Stephen G. Nichols PHILOLOGY AS BLOOD SPORT: the ROMANIC

Stephen G. Nichols

PHILOLOGY AS BLOOD SPORT: THE ROMANIC REVIEW’S FIRST DECADE

t is not exactly fashionable today to call our feld Romance philology. IDescribing a colleague as a “philologist” in fact might well elicit a less than cheerful response. It’s even become vieux jeu to call ourselves literary critics. So how are we to refer to our métier in an era when so many departments have abandoned the term “French literature” to describe themselves in favor of portmanteau rubrics like “Department of French, Francophone, Post-colonial Studies”? One look at the tortured efforts to defne a position in the MLA job listings makes clear how fragmented our domain has become. We now talk in terms of subspecialties—Feminist studies, Francophone, queer theory, post- structural theory (does anyone still do pre-structuralist theory?). And still, most of us do have a dim sense that our feld once was known as “Romance philology.” And we would agree, I believe, that as a discipline, ours is an exacting one. But how, exactly, would we defne it today? Most likely, we would parse it either as the work of the individual scholar responding to a particular vision of humanist activity, or as a phenomenon of institutional authority. Both views produce a history of practice, much as René Wellek once sought to write a history of modern criticism by cumulative analyses of the work of individual critics on one hand and schools of criticism on the other. I wonder, though, if it would occur to us to ask how a discipline like Romance philology emerges in a given time and place as an ongoing series of represen- tational events in a carefully defned framework? What is counter-intuitive here is the idea that a discipline is less a function of people per se than of a continuous stream of written communications. In other words, it evolves from the systematic publication of scholarly articles in a journal founded for and dedicated to that purpose. But before pursuing this third way of defning Romance philology, let’s look briefy at the frst two modes mentioned. Erich Auerbach offers an excellent illustration of the frst when he sets out to describe Romance philology in his Introduction aux études de la philologie romane as “the set of activities that concern themselves systematically with human language, and in particular with works of art composed in that medium.” In this account, philology serves textual transmission “in order,” as Auerbach says, “to preserve from the ravages of time the works that constitute its intellectual patrimony; to preserve them not

The Romanic Review Volume 101 Numbers 1–2 © The Trustees of Columbia University

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only from oblivion but also from the changes, mutilations, and additions that necessarily result from popular consumption or the negligence of copyists.”1 On the side of the second defnition, which views a discipline as a phenomenon of institutional authority, the Middle English scholar Seth Lerer offers a double perspective when he writes of its European origins:

Most narrowly, ‘philology’ connotes the study of historical linguistics as it developed in the nineteenth century and came to be associated, especially in German universities, with the practices of lexicography, textual criticism, and literary-aesthetic evaluation. This practice centered on two mutually-related inquiries: the establishment of historical phonology and the codifcation of sound changes as the ‘laws’ of diachronic linguistics; and the excavation of the etymologies of individual words, often in the process leading to the recovery of defning social or cultural norms.

Of the emergence of philology in America, Lerer then writes:

Both aspects of the philological tradition were central to the work of William Dwight Whitney (1827–94), professor of comparative philology and Sanskrit at Yale University from 1853 until his death. Whitney often used the study of a given word’s etymology to understand the institutions of Indo-European culture. [. . .] His philology not only synthesizes its academic heritage but pointedly looks forward to a range of critical phenomena we have now come to associate with the Saussurian revolution in language study and, as its consequences, with the structuralist and poststructuralist conceptions of the fundamentally linguistic nature of social orga- nization and expression. Such conceptions were, as one critic has put it, ‘clairvoyantly glimpsed’ by Whitney. . . (17)

While both these accounts have in common the conviction that philology focuses on language as a means of artistic representation on one hand, and of communication on the other, they convey rather different views of philological context. For Erich Auerbach, the philologist, like the original author, works

1. The preceding two quotations are from Erich Auerbach, Introduction aux études de la philologie romane (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1949) 9. English translation from Suzanne Fleischman, “Medieval Vernaculars and the Myth of Monoglossia: A Con- spiracy of Linguistics and Philology,” Literary History and the Challenge of Philology: The Legacy of Erich Auerbach, ed. Seth Lerer (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996) 92–93. Cited by Seth Lerer, “Philology & Criticism at Yale,” The Journal of Aesthetic Educa- tion 36.3 (Autumn 2002): 19.

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alone. Lerer, however, sees the institution as a matrix where what he calls “professional practices” emerge and evolve. Here is Lerer’s view:

What role does the philological tradition have in the developing profession of American literary study and, in turn, how do the various exemplars of that tradition function as models of professional practice? I [would] argue [. . .] that the story of philology and criticism is distinctively a Yale account [in which] fgures such as William Dwight Whitney and Erich Auerbach form the poles of an inquiry into the development of literary study (and, not the least, literary theory) at Yale, and, furthermore, that such recent developments as the New Historicism have a Yale philological and institutional origin that its practitioners have only recently admit- ted [. . .]. (16)

Lerer’s enthusiasm for the institutional model allows him to designate philology at Yale as the fons et origo of literary theory: “I would contend,” he says, “that Whitney’s work contains within it the seeds of a structuralist or even poststructuralist project—that ‘literary theory,’ as we understand it, begins in nineteenth-century Yale philology.” (18) We need not linger over this assertion of Yale’s hegemony over American philology, theory, and critical studies. Instead, let’s look back one hundred years to the founding of the Romanic Review at Columbia University. The story is worth telling. It involves a new vision of how philology could be constituted as a scientifc—in the sense of French science or German W issenschaft— discipline in America. The vision belonged to Henry Alfred Todd, who, in 1909, was considered America’s foremost Romance philologist.2 Todd had a truly pioneering career in Romance philology. In the early 1880s, he spent three years in Europe, studying in Berlin, Rome, Madrid and Paris, where he completed a doctorate with Gaston Paris at the Sorbonne. Gas- ton Paris later wrote that Todd was the frst American to edit an Old French

2. In his Life of Henry Alfred Todd—the introduction to the frst of two Todd Memo- rial volumes—John Fitz-Gerald reported the following anecdote: “In 1900 the present writer was a student in Berlin under Adolf Tobler, and enjoyed the privilege of many private interviews in the home of the great scholar. On one such occasion Tobler re- marked: “Todd is wohl der bedeuntendste der Romanisten in ganz Amerika” (“Todd is the most important Romance scholar in the entire United States”). The phrase re- mained deeply imprinted on the memory of the young man who had had the privilege of being trained under Todd for several years.” Todd Memorial Volumes: Philological Studies, eds. John D. Fitz-Gerald and Pauline Taylor, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia UP, 1930) 12.

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work, and one of the frst to be commissioned by the prestigious Société des Anciens Textes Français to do an edition.3 In 1883, Todd returned to the United States to study in the newly founded Ph.D. program of Romance philology at Johns Hopkins University under the guidance of A. Marshall Elliott. Obtaining the doctorate in 1885—his second—he joined Elliott on the faculty at Hopkins where he taught Vulgar Latin, Old French, Old Provençal, Old Italian (Dante), and Early Spanish. He also seconded Elliott in founding Modern Language Notes, the frst journal devoted to publishing scholarly research in modern languages.4 Todd would teach at Johns Hopkins until 1891, when he was called to chair the Depart- ment of Romance Languages at Stanford University, which he did for two years before being summoned to Columbia in 1893. The years at Hopkins stamped Todd with fervor for introducing principles of scientifc research into the new discipline of Romance philology. In this aspiration, he was at one with his institution. As the frst modern graduate school in the 1880s, Hopkins trained historians and philologists who went on to revolutionize their disciplines and graduate education itself at prestigious universities throughout North America. Two decades later, in 1910, Todd reminisced about this formative period in the second issue of his new journal, the Romanic Review.

Since 1881, The Johns Hopkins University has conferd [sic] the degree of doctor of philosophy on forty-nine students in the department of Romance languages . . . twenty-one of whom are now heads of departments or full professors in universities or colleges, including the Universities of Chicago, Columbia, Har- vard, Pittsburgh, Stanford, Yale, Alabama, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, Washington, and Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Gallaudet, Gaucher, Ober- lin, and Randoph-Macon Colleges.5

3. Gaston Paris, Romania 19 (1890) 314–315. The edition in question was Le Dit de la panthère d’amours par Nicole de Margival; poème du XIIIe siècle, publié d’après les manuscrits de Paris et de Saint-Petersbourg par Henry A. Todd. Société des anciens textes français (Paris: Fiurmin Didot et cie, 1883). 4. See John Fitz-Gerald, “Henry Alfred Todd, 1. Life,” Todd Memorial Volumes. . . vol. 1.6–7. 5. “Notes and News,” Romanic Review 1 (1910): 227. One should note that the early issues of the Romanic Review give ample evidence of the movement in linguistics at that time to reform English orthography by writing words in conformity with their pronunciation. Hence, in the passage quoted here, Todd—who subscribed to this movement—writes “conferd,” rather than “conferred” on the grounds that one hears “-r-”

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The creation of both Modern Language Notes and the Romanic Review was necessarily linked to this endeavor. Nothing would have been more unthinkable for Todd than a discipline based on scientifc principles that did not also have an organ to publish the fruits of such study. And yet, despite his intimate association with the origin of the frst journal devoted to our feld in America, it is not of Todd, but of the Romanic Review, that we must speak. But to understand the startling originality of Todd’s vision, we must realize that he innately understood what Karl Mannheim, the German sociologist, would later defne as the benefcial effects of (intra-) disciplinary competition. Scholarly journals constituted an ideal context for what Mannheim defned as “the intellectual expressions of conficting groups struggling for power.”6 Even more presciently, by making a point of publishing the work of younger scholars, Todd realized another of Mannheim’s percepts: the incompatibility of generational worldviews as especially productive of competition for knowledge production.7 Two decades before Mannheim published his essay “The Sociology of Knowledge,” Henry Todd launched a scholarly review that encouraged precisely the kind of competition between competing schools and generations that combined innovative thinking with frequently sharp methodological clashes. His disciple, and collaborator, John L. Gerig—who came from Swit- zerland to study with him—leaves no doubt but that Todd deliberately courted competing interests, diverse opinions, and heterogeneous contributions in the pages of the Romanic Review.

in the second syllable, but not “-rr-.” Within a few years, the experiment fades from Romanic’s pages. 6. Karl Mannheim wrote his infuential essay “Wissenssociologie” (“Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge”), from which these quotations are taken, in 1931. “We may regard competition as a representative case in which extra-theoretical processes affect the emergence and the direction of the development of knowledge. Competi- tion controls not merely economic activity through the mechanism of the market, not merely the course of political and social events, but furnishes also the motor impulse behind diverse interpretations of the world which, when their social background is uncovered, reveal themselves as the intellectual expressions of conficting groups struggling for power.” Karl Mannheim, “The Sociology of Knowledge,” Ideology and Uto- pia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., 1954) 241. 7. “To mention only one of the many possible bases of collective existence, out of which different interpretations of the world and different forms of knowledge may arise, we point to the role played by the relationship between differently situated generations. This factor infuences in very many cases the principles of selection, organiza- tion, and polarization of theories and points of view prevailing in a given society at a given moment” (Sociology of Knowledge 242).

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[Todd] did not hesitate to discard accepted methods [. . .]. Philo- logical research, as it had been considered up to that time, left out of consideration what in Professor Todd’s opinion—and in that his judgment was most accurate—was fundamental, and that is, the human element. To humanize and broaden the aims of philological research was then the ideal, which he ever kept before him. In order to make his ideal [even more] effective, Professor Todd sought to increase and improve the output of American scholars [. . .]. And when he felt the moment opportune in America for the establishment of a review devoted solely to the Romance tongues, he founded the Romanic Review [. . .]. During his long editorship [. . .] Professor Todd exerted a powerful and benefcent infuence on American productive scholarship. Rejecting the methods in vogue elsewhere, according to which the contributor was obliged to adapt his contribution to the character of the review, Professor Todd opened the columns of the Romanic Review to all, regardless of standing, providing the methods and results of the research were sound [. . .].8

In what follows, I would like to tell the story of the Romanic Review’s frst decade. During these formative years, the review became the North American venue for the dissemination of a scholarly discipline still viewed in 1910 as something of an upstart, only to emerge ten years later as a frmly entrenched, academic program. The Romanic Review’s role in moving Romance philology from margin to center hasn’t been told. But it makes fascinating reading. Inevitably, the generative function of “discipline” plays an important role in this story. For with the rise of academic disciplines in the frst half of the twentieth century, the theory of “discipline” has engendered a good deal of discussion since at least 1930, when Karl Mannheim published his signature article, “Wissenssociologie,” on the sociology of knowledge. There, he argued that research programs generate their own disciplinary standards independent of a priori norms; they do so by virtue of continual knowledge production.9 Rather than diverting into a history of that theoretical debate, however, let me

8. John L. Gerig trained at Columbia and then taught Romance philology there for several decades. His remarks are excerpted from his memoir of Todd published in volume one of the Todd Memorial Volumes, 27–29. 9. Karl Mannheim, “Wissenssociologie,” Ideologie und Utopie, 3rd edition (Frankfurt am Main: Schulte-Bulmke, 1952) 227–267, esp., 243–45. Cited from David E. Well- bery, “The General Enters the Library: A Note on Disciplines and Complexity,” Critical Inquiry 35 (Summer 2009): 982–983.

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frame the question by looking closely at the Romanic’s early issues. In choos- ing the “opening scene” of this long running drama, I simply want to suggest that from the outset, the Romanic Review functioned as a dynamic mediator for Romance studies. But just what was so special about the frst issue? Well, its title for one thing. “Romanic” stands out not as archaic—for archaisms are simply every- day language fallen into disuse—but as a scientifc coinage that didn’t “take.” One has only to look at the names of some of the newly formed departments of Romanic languages at American universities around 1909 to recognize an emergent discipline in search of an apposite title. Todd’s new journal gave an authoritative boost to the term in spreading it across its front cover, complete with what amounts to a defnition of the feld as well as a declaration of edi- torial purpose:

The Romanic Review A Quarterly Journal Devoted to Research, The Publication of Texts and Documents, Critical Discussions, Notes, News and Comments, in the Field of the Romance Languages and Literatures

As it happens, the title of the journal itself occasioned the frst manifestation of inter-generational confict. Concern that the vernacular connotations of the term “Romance” might mislead readers sparked discussion in the frst volume. Speaking for the younger scholars, the Hispanist John Fitz-Gerald (University of Illinois) made the case for the neologism, saying:

The word Romance, as a designation for the languages derived from the language of Rome, is open to objection on the score of its many other meanings in modern English, meanings which, even in the minds of the fairly well-educated, have lost most, if not indeed all, of their relation to Rome [. . .]. The form Romanic is open to none of these objections. It has no multiplicity of meanings, and is in excellent company, as a form, both at home and abroad, as witness the numerous adjectives descended from analogous Latin forms, e.g.: Arabic, Celtic, Chaldaic, Germanic, Hebraic, Hispa- nic, Italic, Teutonic, and their companions in most of the other languages.10

10. John D. Fitz-Gerald, Romanic Review 1 (1910): 229–230.

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Among established scholars, like Harvard’s J.D.M. Ford, however, the new term grated: “I take no stock in the remark that Romance Review would suggest book reviews of novels, since the new venture is not intended for people at large, but for the informed. I prefer Romance on historical and every other ground, and fnd Romanic unattractive” (230). Ford, however, misses the point that Fitz-Gerald and the two editors-in- chief—Todd and his colleague Raymond Weeks—sought to convey by the less familiar usage, “Romanic.” Namely, that as the name of a journal intended to foster the growth of an emergent discipline, the neologism, by its unfamiliarity, would command attention, if only by what Ford calls its “unattractiveness.” What could be more apposite for a review created to announce the arrival of this new philological sub-specialty? Let’s not forget that Todd, like his mentor, Marshall Elliott, was a scholar of medieval French literature with active ties to the intellectual life of Paris. We have seen the former’s close ties to Gaston Paris, Paul Meyer, and the Sor- bonne. Together, Elliott and Todd had contrived to invite the great fn-de-siècle literary critic Ferdinand Brunétière to lecture at Johns Hopkins and Columbia in the spring of 1898. It was the frst time a leading French intellectual had been invited as visiting professor in the United States. Brunétière gave fve lectures in Baltimore and another series in New York, lecturing in French to overfowing auditoriums according to contemporary accounts. That visit paved the way for those of other eminent French professors, including Joseph Bédier, who gave a series of lectures at a select group of American universities in the fall of 1909. The notice in the Romanic Review of Bédier’s visit is worth quoting since it illustrates precisely how Todd envisaged that his journal could translate and interpret transient events within Romance studies into an interpretive historical record.

Professor Bédier, of the Collège de France, saild [sic] for home at Christmastide, and arrived safely. He came under the auspices of the Alliance Française, to conduct a series of lessons such as he gives at the Collège de France. These lessons were meant to be rigo- rously scientifc, and to resemble as little as possible the conven- tional public lecture. The subject matter concernd [sic] the period of Old French, and largely, but not solely, the epic literature. The lessons of Professor Bédier produced an admirable, and let us hope, lasting impression of what constitutes the fnest qualities of French scholarship and character. Professor Bédier delivered a series of lessons at the following universities: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Illinois; also one or two lessons at Vassar, and at the universities of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. He represented the Collège de France at the installation of President

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Lowell of Harvard, and received the honorary doctorate from that university.11

I want to argue that at least four items that appear in the frst issue attest a programmatic intention underlying the inaugural number, a program systematically implemented in the Romanic’s early years. The items in question are: (1) the report of Bédier’s leçons in New York; (2) the inaugural article of the frst issue by a younger scholar; (3) the discussion regarding the mer- its of “Romanic” versus “Romance;” and (4) Todd’s choice of a title for the journal. Considered individually and together, these items signal a determination to make the Romanic Review a rallying-point for Romance scholarship with the aim of raising the quality and productivity of American research. But the editors realized that the most effective means of validating Romance studies in North America would be as a dialogic partner with the best European scholarship. By winning recognition for their enterprise from leading Euro- pean practitioners, particularly at the Sorbonne, the editors of the Romanic would increase the prestige of their feld at home. The Romanic implemented this strategy not only in the inaugural issue, but also consistently throughout the frst decade. Since disciplines establish themselves by calling attention to an authoritative genealogy—in the same way vernacular languages and literatures did in the Middle Ages—Todd’s choice of title did double duty. Besides clearly delimit- ing the domain of the sub-specialty the journal addressed, “Romanic” echoes the title and philosophy of the pre-eminent journal of Romance philology of the era: Romania, founded in 1872 by Gaston Paris and Paul Meyer (whose heritage Michel Zink recently celebrated with a colloquium at the Collège de France).12 My conviction that Todd wanted to suggest the link between his new journal and Romania—at least implicitly—is strengthened by his own admission that “[i]n selecting a title for our Review, the editors hesitated between Romanic Review and Romance Review. The former name was tenta- tively adopted, altho [sic] it was found later, when all of the editors had exprest [sic] their opinion, that a majority seemd [sic] to favor the latter name.”13 Under the circumstances, it can hardly be fortuitous that the opening words in frst article published in the Romanic Review are “Professor Bédier,” Gas- ton Paris’s student and successor at the Collège de France. Lest one doubt Todd’s intent in opening the inaugural issue of his journal by paying homage

11. Romanic Review 1 (1910): 110. 12. Le Moyen Âge de Gaston Paris, éd. Michel Zink (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2004). 13. “Notes and News,” Romanic Review 1 (1910): 229.

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to Bédier, one has only to read the rest of the sentence. It establishes as clearly as a manifesto the fliation of American philology from its French source and inspiration.

Professor Bédier in his Légendes épiques has studied the relation of Ogier le Danois to the abbey of St. Faro of Meaux. He has shown to what a remarkable extent the monks of Meaux were instrumen- tal in the formation of the legend of this epic hero.14

Todd’s Francophile leaning, however, did not color his determination to publish a journal that resolutely refected the Romanic ideal. One has only to look at the “demographics” of the frst few volumes to gain insight into his edi- torial policy. The inaugural volume, which began appearing in the frst quarter of 1910, contained thirty-six articles: sixteen on primarily French subjects; fourteen on primarily Italian literature; and six on Hispanic subjects (one of which is written in Spanish, the only non-English paper in the volume). Seven of these articles—some twenty percent of them—take a comparative Romance approach and deal with texts in several languages. Volume 2 contains twenty- fve articles: ten on French subjects, seven on Italian, three on Spanish, and three treating French and Italian, such as “An Italian Complaint for the Death of Pierre de Luisgnan,” or “The Symbolism of Petrarch’s Canzone to the Vir- gin.” Noteworthy also is the appearance of interdisciplinary studies such as “Dante and Aquinas,” “Classical Eclogue and the Medieval Debate,” “Illustra- tions of Chaucer. Drawn Chiefy from Deschamps,” and “Jehan de Vignay and his Infuence on Early English Literature.” The infuence of English mythog- raphers like Sir James Frazer and Jane Harrison may be seen in articles like “Storm-Making Springs: Studies on the Sources of Yvain.” Todd seems to have determined that the new journal would circumscribe the Romanic world in North America by the articles it published. Judging from the demographics of contributors, he seems to have sought to overcome the geographic dispersion of American scholars by offering an occasion for congregation in the pages of his review. Scholars from the Universities of Wisconsin and Cincinnati, respectively, authored the frst two articles in the inaugural issue. Also represented were the Universities of Toronto, Illinois, MIT, Western Reserve Women’s College, Dartmouth College, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, as well as articles from several independent scholars. By 1914, the Romanic Review had published well over a hundred articles with an increasing tendency to adopt comparative approaches across several

14. Barry Cerf, “Ogier le Danois and the Abbey of St. Faro of Meaux,” Romanic Re- view 1 (January-March, 1910): 1–12.

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Romance languages along the lines of “A Parallel between the Roman de Flamenca and Dante’s Purgatorio (IV, ll. 1–13)” in volume 1, or “Dante’s Vita Nuova 41 and Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligés, vv. 5815ff” in volume 2. The “Notes and News” section at the end of each issue served as a kind of newsletter for the community, conveying information about its professional life. Some items are not only colorful but reinforce the openness toward cross- disciplinary study noted above; it is ethno-musicology in the following case:

It is stated that Mr. Charles F. Lummis, of Los Angeles, Cal., has been collecting Spanish and Indian folk songs for twenty years, and that he possesses in his collection fonographic [sic] records of over six-hundred such songs. About four-hundred of these are Spanish. The remainder represent thirty-two Indian dialects of languages. The Spanish songs have been transcribed by experts. A similar collection of popular songs in English has been gatherd [sic] and publisht [sic] by Professor John A. Lomax, of the University of Texas, under the title Cow-Boy Ballads.15

Parenthetically, I should note that by way of extending the philological reach of the Romanic Review into the practice of the English language, the “Notes and News” section of early issues begins with the statement:

Both of the editors-in-chief of this Review are advocates of the movement for the simplifcation of English spelling. Within appro- priate limits, contributors will be freely permitted to follow their individual predilections in the matter. “Si on écrivoit connaissais au lieu de connoissois,” wrote Bos- suet, “qui reconnoistroit ce mot?”

It did not take long for Todd’s inclusive policy towards Romance scholars to incite clashes between established scholars—those “barons” like J.D.M. Ford at Harvard, or William Nitze at Chicago—who found themselves challenged by younger scholars anxious to try new methods. One of the most sangui- nary exchanges had its inception in April 1914, when Nitze published “The Romance of Erec, Son of Lac,” in volume 11 of the Modern Philology, the journal he edited at the University of Chicago. As background to the clash, we must bear in mind that besides the editors- in-chief, Henry Todd and Raymond Weeks, the review had fourteen of the most prominent Romance scholars in North America as “cooperating editors.”

15. “Notes and News,” Romanic Review 2 (1911): 112.

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They were all listed prominently on the front cover of the Romanic Review, thereby constituting a network of Romance scholars representing all parts of North America. To say these scholars formed a “school” might be too strong a claim. They were all, however, strongly identifed with the emergent methods—what we might call openness to new “theoretical” trends—that Todd and Weeks espoused. Notably absent from this list was the name of Wil- liam Nitze. As editor of the older Modern Philology, founded in 1903, Nitze also represented a more traditional and authoritative philology. One sees this clearly in his article on Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec et Enide, published, as I said, in his own journal, Modern Philology, in 1914. Nitze’s article arises from undoubted erudition: conversant with Middle English literature, Celtic literature, classical and medieval Latin, his command of the subject allows him to refute out of hand opinions contrary to facts as he mar- shals them. Reporting that the genuineness of the opening lines of Chrétien’s prologue had recently been called into question, he dismisses that imputation with the fat rejection that “their genuineness can hardly be doubted.”16 Nitze then points to Chrétien’s other prologues, to those of Marie de France, and concludes imperiously: “Besides, prologue or no prologue, the poem itself amply justifes the view that Crestien was conscious of his art, however defec- tive we may consider his art to be” (446). The crux of Nitze’s article centers in Erec’s sudden change of attitude toward Enide, expressed in the words: “Por qu’avez dit que mar i fui? / Por moi fu dit, non por autru, nor por autrui” (vs. 2522), which obviously mean: “Why did you, Enide, say woe is me, Erec; you said this for me, and not for another”:

Rescued by him from straitened circumstances, she yet has all the qualities of a courtois lady of the highest rank. Now the question has often been asked: What is Erec’s motive for maltreating so loyal a wife? With an artist’s instinct, I believe, Crestien has not vouchsafed to tell us [. . .]. (446-7)

So Nitze proposes to resolve the issue once and for all. Rejecting jealousy as a possible motive, he turns to Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale, where the knight promises to serve his lady faithfully, refrain from feeling jealousy, and folwe hir wyl in al, / As any lovere to his lady shal, / save that the name of soveray- nètee, / That wolde he have, for shame of his degree. “If these lines are repeated here at the beginning of an article on the Erec,” writes Nitze, “it is because they furnish a ‘convenient’ expression of what I think is the fundamental issue of Crestien de Troyes’s poem” (445).

16. William Albert Nitze, “The Romance of Erec, Son of Lac,” Modern Philology 11 (1914): 1–46.

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Nitze argues that Erec invokes the same sense of soveraynètee that Frank- lin’s knight claims, but exercises it with desmesure—a lack of perspective, or temporary madness—that occasions his humiliation of Enide for much of the romance. He accounts for Erec’s “madness” by a learned excursus through classical and Celtic folktales involving otherworld adventures. If these folktales antedate Chrétien, it was nonetheless “he who wove them into a defnite plot by stressing the moral relationship of his two pairs of lovers” (489). He concludes:

The result is a romance which bears the imprint of Crestien’s genius—his sense of style, his grasp of the essential motives of human action, his knowledge of the courtois circles of his day— however much its real motivation has been obscured for us by the false notion of the hero’s jealousy as set forth in the parallel, and perhaps independent, version of the Welsh Geraint. (489)

It did not take long for an article in the Romanic Review to challenge Nitze’s conviction that he had once and for all laid to rest the misguided notion that Erec’s treatment of Enide might be accounted for by reference to new theories of psychopathology, such as those emanating from the writings of Sigmund Freud. That a hero of Erec’s stature and lineage might have an unconscious, a psychic state manifesting itself in jealousy, was simply anathema to Nitze. In the opening article of Romanic Review 9, M.B. Ogle of the University of Vermont begins an article entitled “The Sloth of Erec” with a clarion call to battle:

The strange behavior of Erec and his treatment of his wife Enide, as set forth by Chrétien in his romance, were properly explained, in the opinion of the writer at least, by Roques (Romania [39]: 377); and lately Sheldon (Romanic Review 5 [1914]: 115 sq.) and Woodbridge (Romanic Review 6 [1915]: 434 sq.) have advanced practically the same explanation. There would be no further need, therefore, of argument about the matter, were it not for the fact than an entirely different theory, advanced by Nitze (Modern Phi- lology 11 [1914]: 445 sq.) still stands as a challenge to those who hold other views.17

Ogle reviews the different arguments and adds his own gloss to the effect that Erec, “even though combining in his person wisdom, strength, and

17. Romanic Review 9 (1918): 1–20.

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glory, was none the less to become a sluggard through love.” He then fres a broadside at Nitze:

This interpretation, which makes of Chrétien’s poem a logical, consistent whole, renders unnecessary the a priori assumption, which it seems to me is entirely unwarranted by the facts, that the Celtic fairy-mistress story had, by Chrétien’s time, become so entirely dissociated from its environment, so completely rationa- lized, as to produce a story in which not a trace of the imperious fée remains [. . .]. This latter type of story, moreover, fails utterly to account for Erec’s harsh treatment of his wife, which is fundamentally opposed to the fairy-mistress idea [. . .]. (19)

Less than a year later, Todd opened the pages of the Romanic to a blistering response by Nitze entitled, “Erec’s Treatment of Enide,” that bears an epigraph from Renan: La vérité est dans une nuance, although there is not much nuance in what follows, as we see from the opening paragraph.18

In the Romanic Review, 9, 1 ff., Professor Ogle attacks my interpretation of Crestien’s Erec, but on inadequate grounds. He thinks that Erec’s motive in treating Enide harshly is not his wounded sense of sovereignty but “the doubt which he feels of her love for him.” Since Professor Ogle has missed the point of much of my discussion, in fact at times misconstrues my remarks hopelessly, it may be well to recall the purpose of my former study—in answe- ring him here. (26)

Despite some ongoing barbed remarks regarding “Professor” Ogle’s obtuse- ness and the illogic of his reasoning (“the obvious errors of statement and interpretation which Ogle makes”), a funny thing happens on the way to the guillotine. By the end of the response, Nitze begins to incorporate some of the examples Ogle cites, and we fnd remarks like the following: “To use Ogle’s excellent word,” “in accord with Crestien’s knowledge of the Classics (on which Professor Ogle throws additional light).” Despite the apparent soften- ing, Nitze concludes with a vigorous reassertion of his thesis: “[Crestien’s] chief character progresses from an assertion of sovereignty to a demonstra- tion of valor to a full recognition of his wife’s love. Erec’s amie is also, and worthily so, his fame.”19

18. Romanic Review 10 (1918): 26. 19. Ibid., 37.

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One cannot help feeling that if Chicago and New York, Modern Philology and the Romanic Review represent traditional versus more modern conceptions of Romance philology, the vigorous dialectic their different positions provoke nevertheless defnes their discipline as a vital enterprise. It is in creat- ing a means for Romance studies to take shape, defne, and redefne itself that the Romanic Review enriched the American world of letters.

Johns Hopkins University

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