The advocates of the philosophy of engagement assert that learning and scholarship are not value-free, that there is a ubiquitous, even if implicit, commitment to a moral, and therefore basically political, standpoint in the vocation of the scholar and in the mission of the university. The first thing to note about this philosophy is its high-mindedness, its exalted conception of the role of the scholar and scholarship. However, if the commitment of the scholar is moral and not only intellectual, to virtue and not only to truth, how can this supply guidance or a principle of decision where the scholar encounters conflict among moral values? Decisions as to which values are to be given priority flow from the judgments, inescapable moral and political judgments, with which the citizen must concern himself. But the traditional view is that the primary goal of the citizen in his role as scholar is not the quest for virtue or power but the quest for significant truths. The pursuit of truth does not entail withdrawal or isolation from but service to society. Scholars cannot and should not escape the world of politics. But in a rational and humane society there must be some activities and institutions that are beyond politics.

Luther's German writings contain a large number of Biblical quotations, many of which differ from his translations of these same passages in his formal Bible. It is obvious that he generally did not take time to look up a passage in his published versions, but produced a new, ad hoc translation which was the inspiration of the moment. The variorum Weimar edition of Luther's Bible, now complete in twelve volumes, regrettably does not include these informal quotations. From among all the casual quotations occurring in Luther's German writings, a few examples from the New Testament are presented and discussed in this article, along with the corresponding texts of the Greek original, the Vulgate, and the pre-Lutheran German Bibles, as well as Luther's official renderings. Luther's ad hoc translations are often even more vivid and concrete than his official Bible itself. They might be said to constitute a new Luther Bible—one which is not complete, to be sure, but which includes many if not most of the great scriptural passages. These casual quotations are fresh evidence of Luther's impressive stature as a literary figure. They should be included in any new variorum edition of Luther's German Bible.

Spanish literature in the Golden Age was a primary literature that produced an impressive number of new literary forms that were admired, copied, and naturalized throughout the rest of Europe. Rojas' La Celestina, Torres Naharro's Comedia Serafina, the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes, Tirso de Molina's El condenado por desconfiado, and Don Quixote provide examples of the “imaginative authority” of the older literature of Spain. This power of a piece of writing to assume a life of its own, its power to lead the audience wherever it pleases, is best understood in a religious context, since the authors of the works themselves wrote in a religious context. The end of literary study is not theological or moral instruction but elucidation of the intrinsic meanings of the work. Nevertheless, the proper model for the relation of the elucidator to the work is not that of the scientist to physical objects, but that of one man to another in charity. If the critic approaches the poem with this kind of reverence for its integrity, it will respond to questioning and take its part in the dialogue between reader and work which is the life of literary study.

AN important chapter in the history of modern Greek poetry was opened by Claude-Charles Fauriel.1 He circulated a well-organized body of popular verse, fragments of which were known in western Europe to only a few travellers before him, and, of course, to Goethe.2 Yet modern Greek criticism has been ungenerous to him. Although no modern edition of Greek demotic songs can begin without acknowledging his ground-breaking contributions, his editing has been characterized as lacking fidelity,3 and his motives “naturally, indebted to the ideas of German romanticism.”4 Herder's methodological outlook, and Goethe's seminal specimens of 1802 had a great deal to do with the spectacular success of Fauriel's two volumes. Versions of his work were made available in St. Petersburg, Leipzig, and London in 1825, the year of the original publication in Paris.6 On the other hand, neither Goethe's nor Fauriel's motives can be conceived apart from the strong philhellenic sentiment that had so much to do with the physical fate of that province of the Ottoman Empire called Greece. That movement did not differ, either in the kind of dreams that it evoked or in the numbers of romantic and romanticizing adherents that it set dreaming, from those movements that found the Corsicans and the Spanish “exotic” and the Americans “innocent.”

The 176 verses (44 epigrams) of the Walpurgis Night's Dream in Faust, Part I, are structurally divided into three themes and contain elements of aesthetics, cognition theory, and social criticism. In the relationship between Walpurgis Night and Walpurgis Night's Dream, overlapping tendencies toward concrete characterization and abstract figure-allegories pave the way for that interrelation of the “big” and “small” world which is the basic principle of the artistic link between Faust, Part I, and Faust, Part XI. With polemical intentions, Goethe draws a series of types and characters which, as a body, must be understood in the sense of Hegel as an “abolition” of irony in romanticist comedies. In regard to tradition, borrowings from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night'sDream and The Tempest are combined with adaptations of Domenico Cimarosa and the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is the inherent unity of seriousness and levity, of the tragic and the comic, of constructive profoundness and slapstick in all these elements which give Walpurgis Night's Dream an important but up to now functionally underestimated place in the complete work of Faust. (In German)

Although often dismissed as a Victorian curiosity, the faith of Tennyson's In Memoriam anticipates the radically modern religious vision of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Both In Memoriam and Teilhard's The Phenomenon of Man stress the need for modern man to see the human phenomenon in the light of recent scientific knowledge. Both works portray the anxiety and doubt that such a vision entails; both works portray the shape that faith must take if man is to survive. Tennyson and Teilhard see modern doubt as stemming from the space-time malady: overwhelmed by the enormity of the universe, modern man fears his existence is both frail and futile. To counter this malady, both men develop a cosmic faith stressing love as the spiritual energy that drives evolution onward; the need for greater knowledge, communication, and spiritual growth; and an awareness of human survival after death. Translating this faith into Christian terms, both men see man's salvation in his efforts to evolve toward a cosmic Christ-that-is-to-be. Although Tennyson speaks as poet in mostly personal terms and Teilhard speaks as scientist-sage in more general terms, both men use art to lead the reader to Real Assent.

AN AUTHOR who reworks a story adapts the original in such a way that his new story, while obviously based on it, is endowed with new meaning. The original is usually adapted by means of a clear alteration of characterization and plot with a resultant change in underlying philosophy between the original and the reworked story. The Greek plays, for instance, have been altered in this way by Existentialists to diminish the role of fate and to emphasize human responsibility. Rarely is a story reworked in such a way that the meaning of the new work lies not in its difference from but in its similarity to the original.1 To effect this, plot and characterization are only minimally altered and crucial importance is given to a change of period. The new setting superficially disguises but in fact emphasizes the correspondence between the two stories. Some of the key problems encountered in this kind of reworking, such as the avoidance of mere imitation, archaism, and triviality of statement,2 can be revealed by a structural examination of Francisco Ayala's El rapto,3 a short novel based on an episode from Don Quijote.

Most theories designed to explain how and when the Vercelli Book came into the hands of the canons of San Eusebio di Vercelli are little more than guesswork; and those which endeavour to single out a particular agent of transmission ignore local data, such as the records of the commune, abbey, hospices, proto-university, and cathedral, which provide a wealth of documentation for the frequency of Vercelli's contacts with England and Englishmen both during and after the Middle Ages. The only solid evidence for the length of time that Codex cxvii has rested in the cathedral archives must be found in the manuscript itself and in the various book catalogues drawn up by the canons down through the centuries. Of special interest among these catalogues is a recently discovered one, dated 1426, which describes what is probably the Vercelli Book in terms suggesting that it is an old possession of the Eusebian chapter, thus lending support to the contention that the inscription on 24v of the manuscript is indeed north Italian of the eleventh century.

GEORG Trakl, Georg Heym, and Ernst Stadler are generally grouped together as the early German Expressionists. Each was born within a four-year period, 1883–87, and each died in the two-year period, 1912–14. The three poets produced a great deal of bad poetry before breaking through to both originality and modernity for a few short years before early deaths. Their poetry provided some of the models for the immense following wave of Expressionist lyric and at the same time represents the greatest and most lasting achievement of that movement. They shared many techniques, such as the new kinds of metaphor (described by Schneider)1 or the new kind of lyrical sentence-line (Zeilenstil described by Heselhaus).2

As an abstraction from the conditions of real life, the pastoral mode permits both heightened esthetic contemplation and concentrated study of human love. Such removal from reality is related to music, myth, and nature. The peculiarity of La Diana consists in an attempt to fuse the neo-aristotelian antithesis between poetry (myth) and history. For Montemayor, love and virtue are mysterious gifts of nature which man preserves through effort. But if man serves love, high feelings mark the nobleman. In a social context such sentimental aristocracy must be proved in the form of a trial of love. Felismena's contradictory behavior may be understood as an amorous despair—the hardest of trials—that is nevertheless willed. Similar conclusions arise from viewing Belisa's dreams as symbolic projections (the paradigm for which is Felicia's potion—a symbol of rebirth). A symbolic interpretation of the magical dream induced by Alfeo reveals Belisa's desire to kill her lover (will to trial) without suffering his permanent loss. Such psychotic tendencies are stemmed by the goddess Felicia, who allegorically reinstitutes the desire for happiness and its pursuit in the world of reality through self-renunciation.

The Damned Crew was a class of roisterers in London from the early 1590's to the late 1620's, their self-styled captain being at one time Sir Edmund Baynham, who was also involved in the Gunpowder Plot. Represented in literature as perjurers, assassins, dissidents, and revellers, they were thought to be reprobate with the damned crew of devils in hell. Indeed, they may have thought so themselves, reacting from misconstrued predestinarianism as desperate libertines with a limited Manichean outlook. Some such interpretation explains their title and behaviour and the view of them taken by theological controversialists such as Dove, Kellison, and Sutcliffe, and by playwrights like Chapman.