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  • Incipitque Semper
  • Richard Macksey

Thanks are due to John Duda, who joins us as the very able Editorial Assistant for this issue of MLN. His good sense and good humor have been sustaining. He has been assisted at critical points in the production by two former Editorial Assistants to whom warm thanks are also due: Kate Khatib and Tom Dechand.

Once again, we are also indebted to Myrta Byrum at the Johns Hopkins University Press for seeing this issue through production with her customary fidelity, patience, and professional wisdom. Finally, we thank our (perforce anonymous) external referees for their guidance in assessing contributions.

Benchmarks

John Irwin, the lead editor of a new incarnation of The Hopkins Review, has announced the first number of this journal of arts, letters, and criticism for next fall. Contributions to the first issue include an essay by Sir Frank Kermode, fiction by Max Apple, an unpublished MS by Donald Barthelme, art criticism by Ronald Paulson, and poetry by John Hollander, Mary Jo Salter, and Richard Wilbur.

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A new scholarly press, Owlworks, has just appeared on the scene. It is the imprint of The Archangul Foundation of Baltimore. Its first volume is The Political Imagination in History: Essays concerning J. G. A. Pocock (274 pages). It is edited by D. N. DeLuna, "assisted by Perry Anderson and Glenn Burgess"; the contributors include Gordon Schochet, Robert D. Hume, Michael McKeon, J. A. W. Gunn, D. N. DeLuna, Glenn Burgess, J. C. D. Clark, and John Pocock himself. Owlworks has also published in monograph format the "Valedictory Lecture" delivered by Prof. Pocock on his retirement from teaching at Hopkins. According to a recent interview with D. N. DeLuna in the Chronicle of Higher Education (09/15/06) the aim of the Archangul Foundation is to promote the reform of English usage through various linguist innovations. High on its list of projects is the introduction of an "epicene pronoun" to replace the clumsiness of "he or she," "he/she," "his or hers," etc.; the solution, according to DeLuna, is a gender neutral, undeclinable "hu" (pronounced "huh"). The volume of Pocock studies is apparently the first publication to [End Page 1305] use this neologism; there are approximately a score sites where it occurs in the book—to which "the contributors raised no objection."

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The University of Chicago Press is celebrating the tenth anniversary of The Other Voice, a series of carefully edited and well-produced volumes under the general editorship of Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. "The other voice" refers to the response emerging, roughly in the years 1300 to 1700, to challenge a long tradition of misogynist, anti-feminist writings and practices. The major issues on which these protest writings (in many genres) focus are four "problems": chastity, power, speech, and knowledge (education, humanist learning). To date 44 volumes have appeared of texts originally in Latin or the vernacular with scrupulous translations of those not written in English, in some cases in bilingual editions. Some of the authors are well-known (Christine de Pizan, Vittoria Colonna, Louise Labé, Madeleine de Scudéry, Mme de Maintenon), others have been resurrected from long centuries of neglect in rare book rooms. The majority of the authors are naturally women, although the series also includes volumes by men who dared to cross the gender divide in the debates over the central problems (Vives [with reservations], Agrippa, Annibal Guasco, François Poullain de la Barre). All the volumes are well-annotated, contain extensive bibliographies, and introductions by the volume editors and general editors.

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A handsome new publication dealing with the art of the translator, Journal of Italian Translation, has recently appeared under the editorship of Luigi Bonaffini. Published twice a year (April and November), JIT is devoted to the translation of literary works from and into Italian-English-Italian dialects with all translations appearing with their original texts. The journal also publishes essays and reviews concerned with Italian translation. Each number of JIT includes work by a noteworthy Italian or Italian-American visual artist; the first issue features Giulia Di Fillipi. (Submissions and inquiries should be addressed to the editor, JIT, Dept. of Modern Languages & Literatures, Brooklyn College, 2900 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn...

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