Minutes of the 1959 Meeting

Here is an intensity and an exaltation relevant to all of us who are in our humanity face to face with the same partner and enemy. Wimsatt in his essay on the "Affective Fallacy" remarks with something of a sneer. "The historical scholar, if not much interested in his own personal responses or those of his students, is intensely interested in whatever can be discovered about those of any member of Shakespeare's audience."11 Like other New Critics who would divorce poetry from historical— which is to say, human—experience. Wimsatt ignores the profound truth that both sets of responses need each other. But we, as historical scholars and as men alive now, need not ratify this separation. We are not only professionally interested but deeply and humanly involved with both sets of responses. NOTES 1.The present article is an annotated and slightly revised version of my introductory remarks at the conference. 2.G. E. Wade, "The Interpretation of the Comedia" Bulletin of the Comediantes, 1959. A. Reichenberger, "The Uniqueness of the Comedia," Hispanic Review, 1959. A. A. Parker, "An Approach to Spanish Drama of the Golden Age," The Tulane Drama Review, 1959. A. Castro, "El drama de la honra en España," Cuadernos, 1959. 3.Hacia Cervantes, Madrid, 1957, p. 20. 4.R. del Arco y Garay, La sociedad española en las obras dramáticas de Lope de Vega, Madrid, 1942. 5.L. Spitzer, "A Central Theme and its Structural Equivalent in Fuenteovejuna" Hispanic Review , 1955. D. H. Roaten and F. Sánchez y Escribano, "Wölfflin's Principles in Spanish Drama, New York, 1952. 6.C. Brooks, The Well Wrought Um, New York, 1947 (Harvest Books) pp. x-xi. 7.Y. Winters, The Anatomy of Nonsense, cited by Brooks, p. 241. 8.An extreme, and indeed grotesque, illustration oí the interference of history with the literary appreciation of poems of the past is Yvor Winters ' disesteem for the Poema del Cid and the Chanson de Roland because they are "primitive histories" with "a great deal of detail." Section V of the first essay of his Function of Criticism (Denver, 1957) should be required reading foanyone proposing to become the New Critic of the "comedia." 9.How little really new is to be found in Brooks' own Understanding Drama (New York, 1945) written in collaboration with Robert B. Heilman when compared to his very Well Wrought Urn! 10.F. Ferguson, The Idea of a Theater, Princeton , 1949. H. Weisinger, Tragedy and the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall, London, 1953. 11.W. K. Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon, University of Kentucky, 1954, p. 28. Minutes of the 1959 Meeting The 1959 meeting of the Comediantes took place in the Palmer House in Chicago on December 28. Chairman Myron Peyton opened the session at 9:15 a.m. with a review of the petition for group status whkh had been denied by the MLA Program Committee. The incoming Executive Committee of the Comediantes was instructed to keep in touch with the Program Committee and to report again at the 1960 meeting. Karl Selig and John Keller were installed as editor and co-editor of the Bulletin, to replace Everett Hesse, who had submitted his resignation. W. T. MacReady was named to succeed J. H. Parker for the bibliography . Ruth Lee Kennedy, Arnold Reichenberger and Robert Bininger were elected to the Executive Committee for 1960, with Reichenberger as Secretary and Bininger as Chairman. Professor Peyton reminded the meräbers of the Lope Centennial to be celebrated in 1962. Plans have yet to be formulated for observance of the occasion by the Comediantes. Professor Hesse reported on the financial status of the Bulletin. He noted that once more a deficit had been averted and a favorable balance established by the prompt and generous response of the members to his appeal for voluntary contributions in addition to the annual dues. The alternative to this method of financing would be an increase in dues, which all concerned would prefer to avoid. In his report on the topic poll that had been taken prior to the meeting, Chairman Peyton pointed out that the question of "Ways and Means of Encouraging and Improving Research in...