The MLA Conference on Modern Drama: "Founding a Canon: An Opinionated Report"

THE ON MLA CONFERENCE MODERN DRAMA "FOUNDING A CANON: AN OPINIONATED REPORT" THE FIDST (and generally successful) Modern Drama Conference organized by Professor A. C. Edwards of the University of Kansas met Tuesday, December 29, 1959, at the national meeting of the MLA with more than thirty invited specialists in attendance. Professor Edwards acted as chairman and Professor R. J. Kaufmann of the University of Rochester as secretary. The program consisted of two brief talks and a somewhat longer discussion. The first of the two talks, by Professor Robert Shedd of Ohio State, concerned the proper anthology for a modern drama course. The second, by Professor Edith Kern of the University of Pennsylvania, was on the problems of translating foreign dramas into English. Professor Shedd's suggestions first raised standro.rd questions: of the chronological scope of "modern drama" (from Buchner, Hebbel and Kleist? or from Ibsen and Strindberg? to World War II? or to an ever receding present?); of criteria of deciding between the HistolY of Modern Drama or a Masters' course (do we, e.g., want to establish continuity chronologically through theatrical usage, through direct influence or through elaboration of common themes, or by any of these means?). Perhaps we would rather read a harmonized selection of several plays each by a velY few "great" dramatists with merely formal emphasis and with indifference to historical evolution? Perhaps the time has come to break the modern drama into a 19th century course and a 20th century course? Then we must ask whether these should be consecutive parts of a whole or independent. These and other doubts are, and will remain, endemic in our community of specialists until Modern Drama achieves the formalities of defined academic status. Until we can give it a beginning and an end it will be impossible , save casually, to say what it is, or even what its irreducible canon of texts must be. Inside this circle of relevant generalities, Professor Shedd pJaced a very practical enquiry. He and Professor Haskell Block of Wisconsin are doing an anthology of modern dramas to include about forty plays. They have badly wanted to find out jnst what is being done in modem drama courses around the country and just what we want in the way of texts. They have had difficulty finding out. Once again it is clear that we are less well-integrated into a speciality discipline than are people in comparable fields. We need perhaps to work together to unify our critical and scholarly efforts, thus increasing our mutual 331 332 MODERN DRAMA February awareness, so that by our own attentiveness to the use of fact and critical opinion we can raise the reigning standard of our field. That the present standard is not so high as it might be is a fact traceable to many causes of which a number emerged obliquely in the general discussion . More of that in a moment. Professor Shedd's remarks concluded with some words on the jurisdiction problems raised in teaching modem drama. Speech and drama teachers, modem language and English often compete and overlap and (pursuing different critical ends) respect somewhat different standards of excellence. These varying needs further complicate the anthologists' task. It was clear why Professor Edwards asked for a talk on the problems of the anthologist to open this first Conference on Modem Drama, for anthologizing is the engineering phrase of drama criticism which rests upon an antecedent theoretical stage, the ascertaining of a canon. Ignoring this, we improvise. Professor Kern's remarks on translation, in a necessarily different ,\vay, led to some convergi...'t").g reflections on the unifying assumptions behind the discipline called "Modem Drama." Professional translation is necessary because the internal ordering principles of each language differ markedly from all others; still, translation is impossible unless we assume a substratum of common modes of thought, common preoccupations which make these differing "surface parts" interchangeable in the way we call translation. Further, since we work with translated texts a great part of the time, we have to retreat (or advance ) to these underlying unifying assumptions; we usually call these themes. But since, with plays, we are not dealing primarily with conceptual systems but...