The 1961 MLA Conference on Modern Drama

THE 1961 MLA CONFERENCE ON MODERN DRAMA Report of the Secretary THE: MODERN DRAMA CONFERENCE is at present poised between the inform.ality of the small conference and the formal status of a regular MLA group. That seemed clear to the more than forty people who filled the room assigned to the Conference at the MLA convention on Thursday, December 28, 1961, in Chicago. Professor Robert G. Shedd of the Ohio State University acted as chairman of the meeting, which he opened with a series of comments and announcements . The most important was that Modern Drama will have a special Strindberg issue in December, 1962, for which Professor Shedd will be the editor. Papers must be submitted by September to receive consideration, and are especially invited on plays other than The Ghost Sonata or The Dream P1o,y; most of the papers sent in so far deal with a very small area of Stiindberg's work. Professor David Krause of Brown University then briefly described the edition of Sean O'Casey's letters which he is preparing for Macmillan . He invited anyone who has letters from the playwright to send them to him for photocopying, and assured the lenders of their safe and speedy return. Most of the Conference was devoted to two informal reports, one dealing with Strindberg scholarship, and the other with recent books on the contemporary French theater. First, Professor Richard B. Vowles of the University of Wisconsin discussed current trends in Strindberg scholarship. His paper is summarized very briefly here because it will be revised and published in the Strindberg issue of Modem Drama. Professor Vowles made the opening basic point that Strindberg is generally given less consideration than Ibsen and Chekhov, though his importance to the development of the modem drama is at least as great. In part this is the result of the problems involved, which begin with the difficulties concerning the authoritative texts of the plays. The textual hazards are compounded in the various translations, almost all of which seem to be based on the John Landquist edition of 1912-20, in itself not an adequate text. Professor Vowles gave details of recent research on textual problems and discussed some of the studies of Strindberg manuscripts. He then proceeded to recent works, many of them Swedish, which treat specific aspects of Strindberg's 339 340 MODERN DRAMA February ideas and preoccupations, in particular the massive edition of his letters which is proceeding under the editorship of Trosten Eklund. Strindberg's concern with Rousseau and with Nietzsche, his admiration for Balzac, and some aspects of his private life, especially his unhappy marriage to Sirl von Essen, are also discussed and doctimented in recent books and articles. Other articles explore Strindberg's relation to surrealism, his concept of dreams, especially in relation to Kafka, and his reputation in various countries. Professor Vowles described the new (1958) bilingual French-Swedish edition of Vivisections, occasional pieces which Strindberg intended for the French press, but which remained mostly unpublished until their present appearance. He concluded with a description of a book of first person accounts of the playwright. After some discussion chiefly centered on the problems of Strindberg translation, Professor Shedd turned the meeting over to Professor Thomas Bishop of New York University, whose paper was in essence an annotated bibliography of recent works about the contemporary French theater. The most important items of that bibliography are listed here, together with brief abstracts of Professor Bishop's comments. Professor Bishop first noted the difference in approach between the English or American and the French studies of the subject as a whole, of which he listed twelve works. Those in English generally attempt to recreate the essence of modem French theater by means of a general critical introduction followed by chapters on individual playwrights or groups of playwrights. Most of them give a comprehensive , at time profound, view of the Paris stage and are clearly intended either for the connoisseur or for an English speaking audience which is relatively unfamiliar with the French theater. The French books, on the other hand, with one exception (Lalou), attempt to establish an over-all concept such as destiny (Simon) or existence (Gouhier...