Act Of Vengeance Research Articles

‘If You Prick Us Do We Not Bleed?’: Marvel Comics’ Vision: Director’s Cut Re-Evaluating What It Means to Be Human

Vision: Director’s Cut (2017) is a short comic series about Vision, a lonely robot Avenger superhero who builds his own robotic family out of his desire for love and happiness. The story focuses on the Vision family as they struggle to lead a ‘normal’ suburban life under Vision’s tutelage. As beings of artificial intelligence (AI), they are subject to social ostracism and abuse by a neighbourhood that refuses to accept them as part of the human community. In doing so, Director’s Cut enters into the long-standing literary debate about humanness versus monstrousness, what it means to be a human, and who gets to dictate the definition. The storyline is a contemporary science-fiction rendition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), which dramatises the dangers of trying to artificially create a human life. Both texts are in agreement that once these beings are created, because they are sentient and self-aware, then they ought to be treated with dignity, respect and equality. Director’s Cut is additionally comparable to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in exploring the act of vengeance by the traumatised outsider, and how said acts ironically prove their humanness because revenge is a motive inimitable by any other life form.

A Head and Neck Surgeon’s Consideration of King Hyojong’s Poisoning: Fatal Facial Abscess

Background and Objectives The King Hyojong was the 17th King of the Chosun dynasty from 1649 to 1659. He is well known for his plan for northern campaigns against the Manchus (Bukbeol, 북벌), an act of vengeance on the Qing dynasty for the war of 1636. His plan for the northern conquest was never put into action since he suddenly died of small boil on face in 40 years old. After his death, the reason of his sudden death was questioned by the public. Many people suspected him of being killed by poison. We studied and considered the cause of King Hyojong’s death based on two tremendous Chosun dynasty’s official records.Materials and Method We reviewed Joseon Wangjo Sillok (the annals of the Joseon dynasty) and Seungjeongwon Ilgi (the diaries of royal secretariat of the Joeson dynasty).Results King Hyojong had congenital pre-auricular fistula. He also had been suffering from diabetes and its related complications for a long time before his death. His pre-auricular fistula was infected and not managed properly. It could be presumed that King Hyojong’s cause of death was hypovolemic shock from fatal injury of superficial temporal artery caused by inappropriate incision and drainage.Conclusion We assumed a historical person’s cause of death based on Chosun dynasty’s official records.

Hannibal Lecter as Avenging War Orphan in Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Rising

Beginning with Red Dragon (1981), horror icon Hannibal Lecter thrilled audiences as the ultimate unreadable reader, consuming minds and bodies behind the polished veneer of aristocratic taste and psychological expertise. Yet by the end of the twentieth century, Lecter had shifted from monster to hero. This article argues that Thomas Harris’s prequel novel, Hannibal Rising (2006), makes Lecter more palatable by portraying his serial murders as an act of vengeance against a postwar society that allowed war criminals to rejoin the consumer milieu. Hannibal Rising uses graphic depictions of the atrocities of the Second World War—including freezing, starvation, immolation, and enslavement—to mitigate Lecter’s cannibalistic classism and restore his humanity. Lecter is rendered mute by the trauma of consuming his sister, the patrician Lecter Castle becomes a Soviet orphanage, and Lecter’s eventual victims are war criminals who have reintegrated into society across the Western world. In return, Hannibal Rising’s readers are asked to project the specter of Lecter’s trauma and these war criminals’ violence onto all of Lecter’s victims. No act of cannibalism, Hannibal Rising suggests, is more monstrous than the war crimes and subsequent Allied apathy that Hannibal fights and bites against.

МИФ ОБ ЭДИПЕ: СЮЖЕТ МЕСТИ И СТУТУЯ МИТИЯ

Object of the article: This study focuses on the revenge plot in the story of Oedipus. Subject of the article: The author argues that the revenge scheme based on the story about “the statue of Mitys at Argos, which killed the man who caused Mitys's death falling on him”, described by Aristotle, is in fact implemented in the story of Oedipus in a hidden way. The author draws a parallel between a role of the statue of Colonus in “Oedipus at Colonus” by Sophocles (which the author considers as an inseparable part of the Oedipus story – along with “Oedipus Tyrannus”) and a role of the statue of Mitys. Purpose of research: The article describes the structure of the story of Oedipus in the light of the revenge motif. Results: The author argues that the plot structure of the Oedipus story is based on the inversion of the roles of “murderer” and “avenger”, when “murderer” becomes “victim” and “victim” becomes “murderer”. This inversion happens as a result of “splitting” of the “victim”, when the act of vengeance is performed not by the “victim” proper, but their double. Oedipus is split into two different figures, thus becoming a double of himself. Oedipus in the role of “murderer”, who kills Laius in a quarrel at the crossroads, symbolically is a double of Oedipus in the role of “victim”, who, as Laius believes, had been killed by him as a newborn baby. Furthermore, Oedipus in the role of “avenger”, who “avenges” the murder of Laius by blinding the murderer in a symbolic act of suicide, already knows that he is a parricide, while Oedipus in the role of “murderer”, who kills Laius, does not yet know that he kills his father. Field of application: literary studies, structural poetics, classics. Conclusion: The story of Oedipus is based on the revenge plot, which unfolds through prophecies and foreshadowing, prefiguring the alternation of the acts of murder and revenge. For their great assistance and helpful advice, I am indebted to Dan Whitman and Svetlana Gracheva.

Can the Palestinian Antigone Grieve? A political reinterpretation of Judith Butler’s ethical turn

ABSTRACTIn this article I argue that Judith Butler’s move from Antigone’s Claim to Precarious Life is not a move away from politics and towards ethics, but rather a refusal to separate ethics from politics when confronting the politics of queerness in a different geo-political context, that of settler colonialism. I thus criticize Bonnie Honig’s interpretation of that move and argue, instead, that Butler’s ethical supplement to politics is her way of addressing the speechlessness that prima facie disavows the Palestinian claim to equality by coding their mourning as an act of vengeance against the colonial order. Having questioned Honig’s oversight of the difference in the subject positionality of Butler’s move, I then show that Butler’s ethical-political frame of grievability functions as a theoretical performance of the kind of sororal conspiracy that Honig in fact offers as a more suitable model of democratic action.

Western Imaginary of Jihadism

Western jihadism is a complex phenomenon in which the imaginary dimension, the subjectivity of the actors linked to their socio-economic condition but also to their ethnicity, and beyond that, what I call their subjectivation (the ability to empower oneself as a social actor), play a significant role. In Europe, among the Muslim offshoots of migrant workers, most of the psychological developments associated with Jihadism occurs in very specific urban structures, the poor districts or suburbs, where a high concentration of urban poor live with a burden of social stigma linked to the high criminality rate. These settings are often de facto ghettoes. The development of a specific urban imagination often gives meaning to the jihadist commitment among young people living in this type of settlement. This imaginary often feeds on a feeling of stigmatization among these people. Jihadism is not a quest for meaning, but its discovery, the wielding of it through embracing death and inflicting it on the ‘infidels’. It is, in another way, a punishment of society, an act of vengeance against it, be it due to personal reasons (mainly for the young downtrodden of the immigrant origin who feel stigmatized by the society) or due to the lack of ideal, utopia and social justice in society (the case of the young middle class people). This study aims at underlining the fact that social imaginaries should be at the root of socio-anthropological analysis and without understanding the meaning of social action, quantitative views give us at best a unilateral, at most a distorted view of social action and social behavior.

Przyczynek do pozagładowego lurianizmu. Droga żelazna Aharona Appelfelda

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE POST-SHOAH LURIANISM: THE IRON TRACKS BY AHARON APPELFELD The article reinterprets The Iron Tracks by Aharon Appelfeld as a work of Lurianic Kabbalah adapted to the world after the Shoah. It is a reality of collapsed transcendence in which no divinity or ethics hold universal validity. As in Lurianism, this world contains entrapped sparks of former transcendence: dispersed Jewish survivors, artefacts of Jewish life and a Jewish Communist organization. Appelfeld portrays a post-survival world based on permanent repetition and unrepented guilt. The gist of his novel, however, lies in the slim possibility of redemption which the main protagonist, Erwin Siegelbaum, opens up with an act of vengeance on a war criminal.

RaShThe Bullet Train and Other Loaded Poems

on his head / grabs frames from the darkness ,” Kates’s choice not to use the English word “headlamp” keeps the Russian end-line emphasis on “head,” and the “flash” in “flashlight ” reinforces the sense of photographic sight. Often multilayered and dark—“Earth, dying on the eve of winter / responds to the touch like a cold corpse”—in these poems there is also a sense of possibility: “We will die and wake up as someone else, / . . . surviving our ending without trauma. / . . . we will choose for ourselves.” This is a beautifully translated volume that neither exoticizes nor renders out the joy of reading poetry grounded in another place and language . Against the “obstruct[ing]” sounds of “desiccated tendons . . . on a stringed instrument ,” Tazhi’s poetry is a music that explores our shared borders as spaces of opportunity, for the possibility of creating “an imagined world: one that absorbs music from the outside , / and will not preserve the borders / of an internal country.” Alison Mandaville California State University, Fresno RaSh The Bullet Train and Other Loaded Poems Kolkata. Hawakal. 2019. 63 pages. RaSh’s fascinating collection of poems draws immediate attention to its title. One only needs to turn over and read the first poem to understand the politics behind it. He uses the image of the bullet train as a symbol to juxtapose two uncomfortable truths together—India’s ambitious project of building a bullet train and the state-sanctioned killings of Indian rationalists and journalists like M. M. Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh. The idea behind the title and the title poem is to bring to the fore the jarring reality of the parallelism between commercial ambition and human sacrifice. As the poet himself writes: “This train will now pass through / Under skin arteries and veins and nerves . . . / To topple into a depthless soul one by one.” Unlike RaSh’s previous collection of poems, Bullet Train is directly political and addresses issues that have been bothering not just the poet’s conscience but the collective conscience of many in India. In trying to create poetry out of violence, RaSh tries to break free from the stereotypical assumptions about the poet and his/her Muse. The Muse here is far from the Greek imaginary. The Muse is Asifa, a young girl repeatedly raped inside a temple and later killed as an act of vengeance on her community . The Muse is also Rohith Vemula, a young PhD scholar who, after systematic bullying by his university for being a Dalit, succumbs to suicide (see Meena Alexander’s “Death of a Young Dalit,” WLT, Nov. 2016). As historical testimonies vehemently resisting amnesia, the poems hurl a challenge to the status quo: “You can teach me / How to burn alive a peacock . . . / But, never never never never teach me / How to love . . . / You don’t know / What I know.” RaSh’s language jolts the reader out of her indifference. Lines like “her lover bought her wombandfilleditwithink to dip a quill in” transform the reader into an active listener. This is what distinguishes RaSh’s collection . Surpassing ordinary readerly expectations, these poems explode into stories of “lies, conceit, loathing, and repulsion.” The poet-witness, like his Kafka, wails for the dead and the dying at the hands of the oppressor: “Who is he to die so unceremoniously ? / ‘Like a dog,’ ‘like a dog’ . . .” Sahana Mukherjee Kolkata Karen Havelin Please Read This Leaflet Carefully New York. Dottir Press. 2019. 271 pages. Please Read This Leaflet Carefully is the interior monologue of Laura Fjellstad, a young woman made old by decades of chronic pain. Told in reverse chronology, Laura’s story is an endless cycle of enduring and managing pain from “deeply infiltrating endometriosis” that is exacerbated by asthma, severe food allergies, and prestage osteoporosis. Every element of her day in New York—from what she eats to how far she walks—is carefully orchestrated to avoid more pain. Yet, for all her planning and considering , the narrator has very little control over her daily health. This powerlessness results in physical discomfort and, perhaps more destructively, what Laura calls a “sucking vortex of anxiety.” Her thoughts are constantly at war with her family, her lovers, and herself. She both needs...

Karen HavelinPlease Read This Leaflet Carefully

on his head / grabs frames from the darkness ,” Kates’s choice not to use the English word “headlamp” keeps the Russian end-line emphasis on “head,” and the “flash” in “flashlight ” reinforces the sense of photographic sight. Often multilayered and dark—“Earth, dying on the eve of winter / responds to the touch like a cold corpse”—in these poems there is also a sense of possibility: “We will die and wake up as someone else, / . . . surviving our ending without trauma. / . . . we will choose for ourselves.” This is a beautifully translated volume that neither exoticizes nor renders out the joy of reading poetry grounded in another place and language . Against the “obstruct[ing]” sounds of “desiccated tendons . . . on a stringed instrument ,” Tazhi’s poetry is a music that explores our shared borders as spaces of opportunity, for the possibility of creating “an imagined world: one that absorbs music from the outside , / and will not preserve the borders / of an internal country.” Alison Mandaville California State University, Fresno RaSh The Bullet Train and Other Loaded Poems Kolkata. Hawakal. 2019. 63 pages. RaSh’s fascinating collection of poems draws immediate attention to its title. One only needs to turn over and read the first poem to understand the politics behind it. He uses the image of the bullet train as a symbol to juxtapose two uncomfortable truths together—India’s ambitious project of building a bullet train and the state-sanctioned killings of Indian rationalists and journalists like M. M. Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh. The idea behind the title and the title poem is to bring to the fore the jarring reality of the parallelism between commercial ambition and human sacrifice. As the poet himself writes: “This train will now pass through / Under skin arteries and veins and nerves . . . / To topple into a depthless soul one by one.” Unlike RaSh’s previous collection of poems, Bullet Train is directly political and addresses issues that have been bothering not just the poet’s conscience but the collective conscience of many in India. In trying to create poetry out of violence, RaSh tries to break free from the stereotypical assumptions about the poet and his/her Muse. The Muse here is far from the Greek imaginary. The Muse is Asifa, a young girl repeatedly raped inside a temple and later killed as an act of vengeance on her community . The Muse is also Rohith Vemula, a young PhD scholar who, after systematic bullying by his university for being a Dalit, succumbs to suicide (see Meena Alexander’s “Death of a Young Dalit,” WLT, Nov. 2016). As historical testimonies vehemently resisting amnesia, the poems hurl a challenge to the status quo: “You can teach me / How to burn alive a peacock . . . / But, never never never never teach me / How to love . . . / You don’t know / What I know.” RaSh’s language jolts the reader out of her indifference. Lines like “her lover bought her wombandfilleditwithink to dip a quill in” transform the reader into an active listener. This is what distinguishes RaSh’s collection . Surpassing ordinary readerly expectations, these poems explode into stories of “lies, conceit, loathing, and repulsion.” The poet-witness, like his Kafka, wails for the dead and the dying at the hands of the oppressor: “Who is he to die so unceremoniously ? / ‘Like a dog,’ ‘like a dog’ . . .” Sahana Mukherjee Kolkata Karen Havelin Please Read This Leaflet Carefully New York. Dottir Press. 2019. 271 pages. Please Read This Leaflet Carefully is the interior monologue of Laura Fjellstad, a young woman made old by decades of chronic pain. Told in reverse chronology, Laura’s story is an endless cycle of enduring and managing pain from “deeply infiltrating endometriosis” that is exacerbated by asthma, severe food allergies, and prestage osteoporosis. Every element of her day in New York—from what she eats to how far she walks—is carefully orchestrated to avoid more pain. Yet, for all her planning and considering , the narrator has very little control over her daily health. This powerlessness results in physical discomfort and, perhaps more destructively, what Laura calls a “sucking vortex of anxiety.” Her thoughts are constantly at war with her family, her lovers, and herself. She both needs...

Cuncta quatiam: Medeia abala estruturas

The morally aporetic end of Seneca’s Latin Medea puzzles the reader of the play. After having killed her two sons in an act of vengeance against Jason, the mythic female figure is raised to the heavens on a winged chariot toward a triumphal exit. How come that the repudiated and enraged woman turns out to be a kind of heroine for the Stoic playwright? It happens that for him virtus is not measured by good actions in the battlefield, but as a mental disposition to face ill fortune. In a range of occasions Seneca writes about the virtuous human being and his/her consistency of character. We deal in this article with Seneca’s Letter 120 on epistemology, the philosophical piece De providentia and the plays Medea and Hercules Furens in an attempt to elucidate the process through which the barbarous princess regains her identity, far from men, closer to the gods.

Educating Nélida and Valentia: Female Mentorship in Two Works by Marie d’Agoult

The fact that Marie d’Agoult published her 1846 novel, Nelida —long dismissed as an act of vengeance against Franz Liszt—in a socialist periodical, La Revue independante , rather than the established Revue des deux mondes , suggests that she had other goals in mind. D’Agoult centers both Nelida and her 1847 nouvelle, Valentia , on the eponymous heroines’ education, paying particular attention to the role of the female mentor. In Elisabeth, Nelida’s mentor, d’Agoult gives us a socialist, feminist version of that quintessential male mentor, Vautrin, and an alternative to the male protagonist’s failed social ascent and illusions perdues : social intervention in collective life. The lessons of Valentia’s mentor, Rosane d’Ermeuil, a high society courtesan, are, in contrast to those of Elisabeth, primarily sexual in nature. Through these two original and strikingly different figures, d’Agoult offers a two-pronged “way out” for women, a plan for fulfilling them in both mind and body.

The ideology of tri-people: a critical discourse analysis

Muslims, Christians and Lumads (IPs) vary in their ideologies on social issues. This descriptive-qualitative study was conducted to analyse the ideology of tri-people on the issues of the feud (rido), domestic violence, and political leadership in the community level and determine the different approaches employed by the people in resolving the issues. An interview guide on the issues on rido, domestic violence, and political leadership was formulated. A focus group discussion (FGD) was also done to validate or verify the gathered information. The study revealed that the ideology on rido is the act of vengeance, war and killings, land disputes and the clash of clans. On domestic violence: verbal altercation, early marriage and differing principles. On political leadership: dynasty and power and economic stability. Conflict resolution approaches were determined: on rido, dialogue between clans with the participation of elders, barangay council, and religious leaders, negotiation, and reconciliation. On domestic violence, the religious-based approach, elders’ intervention, sitio-based settlement; barangay council settlement, the involvement of Kamal; dialogues; and parent-to-parent approach. On political leadership, collective community effort; public awareness, extra-judicial killing, and election. The study concludes conflicts can be solved by in peaceful means. This study recommends that the institution is a bridge to understanding the diversity of cultures in Mindanao. Therefore, the teaching of each cultural identity is vital to bring awareness and understanding of one’s ideology as a people.

The Siege of Jerusalem ed. by Adrienne Williams Boyarin (review)

adrienne williams boyarin, ed., The Siege of Jerusalem. Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Toronto: Broadview, 2014. Pp. 198. isbn: 978-1-55481-158-8. $18.95.When it appeared in the late fourteenth century, The Siege of Jerusalem was not the first Christian text to explore and revise Josephus' account of the Flavian siege of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., nor was it the first to portray fictively Christianized Romans taking up a campaign as an act of vengeance against the Jews. It was, however, the first rendition to appear in alliterative long line verse, situating the violent tale within the aesthetically adorned literary and emotive context of late medieval English poetry. Because of the anti-Semitic horrors that fill The Siege of Jerusalem, it is difficult to comprehend how the poem was situated and appreciated as an effective religious production and work of art. Yet, as Boyarin is quick to point out, the work offers attentive audiences a better understanding of many of the critical issues which drive premodern scholarship, including uses of genre, textual borrowing and adaptation, Christian medieval receptions and uses of Judaism, hagiography, eschatology, historiography, reliquary culture, conversion, and crusading, to name only a few. It is, of course, not Boyarin's aim to draw attention away from the horrific treatment of the poem's Jews; the text allows a clear understanding of medieval Christian antiSemitism, especially in relation to a range of different crusading impulses that shaped the medieval period. It is in opening up such critical discussions that the translation is so useful, particularly in undergraduate classrooms where levels of familiarity with Middle English vary; the Modern English edition widens the circle of students able to engage with the important questions which the poem raises.Scholars over the past decade have been working to make the Siege more available for scholarly critique. Boyarin's Modern English text joins Ralph Hanna III and David Lawton's Middle English edition published by the Early English Text Society in 2003, the latter a useful update to the earlier, full edition by Eugen Kolbing and Mabel Day published by EETS in 1932. The Siege poem has circulated in partial, anthologized form, in Thorlac Turville-Petre's Middle English excerpt in Alliterative Poetry of the Later Middle Ages, and in full, in Michael Livingston's edition for the TEAMS Middle English Texts Series (2004), which simplified and glossed aspects of the Middle English for classroom use. Boyarin's Modern English translation of The Siege of Jerusalem is the first of its kind, and a valuable undergraduate classroom resource. Boyarin's base-text, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 656, fols. 1v-19r, represents one of the oldest of the more complete manuscripts containing the poem, and is the text used (with some justifiable reservations) by Hanna, Lawton, and Livingston. Boyarin's plan for her translation, for use alongside current editions in Middle English, maintains the divisions and lineations of those editions.While Boyarin situates her work as a supporting apparatus to the Middle English editions, it should be noted that she does not slavishly follow the poem's prior editors at every step. …

Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095-1216 * Crusades: Medieval Worlds in Conflict

Susanna Throop’s monograph offers a careful consideration of the idea of spiritual vengeance in the long thirteenth century, taking Pope Innocent III’s death in 1216 as her closing point. It is a book full of interesting insights and thought-provoking evidence. Although I found the central thesis a little over-stated and a number of important points undeveloped, I nevertheless greatly enjoyed reading this lucid book which makes a valuable contribution to crusading studies. Throop claims that ‘as a result of this study, it is clear that, although the idea of crusading as vengeance did draw upon what we call secular values, it was also firmly rooted in religious ideas of divine justice and vengeance as moral punishment’. There is much merit in this claim, but arguably less in the one stating ‘Crusading was interpreted as an act of vengeance not so much because of its singularity in the minds of contemporaries, but because of the way it fitted into the overall worldview of western European culture at that time’.

Gothic Domesticity in Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms

Gothic Domesticity in Eugene O'Neill's <i>Desire Under the Elms</i>

Crusading as an act of vengeance, 1095–1216. By Susanna A. Throop. Pp. ix+232. Farnham–Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2011. £65. 978 0 7546 6582 3

Crusading as an act of vengeance, 1095–1216. By Susanna A. Throop. Pp. ix+232. Farnham–Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2011. £65. 978 0 7546 6582 3

Consuming the Other: Cannibals and Vampires in Carmen Boullosa's Fiction

CONSUMING THE OTHER: CANNIBALS AND VAMPIRES IN CARMEN BOULLOSA’S FICTION JESSICA BURKE AS old as the rumored existence of cannibalistic practices is the fascination with mankind’s consumption of fellow human beings. The term cannibal was coined by Christopher Columbus when native guides on his voyage to the “New World” told him stories of tribes that fed on human flesh. In 1979 William Arens published a study called The ManEating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy, in which he expressed concern over the field of anthropology’s apparent need for the existence of cannibalism in order to form itself as a valid discipline. His study produced an uproar among anthropologists, who quickly wrote responses focused on proving the existence of cannibalism despite Arens’ implications , and thus ironically confirmed Arens’ argument – we need cannibals . This need is firmly rooted in the human psyche, as evidenced by cannibalism’s consistent appearance in literature, whether in literal or metaphorical form. In the years that followed the discovery of the Americas , the cannibal was re-interpreted and re-presented with varying degrees of sympathy or condemnation, depending on the purpose behind each portrayal of his “reality.” Whether anthropophagy occurs by necessity or from desire, through hatred or through ritual, in an act of vengeance or in an act of savagery, the possible motivations for such behavior are outnumbered only by the texts that explore them. The appearance of cannibalism in three works by contemporary Mexican writer Carmen Boullosa reminds us that the cannibal is just as much a part of human nature as it is of history. In his book Cannibalism: from sacrifice to survival, psychologist Hans Askenasy considers the various reasons why a person would want to consume another person. Besides the obvious reason – hunger – there 177 are a slew of other possible “motivational factors” for cannibalism. In a chapter entitled “Punishment, Indifference, and Unification,” Askenasy provides three factors that eerily coincide with separate instances of cannibalism in three different narrative works of Carmen Boullosa. While these three forms of cannibalism (namely, punitive, unitive, and profane cannibalism ) appear neatly categorized in Askenasy’s work, applying them to Boullosa’s characters serves merely as a departure point for an exploration of acts of consumption that seem to result from both a psychological and a physical need to devour the Other. Set in the past, present and future, respectively, Boullosa’s Son vacas, somos puercos, Isabel, and Cielos de la tierra all involve bizarre cases of cannibalism that serve to underscore the author’s own concerns regarding the destructive impulses behind human behavior. In Son vacas, somos puercos, set in the Caribbean of colonial times, the protagonist Smeeks serves as ship’s surgeon under the tyrannical rule of a French pirate named L ’Olonnais, or “Nau.” While Smeeks is the primary narrator of the novel, at different moments in the text he cedes narration to others, as in the extraordinary case of Nau’s death. Nau narrates his own demise as he is captured and eaten alive by cannibals. It seems a just end for a man who wreaked havoc on colonial society, cruelly abusing both natives and colonists alike. The Indians’ cannibalism can be attributed to revenge rather than hunger, as their leader delivers a speech about avenging the deaths of the tribe’s loved ones. This punitive cannibalism is preceded by a ritual in which the women of the tribe abuse Nau, tying him to a hammock to force themselves on him before later cutting off his eyelashes and slapping him. The misogynistic pirate continues to blame the female sex for his current situation, even though he isn’t sure exactly how they are to blame. He watches as the children devour parts of his body, until the loss of blood causes him to lose consciousness. Nau’s defiance in the face of the tribal women exemplifies the general sense of scorn for the female sex felt among the European pirates, who call themselves free “pigs” as opposed to the domesticated “cows” that marry, settle, and pay tribute to the crowns of Europe. Throughout the novel there is an underlying fear of domestication and a rejection of the female sex as an emblem of...

THE DEATH OF CHARLES I

By the winter of 1648–9, demands for retributive justice on Charles I and his supporters had built to a crescendo. But regicide was generally regarded as an extremely bad idea, and the king's trial was contrived as a final bid for peaceful settlement, not a prelude to king-killing. In return for a place at the heart of a new constitutional order, Charles I was required to abdicate his negative voice by pleading to charges brought on the sole authority of the House of Commons. This was a high-risk strategy inspired and justified by the weakening of opposition to the trial in the House of Lords, the city of London and at Edinburgh, and by some of the encouraging signals emanating from deep within the royalist camp itself. However, in their anxiety to avoid having their ultimate sanction forced upon them, the commissioners of the high court of justice gave the king rather more opportunities to plead to the charges against him than was consistent with the maintenance of their own authority. Rather than persuading him to give in, they encouraged him to stand firm, with fatal consequences. Far from being a providential act of vengeance, or indeed the inexorable fate of a man predestined to martyrdom, the execution of Charles I was a highly adventitious occurrence – predictable, perhaps, yet contingent on a wide range of unpredictable circumstances.

The Strange Death of Patroklos

The account of the death of Patroklos occupies a strategic position in the narrative economy of the Iliad: before this event, Achilles has withdrawn from combat out of indignation against Agamemnon; afterwards, his anger turns against Hector, whom he holds responsible for his friend's death. Achilles returns to battle and kills Hector in an act of vengeance that, as we have known from the beginning of the poem, will lead to his own demise, which is not actually recounted in the Iliad. This episode stands out because it is atypical both in the contents of the narration and in the means of expression used (what are generally termed “formulas”). I will give some examples of these oddities and then propose an interpretation. Here is the text, in the translation by Richmond Lattimore:So long as the sun was climbing still to the middle heaven, so long the thrown weapons of both took hold, and men dropped under them; but when the sun had gone to the time for unyoking of cattle, then beyond their very destiny the Achaians were stronger and dragged the hero Kebriones from under the weapons and the clamour of the Trojans, and stripped the armour from his shoulders. And Patroklos charged with evil intention in on the Trojans. Three times he charged in with the force of the running war god, screaming a terrible cry, and three times he cut down nine men; but as for the fourth time he swept in, like something greater than human, there, Patroklos, the end of your life was shown forth, since Phoibos came against you there in the strong encounter dangerously, nor did Patroklos see him as he moved through the battle, and shrouded in a deep mist came in against him and stood behind him, and struck his back and his broad shoulders with a flat stroke of the hand so that his eyes spun. Phoibos Apollo now struck away from his head the helmet four-horned and hollow-eyed, and under the feet of the horses it rolled clattering, and the plumes above it were defiled by blood and dust. Before this time it had not been permitted to defile in the dust this great helmet crested in horse-hair; rather it guarded the hear and the gracious brow a godlike man, Achilleus; but now Zeus gave it over to Hektor to wear on his head, Hektor whose own death was close to him. And in his hands was splintered all the huge, great, heavy, iron-shod, far-shadowing spear, and away from his shoulders dropped to the ground the shield with its shield sling and its tassels. The lord Apollo, son of Zeus, broke the corselet upon him. Disaster caught his wits, and his shining body went nerveless. He stood stupidly, and from close behind his back a Dardanian man hit him between the shoulders with a sharp javelin: Euphorbos, son of Pantho(s, who surpassed all men of his own age with the throwing spear, and in horsemanship and the speed of his feet. He had already brought down twenty men from their horses since first coming, with his chariot and his learning in warfare. He first hit you with a thrown spear, o rider Patroklos, nor broke you, but ran away again, snatching out the ash spear from your body, and lost himself in the crowd, not enduring to face Patroklos, naked as he was, in close combat.

Wrongful Death: A medical tragedy

Sandra M Gilbert Norton, £15.95, pp 365 ISBN 0 393 03721 5 Elliot Gilbert, professor of English literature at the university of California, Davis, died on 11 February 1991 only hours after a radical prostatectomy for a large cancer. His death followed a series of medical mishaps ranging from a long and difficult resection of an adherent gland to mismanagement of a postoperative haemorrhage that was later deemed negligent. The circumstances were shrouded in evasions; communication with the family was bumblingly incompetent. Almost inevitably therefore, things ended in court. Wrongful Death is a final act of vengeance by his …