This discussion, which concluded the Eighteenth Alabama Symposium
on English and American Literature, took place October 10, 1992, in the
Bryant Conference Center at the University of Alabama. The moderator
was Donald R. Noble and the panelists were M. H. Abrams, Nina Baym,
Frederick Crews, Ihab Hassan, David Lehman, Richard Levin, Paisley
Livingston, Saul Morson, and John Searle.

Donald Noble : Good morning. My name is Donald Noble, and I'm with the
English Department of the University of Alabama. Over the last three days I
have tried to formulate a few questions that might serve as a starting point for
the discussion, and questions have, of course, been suggested to me. The gen-
eral questions that seem to have evolved are--at the end of our three days, can
we say that there are areas of agreement among these panelists? Would they
be willing in a brief way to say what ideas at this point they share? Where
there are disagreements, these will become perfectly obvious in the panelists'
inability to decide that there are points of agreement.

I'd like to press Professor Crews and others in the direction of prognostica-
tion. That is, we want to hear these trained navigators give their educated guesses
as to where the profession is going. In terms of canon and gender, the ques-
tion seems to me one that was begged off the other day: if works in which
individuals are represented unsatisfactorily or problematically are dropped from
the canon, will that canon eventually consist only of works in which all gen-
ders, races and ethnic groups are represented to their own satisfaction, and will
we be in a perpetual state of evaluating what constitutes satisfactory repre-
sentations? Perhaps, to begin on a more positive note, we can suggest where it
appears there are points of agreement. Professor Abrams.

M. H. Abrams : Well, I can propose some basic points of agreement that seem
to be explicit or implicit in the array of papers that have been read at this con-
ference. There is a world out there, a world that is a world for us, for human
beings. That world includes human beings that are purposive agents who are
capable of intentional actions. Language and the use of language fit into that
frame of reference. The use of language in literature, even though fictional, can

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