that in many institutions of the nation die requirement of foreign language for the undergraduate degree is being reduced or abolished, are enough to motivate us to reassess the part tiiat languages play in die liberal arts curriculum. We should be reexamining our philosophy, our course offerings, and our methods, and making known our belief in those values. Naturally, when the foreign language requirement is removed from an institution's curriculum, enrollment figures in foreign languages may tend to plunge downward, and teachers may be urged to move elsewhere, if not out of the profession. Then the nation may be caught unprepared when an emergency arises, having discarded sometiiing of value.","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1970-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116908724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Light In August is not everyone's idea of a funny novel. Most readers would no doubt agree with Kazin, Sewall, and other critics, as well as with Faulkner himself, that it is essentially a "tragic" story.' Certainly, it is suffused with pathos, sorrow, and most of the variables of tragedy. Nonetheless, there are, I believe, several comic elements in the novel which have been generally neglected. Taken in isolation, some of the novel's comic situations and characterizations might be passed over, but in their totality they are a significant element in its structure. I should like to argue that in particular there are ironic patterns which are central to the major concerns of Light In August. "Irony," of course, is not necessarily comic: the peripeteia of Greek tragedy, the "irony of events" which defines the novels of Hardy, and the dramatic reversals of Shakespeare's tragedies are all proofs that "irony" is a genuinely amphibian term existing healthily in both the comic and non-comic experience of literature. For the purposes of this paper, however, I shall take "irony" to be intimately related to, if not inseparable from, the comic experience. The peculiar kinds of Faulknerian irony which I am going to discuss have more of Cervantes or Ariosto in them than Sophocles or Shakespeare. They are ironies not merely of reversal and frustration but of circularity as well. Faulkner's characters, in the moment of their thwarted, frustrated expectations, resemble less an Oedipus or a Lear confronting an awesome destiny-the dreadful image of some promised end-than they do a Quixote confronting the empty air of vanished giants or a Ruggiero clasping the empty space left by an invisible Angelica. That is, they are left not with the compensation of something exterior to themselves, both awesome and sacred, but with nothing but themselves and their own self-consciousness. Seen in another perspective, the ironies of Light In August recall the frustration of characters in works by Sartre, Camus, and Pynchon, among others. They are frustrations which are defined by their interiority, solitariness, and selffocusing. There are a number of ironic situations in Light In August, all of which involve the experience of an unforeseen event quite different from that which has been expected. For example, when Lucas Burch confronts Lena
{"title":"The Pattern of Thought in Light in August","authors":"R. Wilson","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1970.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1970.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Light In August is not everyone's idea of a funny novel. Most readers would no doubt agree with Kazin, Sewall, and other critics, as well as with Faulkner himself, that it is essentially a \"tragic\" story.' Certainly, it is suffused with pathos, sorrow, and most of the variables of tragedy. Nonetheless, there are, I believe, several comic elements in the novel which have been generally neglected. Taken in isolation, some of the novel's comic situations and characterizations might be passed over, but in their totality they are a significant element in its structure. I should like to argue that in particular there are ironic patterns which are central to the major concerns of Light In August. \"Irony,\" of course, is not necessarily comic: the peripeteia of Greek tragedy, the \"irony of events\" which defines the novels of Hardy, and the dramatic reversals of Shakespeare's tragedies are all proofs that \"irony\" is a genuinely amphibian term existing healthily in both the comic and non-comic experience of literature. For the purposes of this paper, however, I shall take \"irony\" to be intimately related to, if not inseparable from, the comic experience. The peculiar kinds of Faulknerian irony which I am going to discuss have more of Cervantes or Ariosto in them than Sophocles or Shakespeare. They are ironies not merely of reversal and frustration but of circularity as well. Faulkner's characters, in the moment of their thwarted, frustrated expectations, resemble less an Oedipus or a Lear confronting an awesome destiny-the dreadful image of some promised end-than they do a Quixote confronting the empty air of vanished giants or a Ruggiero clasping the empty space left by an invisible Angelica. That is, they are left not with the compensation of something exterior to themselves, both awesome and sacred, but with nothing but themselves and their own self-consciousness. Seen in another perspective, the ironies of Light In August recall the frustration of characters in works by Sartre, Camus, and Pynchon, among others. They are frustrations which are defined by their interiority, solitariness, and selffocusing. There are a number of ironic situations in Light In August, all of which involve the experience of an unforeseen event quite different from that which has been expected. For example, when Lucas Burch confronts Lena","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"214 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1970-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132215806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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