Cheap Pmla : Publications Of The Modern Language Association Of America - Paperbound (Magazine) Price

There is a New Yorker cartoon in which two elves are talking. One says to the other, "I can’t live in a glen that has such a narrow definition of what it is to be elfin." There are no cartoons--yet--in PMLA, which is published six times a year as the official publication of the MLA, by far the largest organization in the U.S. of teachers of English and other languages. But in recent years member professors, like those elves, have started to feel very constricted in their self-definitions. This is reflected in a new PMLA. There are now colorful covers (some with pictures!), single-topic issues (such as postcolonialism and rereading class), and special sections of shorter papers (about the relation between English and foreign-language teaching or science in the 19th century). Granted, four or five articles in the venerable tradition of canonical authors and texts, with such titles as "Frank O’Hara’s Open Closet" or "Hoccleve, the Virgin, and the Politics of Complaint," form the magazine’s core, as always. Proudly and handsomely footnoted, each of these articles is offered as the best of its kind and has to pass through the profession’s most rigorous review process before appearing in the light of published day. Increasingly, though, more heretofore marginal and practical questions, such as what to tell English majors or how to restore the monograph, eat away at the formerly unquestioned research agenda, now felt to be too narrow. Although few professors would still either want to or be able to read it, one can for the first time imagine a future PMLA article on elves, or even New Yorker cartoons. –Terry Caesar

CATEGORY:	Magazine
MANUFACTURER:	Modern Language Assn Of Amer
FEATURES:	Magazine Subscription
TYPE:	Modern European Languages . Celtic Language & Literatures
MEDIA:	Magazine