This general issue of Mosaic begins with Sheldon Rothblatt’s 1989 Sidney Warhaft Memorial Lecture, “A Long Apocrypha of Inquiries: The Humanities and Humanity,” which examines the state of the humanities. The lecture contextualizes the essays that follow; they re-examine many traditional literary themes, techniques, and genres, including the story frame, the self, the pastoral, Daniele Del Giudice’s New Atlantis, Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, and Weir Mitchell’s “George Dedlow.”