The Editor's Fence

11 THE EDITOR'S FEIvCE 1. Seminar on English Literature In Transition: The Aesthetics of Realisms (1880-192Ö7 The fourteenth consecutive Seminar on the ELT period will be held at the Kew York MLA meetings In December, I97O. Fapers on which the discussion will be based should reach me before the end of October In order to be considered for publication In ELT prior to the MLA meetings. Papers may deal with theories of realism, with specific aspects of fictional realism, with the relationship of fictional realism to historical reality, with Individual practitioners of realistic fiction, and so on. It Is essential that the content of the papers be specifically concerned with English literature between I88O and I92O. Time, date and place for the Seminar will be announced as soon as this Information Is released by MLA. 2. The ELT Invasion: In the preceding two Issues, I noted ELT courses being offered at Ottawa and at State University College at Geneseo. Frofessor Fred L. Standley (The Florida State University, Tallahassee) now reports that he has been offering a graduate course called Studies In Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature for two years and that he Is teaching a similar course on the undergraduate level this Fall. These courses are In addition to the standard offerings In Victorian and Modern Literature. In his graduate course, Professor Standley uses the Pegasus Press ELT anthologies and works by Moore, Bennett, Galsworthy, Shaw, Synge, Wells, Wilde, and Pater. Courses In the ELT period have been firmly established In many graduate programs, but I am especially delighted to hear of their appearance In undergraduate curricula. ELT literature, It seems to me, has considerable bearing on the present time and most of It Is still sufficiently unburdened by an oppressive weight of repetitive and rather pretentious scholarship to allow for some free play of mind. It Is a literature laced with a sense of humor we sometimes seem In danger of losing. Yet, how marvelously ELT literature dramatizes the confrontation of the "establishment" and the "anti-establishment " of that day, how delightfully the game of "relevance" vs. "Irrelevance" was played then, and few of the writers of that time ever forgot that one aim of Imaginative literature Is to give pleasure to an audience. ANNOUNCEMENTS 1. People: We at Northern Illinois University are pleased to have on our staff for the Fall Term, as Visiting Associate Professor , Harold F. Mosher, Jr., who has been at Nice for the past two years and whose home base Is the University of Cincinnati. Professor Mosher will be teaching a seminar on Stylistics and the Novel and another graduate course on Form and Meaning in Fiction. I am particularly happy to have him so near, for he has contributed gen- ...