THE ENGLISH INSTITUTE
announces
THREE' PRIZES
of
TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS
each
for the best essays on any of the following topics:
I. ORAL TRADITION AND LITERARY FORM (Chairman, Albert
B. Friedman, Claremont Graduate School). Essays should consider
questions like these : How does poetry or prose orally improvised ac–
cording to traditional formulae and destined to be heard only, not
read, differ from poetry or prose meant to be deciphered from the
page by a silent, solitary reader? What contrasts and similarities
arc discernible between literary poetry written to receive a musical
setting and the folk, traditional song genres ? In what ways have
the themes, imagery, modalities, rhythms, etc., of oral art interacted
with the forms and conventions of "official" literature?
II. DICKENS (Chairman, Gordon N. Ray, Guggenheim Foundation).
Essays should focus on Dickens' novels.
III. CRITICISM IN RENEWAL: THE NOVEL (Chainnan, Roy Harvey
Pearce, University of California at San Diego). Essays should focus
on the problem of form and relevance in the novel-in particular,
on the relation between the novelistic "subject," in its origins in the
workaday world, and the form the novel takes. In order to achieve
some parallelism, the panel speakers (two of whom will be
J.
Hillis
Miller, of Johns Hopkins, and Stephen Gilman, of Harvard) will
at some point in their papers treat of
Huckleberry Finn
as an
instance. Essayists may want to use this novel as reference, although
such reference is not necessary.
These topics will constitute the program of the 1967 session at Colum–
bia University, September 5th through 8th. Prize-winners will read their
essays at the session, which they will attend as guests of the Institute. The
Supervising Committee of the Institute reserves the right to award fewer
than three prizes, or no prize, according to its judgment of the quality
of submitted essays.
Essays, which will be judged by members of the Supervising Committee,
must be sent before July 1, 1967, to Professor C. L. Barber, the chairman
of the 1967 session, Wright Hall 203, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
01060.
Essays must be no longer than
6000
words, typed double-spaced,
and accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope or, if submitted
from abroad, by the appropriate international postage coupons.
1966 Prize Winners
Peter Elbow
(Graduate Student, Brandeis University): "Two Boethian
Speeches and Chaucerian Irony in
Troilus and Ciiseyde"
Warner Berthoff
(Bryn Mawr College): "The Study of Literature and the
Recovery of the Historical"
HonoTable Mention
A. D. Van Nostrand
(Brown University): "The Lay of
Paterson"
James E. Breslin
(University of California, Berkeley): "Whitman and the
Early Development of William Carlos Williams"
