The Second MLA Conference on Modern Drama

THE SECOND MLA CONFERENCE ON MODERN DRAMA Report of the Secretary THE SECOND CONFERENCE ON MODERN DRA...'.{A met Tuesday, December 27, 1960, at the national meeting of the MLA with about forty people in attendance. Professor Robert C. Shedd of Ohio State University acted as chairman and Professor John C. Wentz of Rutgers University as secretary. The program consisted of a brief business meeting, a report by Professor Walter H. Sokel of Columbia University on needs and opportunities for further research in Expressionist drama, a report by Professor Edwin Engel of the University of Michigan on recent O'Neill criticism and needs for further work on O'Nelli and his plays, and a panel discussion of "On the Newness of the New Drama," a paper by Professor R. J. Kaufmann of the University of Rochester. In his opening remarks, Professor Shedd discussed the possibility of establishing a formal organization within the MLA for members with a special interest in modern drama. The suggestion has been made that a new section concerned with drama since about 1870 should be created. No immediate action in this direction is contemplated , but interested persons are invited to express their opinions on the subject ,to Professor Shedd, Professor A. C. Edwards of the University of Kansas, or Professor Stanley Weintraub of Pennsylvania State University. A third conference on modem drama is planned for the 1961 MLA meeting at Cincinnati. Finally, Professor Edwards, editor of Modern Drama, invited his readers to send him whatever comments, criticisms, or suggestions they might have relating to the conduct and policy of the journal. I Professor Sokel devoted most of his report to a critical and selective listing of important books, articles, and bibliographical studies dealing with Expressionist drama which have appeared in the past two or three years. (Modern Drama will print a summary of the bibliographical portion of this report in the May, 1961 issue.) Professor Sokel directed his concluding remarks to the need for a satisfactory definition of the term "Expressionism," which by now has become very vague indeed. He suggested that one might approach the problem by devising a series of categories and questions based upon the traditional Aristotelian classifications. What, for example, are the essential characteristics of Expressionist plot, motivation, dialogue, or characterization? 335 336 MODERN DRAMA February Professor Engel began his report by commenting briefly on three recent books about O'Neill and his work. Croswell Bowen's The Curse of the Misbegotten (1959) is a more or less "journalistic" biographical study of O'Neill and his family which is weakened by inadequate documentation , factual inaccuracy, and the thesis that the troubles of the O'Neills may be attributed in large part to an ancestral Irish curse. In Part of a Long Story (1960), Agnes Bolton, O'Neill's second wife, has written an account of the years when the playwright was her husband. Here the discriminating reader must sift the significant from the trivial. Doris Falk's Eugene O'Neill and the Tragic Tension (1958) is a sound scholarly interpretation of O'Neill's work, but the clearly defined scope of Professor Falk's book for the most part precludes biography or the detailed criticism of individual plays. Recent articles on O'Neill cited by Professor Engel include: John Henry Raleigh, "O'Neill's Long Day's Journey . .. and New England Irish Catholicism" (Partisan Review, Fall, 1959); Cyrus Day, "The Iceman and the Bridegroom" (Modern Drama, May, 1958); and the items included in the special O'Neill issue (December, 1960) of Modern Drama. The needs in O'Neill scholarship are numerous. The "big book on American drama"-a work comparable to Parrington's Main Currents in American Thought or Matthiessen's American Renaissance-remains to be written, as does a sound biography of O'Neill himself. It is also time, Professor Engel believes, for a book-length collection of critical essays on O'Neill. Specialized studies might explore such topics as O'Neill's relation to Strindberg and to Pirandello and O'Neill as a man of the theater. Finally, O'Neill's dramas deserve a more imaginative interpretation on the stage than they have lately received. The conference next turned to...