aural poetry from Europe, the emergence of Third World au-
thors, the rising cause of feminism in life and literature, and,
most dramatically, the introduction of Continental theory
into the previously staid world of Anglo-American literary
scholarship. These transformations demand that many tradi-
tional treatments be rethought, and part of the new responsi-
bility for Crosscurrents will be to provide such studies.

Contributions to Crosscurrents/Modern Critiques/Third
Series will be distinguished by their fresh approaches to es-
tablished topics and by their opening up of new territories for
discourse. When a single author is studied, we hope to pre-
sent the first book on his or her work or to explore a previous-
ly untreated aspect based on new research. Writers who have
been critiqued well elsewhere will be studied in comparison
with lesser-known figures, sometimes from other cultures, in
an effort to broaden our base of understanding. Critical and
theoretical works by leading novelists, poets, and dramatists
will have a home in Crosscurrents/Modern Critiques/Third
Series, as will sampler-introductions to the best in new Amer-
icanist criticism written abroad.

The excitement of contemporary studies is that all of its
critical practitioners and most of their subjects are alive and
working at the same time. One work influences another,
bringing to the field a spirit of competition and cooperation
that reaches an intensity rarely found in other disciplines.
Above all, this third series of Crosscurrents/Modern Cri-
tiques will be collegial -- a mutual interest in the present mo-
ment that can be shared by writer, subject, and reader alike.

Jerome Klinkowitz

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