The Little Professor

In 1950, what was published in PMLA?

Results derived from a search in the MLA International Bibliography, with the chronological limiters of January 1950 to January 1951; the search yielded a total of eighty-eight articles.  Some observations at the end.

American literature:

  • George H. Nettleton, "Sheridan's Introduction to the American Stage" (reception; 18th c.)
  • Donald A. Ringe, "Hawthorne's Psychology of the Head and Heart" (19th c.)
  • John W. Shroeder, "'That Inward Sphere': Notes on Hawthorne's Heart Imagery and Symbolism" (19th c.)
  • Carl F. Strauch, "The Date of Emerson's Terminus" (establishes date; 19th c.)
  • G. Giovanni, "Melville and Dante" (19th c.; response to earlier article)
  • John K. Reeves, "The Way of a Realist: A Study of Howells' Use of the Saratoga Scene" (19th c.)
  • C. Hugh Holman, "Simms and the British Dramatists" (source study; William Gilmore Simms; 19th c.)
  • R. W. Short, "Some Critical Terms of Henry James" (19th c.)
  • W. B. Gates, "Cooper's The Sea Lions and Wilkes' Narrative" (source study; James Fenimore Cooper; 19th c.)

English literature:

  • Helaine Newstead, "Kaherdin and the Enchanted Pillow: An Episode in the Tristan Legend" (source study; medieval)
  • W. H. Trethewey, "The Seven Deadly Sins and the Devil's Court in the Trinity College Cambridge French Text of the Ancrene Riwle" (manuscript; medieval)
  • Anna J. Mill, "The York Plays of the Dying, Assumption, and Coronation of Our Lady" (medieval)
  • R. H. Bowers, "A Middle English Treatise on Hermeneutics: Harley Ms. 2276, 32v-35v" (manuscript; medieval)
  • William A. Nitze, "Additional Note on Arthurian Names" (medieval)
  • Jerome W. Archer, "On Chaucer's Source for 'Arveragus' in the Franklin's Tale" (source study; 14th c.)
  • Margaret Schlauch, "Chaucer's Prose Rhythms" (14th c.)
  • Charles Muscatine, "Form, Texture, and Meaning in Chaucer's Knight's Tale" (14th c.)
  • Margaret H. Statler, "The Analogues of Chaucer's Prioress' Tale: The Relation of Group C to Group A" (source study; 14th c.)
  • Mary E. Dichmann, "Characterization in Malory's Tale of Arthur and Lucius" (15th c.)
  • Curt F. Buhler, "The Liber de Dictis Philosophorum Antiquorum and Common Proverbs in George Ashby's Poems" (source study; 15th c.)
  • Rossell Hope Robbins, "The Poems of Humfrey Newton, Esquire, 1466-1536" (transcription; 15th-16th c.)
  • Bertrand Evans, "The Brevity of Friar Laurence" (Shakespeare; 16th c.)
  • Ralph M. Sargent, "Sir Thomas Elyot and the Integrity of The Two Gentlemen of Verona" (Shakespeare; source study; 16th c.)
  • Michael F. Moloney, "Donne's Metrical Practice" (16th-17th c.)
  • Elizabeth Jackson, "Milton's Sonnet XX" (17th c.)
  • Arnold Stein, "Satan: The Dramatic Rôle of Evil" (on Milton; 17th c.)
  • Audrey Chew, "Joseph Hall and Neo-Stoicism" (17th c.)
  • Peter G. Phialas, "The Sources of Massinger's Emperour of the East" (source study; 17th c.)
  • A. Owen Aldridge, "Polygamy in Early Fiction: Henry Neville and Denis Veiras" (17th c.)
  • Edward A. Bloom, "Addison's 'Enquiry after Truth': The Moral Assumptions of His Proof for Divine Existence" (18th c.)
  • Robert Halsband, "Addison's Cato and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu" (18th c.)
  • Earl R. Wasserman, "The Inherent Values of Eighteenth-Century Personification" (18th c.)
  • D. J. Greene, "The Johnsonian Canon: A Neglected Attribution" (authorship; 18th c.)
  • Arthur M. Eastman, "Johnson's Shakespeare and the Laity: A Textual Study" (editing; 18th c.)
  • Edward Hart, "Some New Sources of Johnson's Lives" (source study; 18th c.)
  • James L. Jackson, "Pope's The Rape of the Lock Considered as a Five-Act Epic" (18th c.)
  • George Winchester Stone, Jr., "David Garrick's Significance in the History of Shakespearean Criticism: A Study of the Impact of the Actor upon the Change of Critical Focus during the Eighteenth Century" (reception; 18th c.)
  • Joyce Hemlow, "Fanny Burney and the Courtesy Books" (source study; 18th c.)
  • Lodwick Hartley, "Cowper and the Evangelicals: Notes on Early Biographical Interpretations" (18th c.)
  • Robert D. Mayo, "Gothic Romance in the Magazines" (publishing; 18th-19th c.)
  • James Benziger, "Tintern Abbey Revisited" (critical responses; 19th c.)
  • Raymond D. Havens, "Structure and Prosodic Pattern in Shelley's Lyrics" (19th c.)
  • Alan Lang Strout, "James Hogg's 'Chaldee Manuscript'" (publishing; 19th c.)
  • Jane Worthington Smyser, "Coleridge's Use of Wordsworth's Juvenilia" (authorship; 19th c.)
  • Fred W. Boege, "Point of View in Dickens" (19th c.)
  • Buckner W. Trawick, "The Sea of Faith and the Battle by Night in Dover Beach" (Matthew Arnold; 19th c.)
  • Marjorie D. Coogan, "Inscape and Instress: Further Analogies with Scotus" (Scotus' influence on Hopkins; 19th c.)
  • Bennett Weaver, "Twenty Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd" (transcription; 19th c.)

French:

  • Alfred Adler, "Problems of Aesthetic versus Historical Criticism in La Mort le roi Artu" (critical approaches; medieval)
  • William S. Woods, "The Symbolic Structure of La Chanson de Roland" (medieval)
  • Andrew Bell, "Gaimar's Early 'Danish' Kings" (on Geffrai Gaimar; 12th c.)
  • Linton C. Stevens, "How the French Humanists of the Renaissance Learned Greek" (Renaissance)
  • Harry Kurz, "Montaigne and La Boétie in the Chapter on Friendship" (16th c.)
  • Nan Cooke Carpenter, "Rabelais and the Chanson" (16th c.)
  • H. Carrington Lancaster, "'The Richelieu-Corneille Rapport" (17th c.; response to earlier article)
  • Frank M. Chambers, "Pascal's Montaigne" (source study; 17th c.)
  • Olin H. Moore, "Victor Hugo as a Humorist before 1840" (Shakespeare's influences; 19th c.)
  • Henry A. Grubbs, "Mallarmé's 'Ptyx' Sonnet: An Analytical and Critical Study" (19th c.)
  • Margaret Gilman, "Balzac and Diderot: Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu" (source study; 19th c.)
  • Marianne Bonwit, "Flaubert auf Goethes Spuren: In Italien und im Château des Coeurs" (19th c.)
  • B. F. Bart, "Flaubert's Itinerary in Greece" (19th c.)
  • J. J. Lamorest, "Lamennais, le 'nouveau Pascal'" (source study; 19th c.)
  • René Galand, "Proust et Baudelaire" (19th-20th c.)
  • Jean Canu, "André Gide et la Normandie" (20th c.)
  • Harry Levin, "Proust, Gide, and the Sexes" (homosexuality; 20th c.; response to earlier article)

German:

  • Arno Schirokauer, "Der Mareo Seo" (on cosmogony in Wessobruner Gebet; medieval)
  • William H. Bennett, "The Milanese Leaves of the Skeireins under Ultraviolet Radiation" (manuscript; medieval)
  • Curtis C. D. Vail, "Lessing's Attitude toward Storm and Stress" (18th c.)
  • Heinz Bluhm, "Nietzsche's Idea of Luther in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches" (19th c.)
  • Andrew O. Jászi, "Richard Dehmels Auseinandersetzung mit dem Kultus des Lebens" (20th c.)
  • W. H. Rey, "Return to Health? 'Disease' in Mann's Doctor Faustus" (20th c.)
  • Sol Liptzin, "Goethe and Beer-Hofmann" (source study; 20th c.)

Italian:

  • Edward  Williamson, "Form and Content in the Development of the Italian Renaissance Ode" (Luigi Alamanni and Bernardo Tasso; 16th c.)
  • Vincent Luciani, "Sansovino's Concetti Politici and Their Debt to Guicciardini" (Francesco Sansovino; source study; 16th c.)

Spanish:

  • Yakov Malkiel, "Old Spanish Paladino, Palaciano, Palanciano, Palaciego" (linguistics)
  • Bruce W. Wardropper, "The Search for a Dramatic Formula for the Auto Sacramental" (16th c.)
  • Everett W. Hesse, "Courtly Allusions in the Plays of Calderón" (17th c.)
  • Max J. Oppenheimer, Jr., "The Baroque Impasse in the Calderonian Drama" (17th c.)
  • Henry W. Hoge, "Notes on the Sources and the Autograph Manuscript of Lope de Vega's El príncipe despeñado" (source study; 17th c.)
  • Juan López-Morillas, "Unamuno and Pascal: Notes on the Concept of Agony" (20th c.)

General poetics, stylistics, other theory, surveys:

  • W. K. Wimsatt, "Verbal Style: Logical and Counterlogical" (stylistics)
  • Lawrence Edward Bowling, "What Is the Stream of Consciousness Technique?" (form)
  • Robert Graham Sawyer, "1950 Research in Progress in the Modern Languages and Literatures" (bibliography)
  • Millett Henshaw, "American Bibliography for 1949" (bibliography)
  • Henry M. Silver, "Putting It on Paper" (scholarly manuscripts)
  • R. B. McKerrow, "Form and Matter in the Publication of Research" (scholarly manuscripts)
  • Howard F. Lowry, "Literature in American Education"
  • George Sherburn, "Words That Intimidate" 

Some observations:

  • English literature clearly dominated, with 39 articles (or nearly half of the total); American literature, with nine articles, ranked a distant third, with French second.
  • Eighteen articles were devoted to literature published prior to the sixteenth century; thirty articles were devoted to literature published between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.  Only eight articles (including the article on stream-of-consciousness) dealt with twentieth-century literature of any national origin.
  • Sixteen of the articles are source studies, whereas approximately twelve deal with formal issues (the precise number is open to argument).  The remainder draw on thematic criticism or address problems of textual editing.  Only one title foregrounds questions of aesthetic evaluation.
  • Articles on poetry, drama, and nonfiction prose drastically outnumber articles on fiction, partly as a result of chronological focus.
  • Nearly all of the articles are single-author (or author and influence) studies.

Some additional notes:

  • In my own specialties, it has been my general experience that literary criticism published in the 1950s or earlier is not systematically evaluative.  That is, while scholars may certainly offer opinions about a work's quality, such opinions frequently do not demonstrate any sort of thoroughgoing immersion in aesthetics (and, sometimes, appear entirely inexplicable). 
  • It would be interesting to see what kinds of arguments these articles offer.
  • It would also be interesting to know how, in these cases, scholarly research matched up with classroom practice.  Or not.
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