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Sheldon Sacks
         Chimera II: The Margins of Mutual Comprehension
         The publication in this issue of Leonard B. Meyer's superbly
            detailed analysis of the Trio of Mozart's G Minor Symphony
            became the occasion of us to reexamine and restate some of the
            general aims of .
             
            From its inception  was based on the assumption
            that we can indeed understand each other, at least to the point
            where critical exchange becomes meaningful and fruitful. It is this
            belief, for example, that has led us to eschew the more fiery
            debates and to concentrate instead on articles in which
            distinguished critics of all the arts attempt to explore the issues
            that divide them the correspondence between Gombrich and
            Bell, for example, Booth's attempt to represent his
            understanding of Abrams followed by Abrams' representation of
            how he understands his own work, or, similarly, the exchange
            between Angus Fletcher and Northrop Frye. Even in our more heated
            Critical Response section, we have tended to reject those arguments
            that reflect primarily the egos of the disputants in favor of
            discourse that reveals the actual issues that separate them. We
            have been fully conscious that such a focus eliminates some of the
            excitement of fiery battle, and we are aware as well that we have
            not always succeeded in our attempt.
C. Truesdell
         The Scholar: A Species Threatened by Professions
         Progress cannot be reversed; what it has killed, we cannot restore
            to life. Professionalism, like pollution, is here to stay. However,
            the fact that professionalism and pollution are facts does not
            force us to welcome and implement them. Indeed, there are those who
            would accelerate "progress," their effective definition of which is
            what is going to happen willwe nillwe. I wonder why progressive
            thinkers do not, since it is inevitable we shall all die one day,
            advocate present universal suicide.
             
            Preferring to cling to the remains of life rather than renounce it,
            preferring to strive for light so long as I can see a glimmer, I
            first recall the qualities ideal in one who is to search and trace
            the development of science.1
             
            The workshop of the scholar in the history of science is the
            periods in which his authors lived. He should know those periods'
            ways of life and belief and education, both the common and the
            eccentric; their political histories; their variety in aspects;
            their social and economic structures; their architectures,
            literatures, and arts. He should feel at home in the houses of
            those times, sit easily in their chairs, both figurative and
            wooden, and discern what was then mostly admired or rejected in
            painting and sculpture and decoration. He should have read not only
            the books that carried the intellectual products of his period but
            also those that were then the fare of young minds as they were
            taught, such books having been commonly of an earlier time. The
            student who does not command, as a minimum, the main episodes of
            Holy Scripture, classic mythology, and the corpus of golden Latin
            is glaucomatose in the modes of thought of Western men educated
            before 1900.
             
            ·  1. The text printed here is based on an address delivered at the
            banquet of the History of Science Society and the Society for the
            History of Technology, Washington, D.C., December 29, 1972. So as
            to retain definiteness and immediacy, I have not blurred the
            original focus upon the history of science and technology, trusting
            that any reader who can understand me at all will be able to turn
            the same lens upon his own field of learning or pseudolearning.
             
            Clifford Ambrose Truesdell, III, Professor of Rational Mechanics at
            John Hopkins University, is the author of, among others, Rational
            Thermodynamics, Six Lectures on Modern Natural Philosophy, and
            Essays in the History of Mechanics. He has edited or coedited six
            volumes of the Encyclopedia of Physics; he has founded three
            international journals of scientific and historical research and
            continues to edit two of them. Among his many honors, Professor
            Truesdell is a Foreign Member of seven European National Academies
            of Science.
Paul de Man
         Political Allegory in Rousseau
         In the Social Contract, the model for the structural description of
            textuality derives from the incompatibility between the formulation
            and the application of the law, reiterating the estrangement that
            exists between the sovereign as an active, and the State as a
            static, principle. The distinction, which is not a polarity, can
            therefore also be phrased in terms of the difference between
            political action and political prescription. The tension between
            figural and grammatical language is duplicated in the
            differentiation between the State as a defined entity (Etat) and
            the State as a principle of action (Souverain) or, in linguistic
            terms, between the constative and the performative function of
            language. A text is defined by the necessity of considering a
            statement, at the same time, as performative and constative, and
            the logical tension between figure and grammar is repeated in the
            impossibility of distinguishing between two linguistic functions
            which are not necessarily compatible. It seems that as soon as a
            text knows what it states, it can only act deceptively, like the
            thieving lawmaker in the Social Contract, and if a text does not
            act, it cannot state what it knows. The distinction between a text
            as narrative and a text as theory also belongs to this field of
            tension.
             
            Paul de Man, Tripp Professor in the humanities and chairman of the
            French department of Yale University, is the author of Blindness
            and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. His
            forthcoming study of the theory of figural language, of which this
            essay will be a part, centers on Rousseau and involves as well
            Rilke, Proust, and Nietzsche. He has also contributed "The
            Epistemology of Metaphor" (Autumn 1978) to .
Joyce Carol Oates
         Jocoserious Joyce
         Ulysses is certainly the greatest novel in the English language,
            and one might argue for its being the greatest single work of art
            in our tradition. How significant, then, and how teasing, that this
            masterwork should be a comedy, and that its creator should have
            explicitly valued the comic "vision" over the tragic how
            disturbing to our predilection for order that, with an homage paid
            to classical antiquity so meticulous that it is surely a burlesque,
            Joyce's exhibitionististicicity is never so serious as when it is
            most outrageously comic. Joyce might have been addressing his
            readers when he wrote to Nora in 1909: "Now . . . I want you to
            read over and over all I have written to you. Some of it is ugly,
            obscene, and bestial, some of it is pure and holy and spiritual:
            all of it is myself."
             
            Joyce Carol Oates is the author of, among others, them, Wonderland,
            and The Assassins. "Jocoserious Joyce" is part of a book on tragedy
            and comedy. Her contributions to , include
            "Lawrence's Gotterdammerung" and "The Picture of Dorian Gray:
            Wilde's Parable about the Fall" (Winter 1980).
             
Alistair Elliot and Richard Stern
         A Poetic Exchange
         [Alistair Elliot:]
             
            Inside the margins of a book
            through the screen doors of ink
            you find yourself among explained people
            whom you imagine from one clue, or two,
            people you cannot bore or smell,
            who will not love you or seduce your friend.
            They have names out of telephone books 
            Baggish and Schreiber 
            but of course they are not real.
             
            [Richard Stern:]
             
            Dear Mr. Elliot. Or for these lines anyway 
            Dear Alistair ("invisible, recognisable reader").
            I wish I were as fictional as Baggish
            And could answer with impalpable visibility,
            but here I am, beside a Dutch canal,
            two hundred clumsy pounds
            and one American election older than you.
            (I read the Contributor's Note.)
            Your poem is on the bed beside my socks.
             
            Alistair Elliot is the author of Air in the Wrong Place, a
            collection of his poetry, and has translated Euripides' Alcestis
            and Aristophanes' Peace. He is presently compiling a new collection
            of his verse entitled Contentions. In addition to the novel which
            generated this poetic exchange, Richard Stern's works include the
            fictions Golk, In Any Case, and Other Men's Daughters, and an
            "orderly miscellany," The Books in Fred Hampton's Apartment.
Leonard B. Meyer
         Grammatical Simplicity and Relational Richness: The Trio of
            Mozart's G Minor Symphony
         Few will, I think, doubt that the Trio from the Minuetto movement
            of Mozart's G Minor Symphony (K. 550) seems simple, direct, and
            lucid even guileless. Its melodies are based upon common
            figures such as triads and conjunct (stepwise) diatonic motion. No
            hemiola pattern, often encountered in triple meter, disturbs metric
            regularity. With the exception of a subtle ambiguity..., rhythmic
            structure is in no way anomalous. There are no irregular or
            surprising chord progressions; indeed, secondary dominants and
            chromatic alterations occur very frequently. The instrumentation is
            quite conventional, and no unusual registers are employed.
             
            In this essay, Leonard B. Meyer, Benjamin Franklin Professor of
            music and humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, further
            explores and details the significance of theories advanced in his
            book, Explaining Music: Essays and Explorations. His previous
            contribution to, "Concerning the Sciences, the Arts
            - AND the Humanities," appeared in our first issue.
Peter F. Dembowski
         Vocabulary of Old French Courtly Lyrics - Difficulties_and_Hidden
            Difficulties
         Literary difficulties vary. Certain genres are "easier" than
            others. And a knowledge of the historical process, involving what
            is called convention certainly seems to make difficult works
            easier. Such is the case of courtly lyrics. They are "simple" and
            essentially conventional; a reader knows what to expect in them.
            But the problem of literary difficulties remains there too. The
            essential difficulties of courtly lyrics are under the surface.
            They become apparent to a more careful, more thoughtful reader. The
            realization that such difficulties exist is the first step toward
            studying them, and only through studying them can we appreciate the
            real aesthetic wealth of courtly poetry and, I believe, of most of
            the poetry of other ages and other cultures.
             
            Peter F. Dembowski is the author of La Chronique de Robert Clari:
            Etude de la langue et du style and the editor of critical editions
            of Old French chansons de geste. His recent edition of all known
            Old and Middle French versions of the Life of Saint Mary of Egypt
            appears in the series, Publications françaises et romanes.
Richard McKeon
         Canonic Books and Prohibited Books: Orthodoxy and Heresy_in
            Religion and Culture
         The history of freedom is the record of what men have said and done
            and the interpretation of the remains of what they have made. The
            history of freedom of thought and expression, the history of
            literature and of criticism, is constructed by interference from
            those records and remains. The documents and artifacts in which
            thoughts are embodied and expressed and in which historians detect
            ideas and uncover their consequences in thought and action are the
            primary matter of the history of freedom of thought and expression.
            The production of books or other modes of expression, their
            preservation, dissemination, interpretation, and use are results at
            each stage of the interplay of freedom and restraint, spontaneity
            and judgment. The freedom of writers to write, the freedom of
            readers to read, and the freedom of critics or judges or censors to
            select criteria which establish communities united by common
            opinions, beliefs, or institutions supplement and delimit each
            other.
             
            Richard McKeon, editor of The Basic Works of Aristotle, delivered
            this paper at the International Conference on Freedom of Thought
            and Expression in the History of Ideas held by the International
            Society for the History of Ideas in Venice, September
            28 October 2, 1975. The essay will be included in a volume of
            the papers read at the conference to be published by the Society.
            His contributions to  include "Arts of Invention
            and Arts of Memory: Creation and Criticism" (Summer 1975) and
            "Pride and Prejudice: Thought, Character, Argument, and
            Plot" (Spring 1979).
William W. Morgan
         Feminism and Literary Study: A Reply to Annette_Kolodny
         Like Kolodny, I think feminism one of the most vital and energizing
            forces in literary criticism today, but for two reasons I found her
            exposition of the topic disappointing. It seems to me that (1) she
            underplays the most crucial of the many aesthetic and pedagogical
            issues raised by feminist literary study, and (2) she endorses a
            kind of intellectual defeatism when, in the conclusion of her
            essay, she places a "Posted" sign between the male readers of
             and her own area of work. Both flaws (as I would
            call them) arise, it appears, out of her underestimation or
            understatement of the revolutionary implications of feminist
            literary study. On the other hand, both flaws may be evidence of
            her problem in writing for so general an audience, for in
            addressing a very heterogeneous audience about a topic so
            potentially incendiary, she has to confront the rhetorical problem
            of how to tell the truth and still be heard. It is that problem, I
            think, that may have led Kolodny and other feminists to propose an
            intellectual separatism of sorts as a necessary interlude. It seems
            to me that once the revolutionary implications of feminist literary
            study are understood, separatism can be seen to be one of the most
            damaging proposals one could make.
             
            William W. Morgan, associate professor of English at Illinois State
            University, is a contributor to Thomas Hardy: An Annotated
            Bibliography of Writings About Him and has published essays on
            Hardy. He is presently working on a book on Hardy's poetry. This
            essay is a response to Annette Kolodny's "Some Notes on Defining a
            'Feminist Literary Criticism'"(Autumn 1975).
Beverly Voloshin
         A Historical Note on Women's Fiction: A Reply_to_Annette_Kolodny
         While I appreciate Annette Kolodny's attempt to clarify the aims of
            feminist criticism, I would like to correct a historical
            misconception in her recent article, "Some Notes on Defining A
            'Feminist Literary Criticism.'" When Kolodny comes to defining a
            feminist criticism, near the end of the essay, she advocates
            applying to individual works, without preconceived conclusions,
            "rigorous methods for analyzing style and image." . . .
            Kolodny implies that Hawthorne wrongly condemned domestic novels
            without having read them and that once he began reading this body
            of fiction he reversed his views in short, that his initial
            response was unthoughtful and, in current jargon, sexist. Second,
            Kolodny implies that the modern reader will find the domestic
            novels of the 1850s as fascinating as Hawthorne found Ruth Hall.
             
            Beverly Voloshin is a teaching associate at the University of
            California, Berkeley. Her current area of study is mid-nineteenth-
            century American domestic fiction.
Annette Kolodny
         The Feminist as Literary Critic
         Reading Morgan's eloquent explanation of himself as a "feminist,"
            self-taught and now wholly enthused at the prospect of teaching a
            Women Writers course, one comes away sharing Morgan's concern that
            he not be left out in the cold. It is, after all, exciting and
            revitalizing to be part of a "revolution" especially if, like
            Morgan, one can so generously and wholeheartedly espouse its goals;
            and, at the same time, it is surely comforting and ego-affirming to
            experience oneself as a legitimate son of that sacred brotherhood,
            The Community of Scholars. What clearly disturbs Morgan is any
            suggestion that the two may not yet be compatible and that,
            further, if forced to choose, Morgan might find himself without
            viable options on either hand. For, if the larger academic
            "community" continues to close its professional ranks to women in
            general and feminists in particular (as it has also excluded, for
            example, blacks and Marxists), then Morgan, as a self-styled
            "feminist" will be forced to seek shelter among the female
            feminists, many of whom have closed their ranks to men. . . .
             
            Beverly Voloshin's Note restores to print some factual information
            which, for the sake of brevity, I cut from my original article,
            directing the reader, instead, to James D. Hart's concise summary
            of the original context of Hawthorne's letter to Ticknor (see
            my n. 19, p. 88). While she and Hart make much the same point, her
            longer explication is, of course, welcome. Additionally, her fine
            explanation of "what was so daring about Ruth Hall" further
            reinforces my argument that there are fascinating texts to be
            discovered in the "feminine fifties" - even if only one or two;
            certainly, that's better than condemning all the women writers of
            that decade to obscurity. Moreover, since we teach a number of male
            texts simply on the grounds of their historical or "sociological"
            interest, why not also include women's texts on these grounds as
            well? especially if, as Voloshin suggests, they reveal
            "numerous covert rebellions against male authority." How
            fascinating! One looks forward to her doing more than this.
            Finally, my main point was not the "feminine fifties" per se, but a
            plea for the careful reconsideration "of texts by women which have,
            for one reason or another, been either lost or ignored" (p.88).
            Stretching the "feminine fifties" by only two years, for example,
            one discovers Rebecca Harding Davis' Life in the Iron Mills (1861),
            recently reissued by the Feminist Press (New York, 1972).
             
            Annette Kolodny, assistant professor of English at the University
            of New Hampshire, has been awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship for
            the study of women in society. She has written articles on American
            literature and culture and a feminist analysis of American
            pastoral, The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History
            in American Life and Letters.
