From Goethe to Globalism:
Eavesdropping on the PMLA
Introduction
In my attempt to trace the "conversational" development or changes in knowledge focus of the PMLA, I have found much one would expect: the deeper you plumb, the whiter/more European/traditional the focus of the knowledge field becomes.
In order to determine how—and even why—these changes have taken place, or at least to identify conversational trends in this journal, I began by selecting a particular year’s edition, in this case, the ninth year of each decade since the journal’s 1889 inception, and perused the titles of each and every one of the articles.
In my previous blog I echoed what our fellow student Andrew noticed in his exploration of American Literature: namely that over the years, the journal’s content has become more liberal and thus more inclusive of variety of subject matter.
The below chart gives provides a rough topography of how the PMLA’s knowledge field has evolved over time. Notice that from 1969 onward, the subject matter becomes increasingly inclusive and multicultural as traditional subject matter is given less and less attention.
| 1889 | 1899 | 1909 | 1919 | 1929 | 1939 | |
| Dante | Goethe | Chaucer | Shakespeare | 3 Chaucer | Goethe | |
| Language and Lit. of | Middle Egl. | Browning | Goethe | 2 Shakespeare | ||
| Elizabethan Prose | Spencer | |||||
| Studies of English Prose | Dante | |||||
| Plutarch | ||||||
| Joyce | ||||||
| 1949 | 1959 | 1969 | 1979 | 1989 | 1999 | 2004 |
| Existentialism | Cervantes | Twain | Benjamin | Ethics* | Globalism | |
| Joyce | Dryden | Marxism | 2 Feminism | Af.Am. std | Hispanism | |
| Melville | Dostoevsky | Byron | Chaucer | Woolf | Women’s std | |
| Keats | Woolf | Shakespeare | ||||
| Shelley | Twain | Joyce | ||||
| Shakespeare | Blake | Wordsworth | ||||
| Chaucer | Wordsworth | Dickenson | ||||
| Black Folklore | ||||||
| Blake | ||||||
A Look at Specific Articles
I would like to being my report by discussing what I struck me (as an “urban” humanities graduate student, anyway) about the very first document I read from the the first issue/first edition of the PMLA entitled the Address of Welcome by Ex-Governor Jacob Cox.
The one thing that stunned me was the language employed. For example, the phrase: “raw unlettered immigrant”; I do not imagine that you would find such a phrase used these days to refer to anyone, immigrant of not. The other thing that I noticed was the assumption of the speaker that a child learns language at “its mother’s knee.” Again, this is something that—even if we think it to be true—we do publicly assume.
The next issue I looked at in depth was the 1919 edition of the PMLA, with specific attention paid to an article entitled: Why Did Shakespeare Invent Falstaff, by Albert H Thomas. This piece was a straightforward survey of Shakespeare’s Falstaff. The author does a (need I say) brilliant job of evaluating the character and his evolution/development/relation to the audience.
As to the question: “Did anything about this piece strike me as significant or noteworthy?”... Not really. The tone of the article was mildly conservative (though I would have a tough time explaining why I feel that way) and very easy to read. Maybe that would qualify: one thing I noticed in my survey of the PMLA’s developing knowledge field, is that as the journal evolved, the articles became increasingly abstruse.
The next article, by Sherman M. Kuhn, entitled The Dialect of the Corpus Glossary, from the 1939 edition of the journal was much more densely argued and required a great deal more attention then the 1919 Falstaff piece. I don’t know what to attribute this change to other than the subject area which in this case centered on answering two questions: First, to what extent is the language of Corpus the result of dialect mixture? Second, what is the relationship between the language of Corpus and that of the most important of the texts now looked upon as Mercian, the Vespasian Psalter?
The author of this article explores the development of language, with specific attention paid to changes in consonants and dialect evolution; for instance, disparities between the North Umbrian and the Mercian in the 8th century. This article was very specialized, required fervent focus and background knowledge. The seemed so specialized in fact, that I wondered if perhaps there was something to be said about the influence of scientific thinking at the time, i.e. the revolutionary developments in quantum theory that were more likely than not sweeping through European cafes at the time.
The next article I looked at, this time the 1949 edition, entitled An Existentialist and an Idealist view of Satre’s Les Mouches and Schiller’s Wilhem Tell), by Ludwig Kahn, was a pleasure to read!
I was a little taken aback to see this article in the PMLA. It read more like a philosophical monograph than a piece of literary criticism. But that is part of the beauty of the field we have chosen, right? It welcomes opinions and considers so many perspectives. Perhaps the sweetest spot in the entire essay was the exclamation page 7:
What agony, on the other hand, if there be no moral or ideal order, if you cannot appeal to some higher or universal judgment, if you cannot find security in some common morality! What anguish if man has to make his decisions solely on his own responsibility!
I love emotionally charged writing, especially when the subject matter is something that so deeply concerns me.
The next number one edition I looked was the1959 edition of the journal. This time I focus on an article entitled The Diana of Montemayor: Tradition and Innovation, by Juan Batista Avalle Arce. The subject matter of this article concerned the publication of a Diana which Spanish pastoral novel, Diana.
This article was just what one would expect (someone that knows as little as I do) to find in a literary Journal. We finds concerns over such items as “narrative scheme” and “aesthetic attitudes” of the author f Diana (Monetemayor) and “novelistic construction”. Again, this article was just what you would expects to find.
The next number one was from the 1969 edition of the PMLA, entitled Fauriel and Modern Greek Poetry by Stavros Deligiorgis. This article was relatively short and standard, that is, what I expected of a piece of literary criticism.The next article I looked at was the 1989 piece entitled The Politics of Quotation: Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Projects by James L Rolleston.
I was again a little surprised to see that the knowledge field of the PMLA had again expanded to included the work of a philosopher, in this case Benjamin. Though, on second thought, Benjamin is difficult to categorize. Perhaps it makes sense that his work would be of interest: it in itself (from what little familiarity I have with it) is so broad and deals with such a wide array of subject matter that it may have fit right in.
The article itself is concerned with linking Benjamin’s earlier writings to his later work and discusses some of his ideas regarding the silent texts that surround us: buildings, what about their structure, their dimensions there use and shape communicate the ideology of the culture and the society in which they have been erected.
The other part of the article where the author discusses the nature and effects of boredom reminded me of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape letters: Uncle Screwtape advises Wormwood not to engender too much thinking in his host soul, but to keep him satisfied, his daily time “painless and enjoyable.” I don’t know if there is much more of a parallel, but this was interesting…I digress
The article I looked at was the most recent available on JSTOR (2004): Global Literature and the Technologies of Regognition by Shu-Merl Shih.
This article was concerned with the “globalization of literary studies.” The tone is overtly political and considers the effects of “two specific technologies of recognition, that of academic discourse and the literary market.”
Some of the concerns broached in the article were exactly what I expected from a modern day literary journal article. One of its focuses was on the influence of literary criticism itself on the market: because literary criticism was focusing so much on national narrative, that this was somehow artificially stimulating that particular market.
This was an intensely abstruse article, and the subject matter seemed to meld the divide between literature studies and politics. I would not have been at all surprised to see such an article printed in an equally esteemed political journal.
Conclusion
The evolution of the knowledge field of the PMLA from its 1889 inception has been stunning. Before the 60s, the articles were concerned with very traditional subject matter: Chaucer, Goethe, Dante (see the above chart). Post 1969, the shift in subject matter was huge. It seemed to happen overnight. And though the focus has shifted and the attention paid to the traditional had waned, I imagine there is always room for revival.
Overall, I found this exercise illuminating. It was amazing to see how profound the shift in the conversation has been. I am intrigued and excited to see what the future will bring for this journal and others like it, and hope to someday—if I am very lucky—contribute something to the conversation myself.
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