Choice Of Examples Research Articles

Spatial Information Infrastructure for Integrated Coastal and Ocean Management in Canada

Access to current, comprehensive, and reliable spatial information is necessary for informed decision making in integrated coastal and ocean management. This need is being met through development of a marine spatial information infrastructure that encompasses both technological and institutional responses. This article traces Canada's experience in developing a marine spatial information infrastructure over the last 30 years starting with the compilation of coastal atlases, through the development of geographic information systems, to remote data acquisition instruments and Web mapping portals. Because of the plethora of initiatives, it has been essential to be selected and limit the number and choice of examples. The institutional response has lagged behind that of technological innovation and hinges on understanding users’ needs and decision support drivers, sustainability of institutional and individual champions, and, above all, cooperation and collaboration among the broad community of practice.

Differentiating Culture and the Environments in International Business Courses

The author has focused on the problem of repetition in material in international business confounding the course contents. This admixing of material to a large extent comes from the influences of the same cultural and environmental considerations being the source of much information across these courses. The author suggests a way to deal with this admixing through a judicious choice of examples to those impacting the issues in the course. There are many instances where the same cultural or environmental consideration influences some of the main issues in more than one course. The paper suggests the use of an example of that influencer impacting issues that are central to the content of the course being taught. This same strategy involving this same influencer in another course would suggest the use of an example relating to issues pertinent to that course. The use of an influence impacting different issues in different courses forcing a different explanation would help differentiate the courses and also give the student a much fuller and more sophisticated understanding of different cultures. Doing this would increase the cogency of each course and lay a better foundation for the student in understanding the multifaceted nature of the influences of culture and the environments.

Medieval Warfare

This introductory text complements (and offers competition to) the excellent Medieval Warfare: A History, edited by Maurice Keen (1999). Unlike its predecessor, Nicholson's book employs the full scholarly apparatus: her wide-ranging and detailed footnote references make her book particularly useful for students; the author's extensive reading is clear and impressive. Six succinct and highly informative chapters cover theory, practice, personnel, equipment, buildings and, notably, naval warfare (a subject which is finally receiving the attention it warrants). Nicholson readily concedes that in a relatively short book such as this, it is inevitable that some areas do not receive enough coverage: her perceptive comments on the ‘Military Revolution’ left this reader eager for a fuller analysis. Conversely, there is perhaps too much on theory in general and on Vegetius's De re militari in particular (ch. 1). As Nicholson writes towards the end of the book, ‘examination of actual medieval battles suggests that Vegetius’s battle plans generally remained theoretical models rather than being used in practice (p. 138). In her account of the battle of Carcano in 1160 (based closely on John France's analysis), Nicholson notes how Frederick Barbarossa ignored Vegetius's theoretical guidelines. Historians afford Vegetius much attention primarily because he produced a rare and, to some extent, influential book on how to wage war; yet it is unlikely that the book's practical common sense would contain revolutionary ideas alien to experienced medieval commanders in the field. Overall, however, the book is well balanced. Within its imposed confines it is very pleasing to see due attention given to sometimes overlooked matters such as non-combatants (focusing predominantly on women) and, as already observed, the maritime sphere. Despite its relative brevity, the volume conveys a convincing sense of comprehension, while adeptly avoiding cluttering the text with dense facts and figures. Nicholson selects her illustrative examples with care, allowing them to breathe without the constriction of lengthy lists; this allows some of the real drama of medieval warfare to come through, so encouraging undergraduates to read further. Students will also be grateful for Nicholson's lucid and straightforward style. This reviewer was not relishing over twenty pages of technical details on weaponry and equipment, but came away enlightened and without the onset of any technophobic twinges: those bored by bores can still enjoy the paragraphs on gunpowder artillery. In her chapter on the practice of land warfare, Nicholson again employs shrewd judgment in her choice of examples, this time for case-studies of three battles. Eschewing the obvious choices (for example, Hastings or Agincourt), she instead plumps for the relatively lesser known examples of Poitiers (732), Neuss (1475) and, as already mentioned, Carcano (1160), As the chronological range of these battles indicates, Nicholson's Middle Ages encompasses its broadest scope: from 300 to 1500. This is a particular strength of the book: not only does it afford the opportunity to include many revealing, colourful and oft-overlooked examples from the early medieval period (such as Clovis splitting the head of a soldier on, tellingly, a military parade ground); importantly, it also serves to show just how little warfare changed over the whole medieval period, thereby questioning further the increasingly challenged concept of a military revolution in the late medieval period. Nicholson is firmly in the evolutionary camp: ‘Arguably, the development of cannon was the first major step forward in warfare in Catholic Europe since the old Roman Empire’ (p. 90). (Note the qualifying ‘arguably ’). This excellent introductory text deserves to run into many future editions. These may wish to reconsider some relatively minor points of issue. Nicholson subscribes to the almost-universally held view that if a fortress were taken by storm, ‘all inside it could expect no mercy’ (p. 130); the biblical justification cited for this extreme action is Deuteronomy, but this actually specifies the slaughter only of adult males. Also, it was not just the wealthy who were ransomed, but all and sundry, as Roger of Wendover makes clear (even corpses were ransomed, usually for half the going rate of living hostages). A rare dating typo crops up for Edward II's downfall (1227, p. 3). Most importantly of all, to facilitate even greater use of such a valuable book, sub-headings should be used throughout: each of the lengthy chapters comprises a long, unbroken text which hinders ready access to relevant material. Nicholson has produced a masterful synthesis which offers a perfect summation of revisionist and post-revisionist scholarship on warfare in the middle ages. As such, it is an indispensable textbook and a notable achievement.

On Reviewing Don Quixote

On Reviewing Don Quixote

Austria and France: Introduction

Austria and France Introduction ROBERT VILAIN Relations between Austria and France have been characterized by enduring political antipathy, not to say overt hostility, and by profound respect, even empathy, in the cultural sphere ? and sometimes by all of these at once. Whilst this is no doubt true to some extent of every relationship between great nations and cultures, the paradoxes are particularly striking in this instance. It has been observed that ? quite apart from earlier conflicts such as the Thirty Years' War ? France and Austria have been at war no less than nine times between 1715 and 1918, and came to the brink of conflict several more times between the 1720s and 1848.1 Yet periods as disparate as the reign of Maria Theresia and the flowering of Viennese Modernism around 1900 were decisively marked by the influence of France. The development of French music in the nineteenth century is unthinkable without the models of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. However, as is perhaps evident even from this choice of examples, the fact that there has long been a reciprocity of interest on many different levels between Austria and France does not necessarily mean that such interest and awareness have been evenly balanced. For better or forworse, a knowledge ofAustria and her history, literature and culture isnot a sine qua non for the educated French citizen in the way that a familiarity with France and things French has been part and parcel of the cultural awareness of an educated Austrian. Research conducted in 1999 on Austria's image in France suggests a positive, even appreciative awareness on the part of the French public, although the image that has been received is a relatively superficial, picture-postcard one.2 The most successful Austrian cultural 'exports' have probably been in the field of music, a traffic that has not been so marked in the 1 The dates of the wars are listed in Paul W. Schroeder, Pointless Enduring Rivalry. France and the Habsburg Monarchy, 1715-1918', in Great Power Rivalries, ed. byWilliam R. Thompson (Columbia, SC, 1999), pp. 60-79 (P- 62): 1733-35, 1741-48, 1792-97, 1799-1801, 1805, 1809, 1813-14, 1815, 1859, 1914-18; during the war of 1939-45, Austria did not, of course, exist as a separate political entity. 2 See Silke D?rnberger, Entwicklung und Status quo franz?sisch-?sterreichischer Kultur transfers im literarhistorischen Kontext. Eine europ?ische Zweierbeziehung, Europ?ische Hoch schulschriften, Series 13: Franz?sische Sprache und Literatur 265 (Frankfurt a. M., 2002), p. 7. 2 Introduction opposite direction (with the exception of Jacques Offenbach, perhaps). There is, of course, a substantial body of work studying the relationship of the two countries, from the very earliest periods to the present day,3 and the present Introduction is no more than a sketch of some of the most striking cultural features of that relationship. Contacts between Austria and France date back to the Middle Ages, when French pilgrims crossed Austria or sailed down the Danube towards the Holy Land. A cluster of dynastic liaisons was inaugurated with the marriage of Rudolf of Habsburg to Isabella of Burgundy in 1284; Rudolfs grandson, Rudolf HI, married the sister of Philippe IV. In 1477 the daughter of Charles le T?m?raire, Maria of Burgundy, married Archduke Maximilian, later Holy Roman Emperor. And yet it was the extension of just such dense dynastic interconnections, making a powerful union of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, that lay at the root of the centuries-long political antagonism that characterized the relationship of France and Austria.4 The occupation of the Spanish throne by a Habsburg presented a threat to France that did not end until the accession of the Duc d'Anjou as Philip V, confirmed by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. During this period political relations were more often hostile than cooperative. Between 1494 and 1715 the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs and the Valois and Bourbon kings of France fought repeatedly in great, exhausting wars [...]. Both were bidding for European hegemony [...]. Each posed a direct, massive security threat to the other [...]. Almost every kind of stake was involved? particular territories (the Low Countries, the borderlands of modern eastern France...

The Dial, The Little Review, and the Dialogics of Modernism

Thinking that he had lost the chance to publish The Waste Land, which he had not yet actually seen, Scofield Thayer, joint owner and editor of the Dial, wrote to his staff in March 1922 that "if Eliot's long poem was anything like Pound's Cantos, perhaps we are unwillingly blessed" in losing it.1 Accepting the poem subsequently under pressure from his partner James Sibley Watson and his Paris correspondent Pound did not improve Thayer's opinion of it. In October 1922, the month of The Waste Land's publication, he wrote to his prospective new managing editor Alyse Gregory: "I feel forced to refrain in the future from publishing such matter as the silly cantos of Ezra Pound and as the very disappointing 'Waste Land' and I should like to secure for the Dial the work of such recognized American authors as Edith Wharton."2 Thayer was about to preside over a turning point in the institutionalization of Anglo-American modernism, and in the positioning of his own magazine within that institution. Under the circumstances, these hardly sound like words calculated to make The Dial one of the most influential literary reviews ever published in America. Yet the aesthetic conservatism implied in Thayer's choice of examples—Wharton over Pound and Eliot—was, paradoxically, necessary to the Dial's promotion of aesthetic revolution. Already an established magazine, under Thayer and Watson the Dial put experimental modernist work in a context that made it more palatable to a general audience. Meanwhile, the Little Review (1914–29), a contemporary of the Dial (1920–29) and perhaps the quintessential little magazine, provided a first outlet and encouragement for much of that experiment. By emphasizing the relationship between these two equally important, though very different, magazines, we can better understand how together they helped shape one version of an emerging modern American [End Page 42] poetry canon. The relationship between the Dial and the Little Review also demonstrates how, in its rapprochement with a mainstream publishing outlet, early twentieth-century American avant-gardism bears a very different relation to its mainstream contemporaries from that of the European movements on which canonical theories of the avant-garde rest. Thus we need to theorize the relationship between the avant-garde and modernism differently for the American scene—to think in terms of avant-garde tendencies, impulses, or moments rather than movements. Mainly, however, I want to propose here a historically based model for considering how the shaping of taste by modernist magazines is a collective project, not a matter of the atomized influence of single publications. Such a model would complicate center-margin oppositions and blur some of the binaries proposed in an influential theory of the avant-garde like Peter Burger's, by suggesting how the Dial and the Little Review needed each other to accomplish their cultural work. This is not to deny that some magazines have a longer-lasting and deeper impact than others. It is to assert, however, that even those magazines—like individual canonical authors—have their meaning and effect not in isolation but in relation to others. Commentators on modernist magazines have consistently linked the Dial and the Little Review, usually to contrast them, and apologists for both magazines have used the example of one to excoriate the other as it suits them. Nicholas Joost describes the Dial in terms typically reserved for the high modernist art work, defining it as a "disciplined and ordered artifact" in opposition to the "glittering, and occasionally silly, hodgepodge" of the Little Review's failure to offer anything "more than self-expression."3 Gorham Munson, who had kicked off his little magazine Secession in spring 1922 with a critique of the Dial, subsequently contrasted the Dial and the Little Review to the latter's advantage under the title "How to Run a Little Magazine": "The Little...

Causal structure of analogue spacetimes

The so-called ‘analogue models of general relativity’ provide a number of specific physical systems, well outside the traditional realm of general relativity, that nevertheless are well-described by the differential geometry of curved spacetime. Specifically, the propagation of perturbations in these condensed matter systems is described by ‘effective metrics’ that carry with them notions of ‘causal structure’ as determined by an exchange of quasi-particles. These quasi-particle-induced causal structures serve as specific examples of what can be done in the presence of a Lorentzian metric without having recourse to the Einstein equations of general relativity. (After all, the underlying analogue model is governed by its own specific physics, not necessarily by the Einstein equations.) In this paper we take a careful look at what can be said about the causal structure of analogue spacetimes, focusing on those containing quasi-particle horizons, both with a view to seeing what is different from standard general relativity, and what the similarities might be. For definiteness, and because the physics is particularly simple to understand, we will phrase much of the discussion in terms of acoustic disturbances in moving fluids, where the underlying physics is ordinary fluid mechanics, governed by the equations of traditional hydrodynamics, and the relevant quasi-particles are the phonons. It must however be emphasized that this choice of example is only for the sake of pedagogical simplicity and that our considerations apply generically to wide classes of analogue spacetimes.

Principled Understanding? Teaching the Active and Passive Voice

This paper describes some of the misconceptions and confusions in metalinguistic understanding which are established by the teacher during whole-class teaching of the active and passive voice. It draws on findings from a larger study investigating how teachers use talk in whole-class settings to scaffold children's learning. Through a detailed analysis of the teacher's interactions with her class, the paper illuminates the significance of clarity in explanations and choice of examples and the importance of secure subject knowledge. It demonstrates how the teaching of metalinguistic knowledge requires more than an ability to identify and define terminology, and how an overemphasis upon content can lead to a failure to acknowledge the cognitive and conceptual implications of pedagogical decisions.

Promising New Directions in Biochemistry

Promising New Directions in Biochemistry

Factors affecting the robustness of metabolite fingerprinting using 1H NMR spectra

1H NMR spectroscopy is one of the techniques whose potential is currently being explored in the emerging field of metabolomics. It is a non-targeted method, producing signals for all proton-containing chemical species. For crude plant materials the spectra are always complex, with many signals overlapping. Hence a most suitable approach for analysing them is ‘metabolite fingerprinting’, which is aimed at highlighting compositional similarities and exploring the overall natural variability in a population of samples. The most commonly used method for this is principal component analysis (PCA), as it allows the whole spectral trace to be analysed and the vast quantity of information to be simplified. In this paper we investigate whether there are factors which may affect the NMR spectra in a way that subsequently decreases the robustness of the metabolite fingerprinting by PCA. Imperfections in the signal registration (i.e. inconsistency of the peak position) are generally detrimental to analysing whole traces by multivariate methods. The sources of such problems are illustrated through specially designed repeatability studies using potato and tomato samples, and the analysis of a tea dataset containing many samples. Careful sample preparation can help to limit peak shifts; for instance here by attempting to control the pH of the extracts. In addition, some compounds are susceptible to interactions affecting their chemical shifts and mathematical alignment of peaks may be necessary. Lastly factors such as resolution can also affect analyses and must be carefully adjusted. Our choice of examples aims to raise awareness of potential problems. We do not question the validity of the NMR approach, but point out those areas where special care may need to be taken.

Disparate But Disabled: Fat Embodiment and Disability Studies

At a recent conference on race, a prominent but controversial white male academic presented a paper on buckshot skull studies, noting comparisons between Caucasian and African skulls. Well-known for his race/ist scholarship, this scholar concluded that such studies represent facts that cannot be ignored, implying that racism, at least on some levels, can be biologically and scientifically justified. During the discussion of his paper, I posed a question about feminist standpoint epistemology, his obvious belief in science as purely objective, and his recalcitrance to situate himself, as a white male, within the context of his own study and scientific epistemology. After replying with the tiresome argument that only scientists can criticize science and stating that feminist standpoint epistemologists needed to build a rocket that made it to the moon before he would take their criticisms seriously, he continued to argue for pure objectivity, stating he could show me studies that empirically prove women's hips are wider than men's. Unpacking his choice of example exposes the liability I faced as a woman of size in a culture that values thinness. First, his example reminded me of my body size (while I was standing in the front of a

Aggregation numbers and microstructure characterization of self-assembled aggregates of poly(ethylene oxide) surfactants and related block-copolymers, studied by spectroscopic methods

This review presents typical examples of micellar size measurements and structural characterization of self-assembled systems as determined with spectroscopic methods, selected from our representative results accumulated in recent years of systematic studies. The choice of examples has aimed at emphasizing the potentiality of the methods used in the study of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) surfactants. By using the time-resolved fluorescence quenching method aggregation numbers have been determined for direct and reverse micelles as well as for micelle-like clusters formed in (bio)polymer-surfactant solutions. By using specific spectral parameters of a variety of properly chosen molecular probes [fluorescence, UV-VIS and electron spin resonance (ESR) spin probes], problems such as hydration degree and profile of the PEO chains, local viscosity, ordering and packing of surfactant chains have been addressed. The intention was to correlate results obtained from different spectroscopic methods and to refer all polarity data to a common scale, such as Kosower's polarity factor.

LECTURES ON BLACK HOLE QUANTUM MECHANICS

The lectures that follow were originally given in 1992, and written up only slightly later. Since then there have been dramatic developments in the quantum theory of black holes, especially in the context of string theory. None of these are reflected here. The concept of quantum hair, which is discussed at length in the lectures, is certainly of permanent interest, and I continue to believe that in some generalized form it will prove central to the whole question of how information is stored in black holes. The discussion of scattering and emission modes from various classes of black holes could be substantially simplified using modern techniques, and from currently popular perspectives the choice of examples might look eccentric. On the other hand fashions have changed rapidly in the field, and the big questions as stated and addressed here, especially as formulated for "real" black holes (nonextremal, in four-dimensional, asymptotically flat space–time, with supersymmetry broken), remain pertinent even as the tools to address them may evolve. The four lectures I gave at the school were based on two lengthy papers that have now been published, "Black Holes as Elementary Particles," Nuclear PhysicsB380, 447 (1992) and "Quantum Hair on Black Holes," Nuclear PhysicsB378, 175 (1992). The unifying theme of this work is to help make plausible the possibility that black holes, although they are certainly unusual and extreme states of matter, may be susceptible to a description using concepts that are not fundamentally different from those we use in describing other sorts of quantum-mechanical matter. In the first two lectures I discussed dilaton black holes. The fact that apparently innocuous changes in the "matter" action can drastically change the properties of a black hole is already very significant: it indicates that the physical properties of small black holes cannot be discussed reliably in the abstract, but must be considered with due regard to the rest of physics. (The macroscopic properties of large black holes, in particular those of astrophysical interest, are presumably well described by the familiar Einstein–Maxwell action which governs the massless fields. Heavy fields will at most provide Yukawa tails to the field surrounding the hole.) I will show how perturbations may be set up and analyzed completely, and why doing this is crucial for understanding the semiclassical physics of the hole including the Hawking radiation quantitatively. It will emerge that there is a class of dilaton black holes which behave as rather straightforward elementary particles. In the other two lectures I discussed the issue of hair on black holes, in particular the existence of hair associated with discrete gauge charges and its physical consequences. This hair is particularly interesting to analyze because it is invisible classically and to all order in ℏ. Its existence shows that black holes can have some "internal" quantum numbers in addition to their traditional classification by mass, charge, and angular momentum. The text that follows, follows the original papers closely.

Comments on "Robust, fragile, or optimal?" [with reply

The issue of fragile controllers produced by using popular robust and optimal control synthesis methods was raised by Keel-Bhattacharyya in the above mentioned paper (ibid. vol.42 (1997)). The commenter points out that the controller fragility problem described in the paper is: 1) well known in the literature; 2) due to the poor choice of examples; 3) can easily be fixed by changing the optimization criteria; and 4) can be fixed by changing the implementation. In reply, Keel-Bhattacharyya disagree with him on all counts and explain their argument.

Leibniz and the Two Clocks

Leibniz and the Two Clocks David Scott Anyone familiar with Leibniz’s philosophy in general and with his critique of occasionalism in particular is likely familiar with his example of two clocks. Generally speaking, the example illustrates a range of hypotheses that, according to Leibniz, might possibly explain the connections between substances in the world. The most important of these hypotheses are Leibniz’s own doctrine of the preestablished harmony and the occasionalist—for present purposes, Malebranche’s—doctrine of causation. In Leibniz’s mind at least, the two clocks example (so-called because substances are represented by two clocks) illustrates the superiority of the hypothesis of the preestablished harmony over occasionalism. Whether the example in fact succeeds in this regard is the primary question of this paper. Given the times, Leibniz’s choice of example is understandable. A clock is ideally suited to represent a mechanism, of course; and in view of the general “mechanization of the world view” of that time, the example seems to have been in the air.1 Spring-driven clocks had appeared at the outset of the sixteenth century, and the kind of clock Leibniz seems to have in mind in his example, namely, one driven by a pendulum, was the invention, in about 1656, of Christian Huygens, who was a significant influence on Leibniz. Huygens’s invention in fact provided the impetus for a broadening of the importance and extent of horology.2 Although Leibniz’s choice of example was understandable, it was not a happy one, and the general importunity of his use of this example was [End Page 445] recognized by both his contemporary critics and his subsequent commentators.3 In fact his choice of the example becomes almost ironic when it is recalled that Geulincx, who is most commonly associated with the example, was an occasionalist. The operations of two clocks, between which there is a constant and fixed relation, say, of keeping the same time, cannot normally be said to be “related.” The example is more intuitively taken to indicate the random, accidental, unnecessary, and unconnected nature of the otherwise constant and regular relation between the clocks; and so one would think the example more suited to an occasionalist’s position than to that of Leibniz. In what follows I aim to judge the effectiveness—in Leibniz’s own terms—of the two clocks example. In gauging the effectiveness of Leibniz’s use of the example, I expect that a few things can be learned about Leibniz’s system in general and about his critique of occasionalism in particular. My procedure will be to examine separately what I take to be four significant occasions in which Leibniz compares things or substances in the world and clocks. The passages in question date from a period spanning ten years, and in each instance the example is put to service in Leibniz’s attempt to better occasionalism. Beyond this, although the comparison is employed or appraised in slightly different ways each time, the uses to which it is put are basically two. In the first two instances examined below, it is employed primarily to distinguish the preestablished harmony from occasionalism. I will be arguing that, to the extent that it fails to illustrate his point, Leibniz fails adequately to distinguish these two doctrines. This was Arnauld’s criticism.4 In the third and fourth instances, however, the example is employed solely to illustrate certain features of the preestablished harmony. On my analysis, it does not appear to fulfill this role either. [End Page 446] First Use of the Example One of the more well known statements of the two clocks example is from an explanation Leibniz gives to Basnage de Beauval in 1696 of his “New System” (1695): Imagine two clocks or watches which are in perfect agreement. Now this can happen in three ways. The first is that of a natural influence.... The second way of making two clocks, even poor ones, agree is always to assign a skilled craftsman to them who adjusts them and constantly sets them in agreement. The third way is to construct these two timepieces at the beginning with such skill and accuracy that one can...

Three rules of nonlinear physics

Nonlinear Physics is united by nonlinear tools, which can be applied to superconductors, optics, fluids, etc. The author tries to review this kit of nonlinear tools with a special attention to plasma physics and chooses brevity and simplicity rather than detail and rigor. The choice of examples discussed here reflects the author's taste and interests rather than physical significance.

An algebraic extension of Dirac quantization: Examples

An extension of the Dirac procedure for the quantization of constrained systems is necessary to address certain issues that are left open in Dirac’s original proposal. These issues play an important role especially in the context of nonlinear, diffeomorphism invariant theories such as general relativity. Recently, an extension of the required type was proposed using algebraic quantization methods. In this paper, the key conceptual and technical aspects of the algebraic program are illustrated through a number of finite dimensional examples. The choice of examples and some of the analysis is motivated by certain peculiar problems endemic to quantum gravity. However, prior knowledge of general relativity is not assumed in the main discussion. Indeed, the methods introduced and conclusions arrived at are applicable to any system with first class constraints. In particular, they resolve certain technical issues which are present also in the reduced phase space approach to quantization of these systems.

Dreaming in the Middle Ages (review)

150 Reviews Kruger, Steven F., Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge studies in medieval literature, 14), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992; cloth; pp.xii, 254; R.R.P. A U S $ 120.00. This book is not a comprehensive account of 'Dreaming in the Middle Ages'. Perhaps a more accuratetitlewould have been 'Ambivalence and mediation in late antique and medieval dream theory'. Even so, to have given such detailed coverage in the space allotted is no mean achievement. The fifty eight pages of notes give some indication of the pruning to which this prize-winning doctoral dissertation has been subjected. The book also boasts a valuable bibliography and a passable index. Kruger quotes extensively from primary sources, thoughtfully providing translations for all but the Middle English. Like so much else in medieval intellectual culture, medieval dream theory was essentiaUy a development of classical and patristic models. After a few preliminary remarks on m o d e m dream theories, and a brief but thorough treatment of medieval dreambooks and then audiences, Kruger turns to a detailed analysis of Neoplatonic dream theory as exemplified by Macrobius and Calcidius. Discussing 'the doubleness and middleness of dreams', he stresses the Neoplatonic preference for graded hierarchies over stark oppositions. Moving to Augustine, Tertullian, and Gregory the Great he notes that dreams still occupied a middle position between true and false but that this was complicated for Christian writers by uncertainty over the divine or demonic source of the dream. He concludes the chapter with Prudentius' Hymnum ante somnum which recommends mistrustful vigilance. Macrobius' classification, Augustine's triple vision, and Gregory's moral dualism dominated dream theory until the twelfth century, when Aristotelian and medical translations reintroduced materialist dream theories. In the chapter on Aristotle and late medieval dreams, Kruger acknowledges the importance of materialist theories but argues that then impact was limited by then ultimate incompatibility with Christianity. However mistrustful the Church may have been of dreams in general, it had to leave room for divinely inspired visions. Kruger does not take up the question of how far Aristotelianism promoted an opposition between dreams and visions which was foreign to the early medieval Neoplatonic tradition. H e pays particular attention to Albertus Magnus and Vincent of Beauvais, followers of the 'new science' with a strong interest in dreams. Unfortunately, one of the problems in Reviews 151 assessing the degree to which Aristotelianism discredited dream revelation is that writers who do not take dreams seriously rarely bother to mention them. Pursuing his theme of ambivalence, Kruger examines Walafrid Strabo's Visio Wettini and Nicolas Oresme's Tractatus de commensurabilitate vel incommensurabilitate motuum cell as examples of the dream vision form in fiction and philosophy, pausing on the way to reflect on the partial truth which linked dreams, mirrors, andfictionin the medieval mind. The book concludes with the autobiographical dreams of Guibert of Nogent and Hermann of Cologne. A s a history of a male intellectual tradition the work ignores questions of social context. Hildegard of Bingen's Causae et curae is briefly discussed as an example of moral dualism but her use of physiological theories is not dealt with. Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe are mentioned in passing to show then conformity to the Augustinian tradition. Kruger's scholarship is impressive and his choice of examples occasionally refreshing. If his thesis of continuous ambivalence lacks nuance it has the virtue of staying true to the spirit of his subject and tracing an important theme in medieval thought. L. Sharon Davidson Department of Economic History University of Sydney Le Goff, Jacques, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages, trans. Teresa L Fagan, Cambridge Mass. and Oxford, Blackwell, 1993; paper; pp. xxix, 194; 45 plates; R.R.P. A U S $ ? [distributed in Australia by Allen & Unwin]. This is a slapdash book which, despite the reputation of its author, did not need to be translated into English. The original was published in 1957 and is now very dated. The woolly, opinionated introduction to the translation, which raises more questions than it answers, cannot hide the shortcomings of a book whose author has eschewed the hard, critical labour necessary for the topic. Any 'definition' of 'intellectual' that excludes all Carolingian...

Synecdoque et tradition

ABSTRACT : This study presents the data of tradition on synecdoches. The genus has greatly varied in extension from one author to the other : it appears as a nebula of figures, the number of which, lending to increase with time, fluctuates around a stable focus mainly made up of the synecdoches of the part and the whole, and, to a lesser extent, of the genus, the species and the number. On the other hand, as regards the choice of examples, rhetoricians show great constancy in the way they follow their predecessors. The Ancients, whose epistemology most probably did not require much rigour in the matter, only made rare and hazy endeavours to reach a global definition. Generic definitions which have been put forward in modern times follow from variable taxonomic principles which admit synecdoche in a minimal system of four then three tropes, before evicting it in favour of the metaphor/metonymy pair.

Fruits of Illusion

explored in four very different chapters in Bryson's Looking at the Overlooked (henceforth LO); as a vehicle for discussing visual representation by Bann in The True Vine (TV) and as a premise upon which to secure Cezanne's greatness as one of the key proponents of modernism for Verdi. The links between them may be tenuous and Bryson begins provocatively by questioning the very existence of still life: can examples of xenia from Pompeii justifiably be placed alongside still lifes produced in the United Provinces in the seventeenth century or in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century, and form any kind of coherent and meaningful category? Examples which appear to demonstrate no cultural, historical or even stylistic links exhibit a diversity which appears to render the so-called genre of still life so wide as to be virtually meaningless. The very term genre seems to depend upon essentialist assumptions when what holds the perceived category together is at best a set of family resemblances. Bryson suggests that a kind of coherence can be found in the category still life produced not only by '(a) the institution of criticism, from the seventeenth century to the present day, and (b) by the painters themselves, working within pre-established material series, but (c) as produced by the actual objects with which still life painting deals, and the level of material culture to which those objects belong'. Of course, the category gains continuity from other features too (and Bryson acknowledges these). The complete absence of human form is common across historical and cultural divides, and is manifested in still life's opposing 'the anthropocentrism of the higher genres, [for] it assaults the centrality, value and prestige of the human subject'. Bryson also suggests that still life is a type of painting which has been liberated from the tyranny of narrative.1 Despite very different and arresting beginnings (Bann's disquisition on the cultural resonances of the grape is as memorable a piece of writing on art as one is ever likely to encounter), the overlapping of examples both textual and visual between LO and TV threatens at times to descend to the formulaic. In their transhistorical analyses (Bryson's 'family resemblances' allows him to switch between relatives and ancestors with little respect for historical circumstances), any examination of the social practice of still-life painting is largely overlooked in favour of a common methodology which acknowledges that still lifes' 'meaning' can at best be interpreted as the product of certain shared systems of signification. Such proleptic sleights-of-hand are perhaps ultimately frustrating since the kind of metadiscourses in which both indulge betray the absence of much empirical work that still needs to be done on still-life painting (and sculpture).2 Both Bann and Bryson establish a new set of topoi for stilllife painting and in their apparent consensus in the choice of examples and methodology it would be all too easy to substitute one orthodoxy for another. And yet because they question and go beyond much of the empty formalist analysis of the modernist still life (Roger Fry's exegesis on Cezanne's work seems paradigmatic) or the unproblematic emblematic reading of seventeenth-century examples of the genre (against which Svetlana Alpers has railed), and introduce sophisticated and provocative analyses drawing on semiotics, psychoanalysis and, in Bryson's case, feminism, then they are to be applauded. The tendency is to read TV and LO in conjunction and in doing so one stumbles upon an intertextual morass. So much seems well-rehearsed and