Disciplinary Efforts Research Articles

The Plowman’s Tale: The c. 1532 and 1606 Editions of a Spurious Canterbury Tale ed. by Mary Rhinelander McCarl

REVIEWS fines them in terms ofclass. In the French Lancelot cycles, E. Jane Burns argues, clothing also "supersedes anatomy as the prime indicator ofgen­ der identity" (p. 113); but the very play with costume in courtly ro­ mances also exposes the fragility offixed gender categories. Burns's essay also applies contemporary gender theory to a historically situated and perceptive close reading of medieval texts. If the collection can be said to have a flagship essay, it would likely be its opening piece, Dyan Elliott's "Pollution, Illusion and Masculine Disarray: Nocturnal Emissions and the Sexuality of the Clergy." Ar­ guing that nocturnal emissions, which were connected with menstrua­ tion, gave medieval ascetics a "sensitive gauge for clocking the relative success or failure of disciplinary efforts to gain mastery over the body," Elliott tracks the discourse from patristic texts through Gerson. This highly readable and skillful work of original historical scholarship ends in the fascinating observation that the obsession with pollution in late medieval clerical manuals mirrors the concomitant emphasis on eucha­ ristic ritual. Both articulate a similar "masculine disarray," Elliott spec­ ulates, that can be read in the overdetermined status of forms of "man­ handling," where the "unalloyed masculine ascendency" ofclerical ritual in late medieval culture bespeaks anxieties about the very fixity of gender. Constructing Medieval Sexuality is an excellent essay collection with much that will be useful to students, both undergraduate and graduate. It should be essential reading for medieval scholars from all disciplines interested in queer theory and gender studies. SARAH STANBURY College of the Holy Cross MARY RHINELANDER MCCARL, ed. The Plowman's Tale: The c. 1532 and 1606 Editions ofa Spurious Canterbury Tale. Renaissance Imagination Series. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997. Pp. 318. $72.00. This combined edition of two early printed editions of The Plowman's Tale gives readers a chance to reconsider this tale in a Renaissance con­ text, while somewhat slighting its more than 200-year role as a Canter­ bury Tale. I particularly enjoyed reading the 1606 edition, which differs 367 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER from the 1533 edition principally in that the later recension has exten­ sive explanatory notes and glosses by Antony Wotton, a Puritan clergy­ man. The earlier edition, inexplicably dated 1533 in McCarl's text and 1532 in the tide, has its own notes in Latin, most of which quote the Latin Vulgate. Both sets of side notes are printed in McCarl's edition at the bottom ofthe page ofthe text; the proximity ofthe side notes to the text is the most exciting thing about the volume. This edition grew out ofMcCarl's research on sixteenth-century printed books, and it exists in the underexplored territory of the influence of the Middle Ages on the Renaissance, and how the Renaissance shaped our view of the Middle Ages. Part ofthe series The Renaissance Imagination: Important Literary and Theatrical Texts from the Late Middle Ages through the Seventeenth Century, edited by Stephen Orgel, the edition presumably aims to help make such connections. This edition is only available in expensive cloth, so it is clearly not intended for teaching, and in any case there is a serviceable teaching edition in James M. Dean's Six Ecclesiastical Satires put out by the Con­ sortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages (TEAMS). I therefore as­ sume that this edition is intended for scholars of both the Renaissance and the Middle Ages who would like easy access to a sixteenth- and a seventeenth-century version of the poem. The extensive introduction and glossary often seem aimed more at students than at scholars, but that may be due to McCarl's varied audiences. For example, most medi­ eval scholars probably will not need her interesting introductory infor­ mation about Lollardry, but perhaps some Renaissance scholars would find it useful. McCarl chooses to edit two different texts of the poem without regu­ larizing spelling or collating texts. She does not mention any emenda­ tions, but also does not explain her editing choices. There are some ben­ efits to such diplomatic editions, but I wonder what the benefits are for publication of The Plowman'.r Tale and why these two recensions are chosen. Each...

Health Policy In Two Nations: What A British Analyst Might Say

Health Policy In Two Nations: What A British Analyst Might Say

Coping with Parental Problems

Four parental coping efforts—punitive disciplinary efforts, optimistic comparisons, selective ignoring, and resignation—are examined for their effectiveness in reducing parental distress and difficulties. Data are drawn from two sets of interviews with a large metropolitan population; effectiveness is assessed net of gender, socioeconomic status, ongoing marital problems, age and number of children, and initial level of difficulty. For both behavior problems of younger children and the future direction of older children, more frequent punitive disciplinary efforts and less optimistic comparisons were associated with greater parental distress. A resigned, impotent stance was also associated with greater parental distress for outcome concerns but not for behavior problems. None of the coping efforts directly affected later parental problems; rather, the initial level of difficulty and the composition of one's family (ages, number, and residence) were the primary influence. Within the range of coping efforts examined, it seems that the effects of common parental efforts are largely limited to reducing parental distress.

Interdisciplinary research and education for ecosystems management

Contemporary problems in resource and environmental management often cut across disciplinary and other man-made boundaries. Recently several governmental, educational, and research institutions have come up with a variety of organizational plans to address environmental problems that are interdisciplinary in nature. Within the scope of many of these plans, systems analysis has been considered a potential framework in which varied disciplinary efforts can be integrated and unified. This paper discusses the scope and limitation of systems analysis as such an integrative tool. In particular, the roles of objectives, orchestration, synthesis, and implementation in the solution of resource and environmental problems are discussed in detail. Finally, an integrated curriculum for ecosystems management and a set of recommendations to improve the organizational efficiency and the design of interdisciplinary research efforts are also provided.

The Explosion of African Studies in the Soviet Union

Russia's interest in Africa can be traced back to the fifteenth century. Not until the eighteenth century, however, does Russian interest become significant and important, especially through the writings of M. G. Kokovtsev on Tunisia and Algeria. Although these works seemed to be based largely on Kokovtsev's personal experiences in these areas, more formal academic efforts emerged also during this era. In 1790-1791, the Russian Academy of Sciences published The Comparative Dictionary of World Languages. This publication contained information mostly on the North African languages of Arabic, Coptic, Berber, and Fulbe, and some others of the western Sudan. Under the Czarist regime, in the nineteenth century, works by Russian travelers and ethnological and biological studies by scientists appeared. Likewise linguistic studies continued apace through scholarly interest in the ancient Ethiopian language, Geez. Thus, the thrust of systematic scholarship on Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries centered on linguistics. The triumph of the Bolsheviks, in 1917 and subsequently, greatly altered the thrust of scholarship about and interest in Africa. It is the purpose of this paper, therefore, to examine the institutional and disciplinary efforts of the Soviets to understand and interpret Africa in the context of their established ideology. Emphasis has been placed on the institutions of higher education involved in African studies and the types of concern each has for the continent, especially after World War II.

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Mental Disorder among the Polar Eskimos of Northwest Greenland

Mental health, in both industrialized and underdeveloped societies, is coming to be recognized as one of the world's leading social problems. In order to bring more varied skills to bear on this challenging issue, scientific institutions are encouraging re search in several fields other than those traditionally cultivated by psychologists and psychiatrists, particularly in chemical, bio logical, and social sciences. Hope is expressed that such inter disciplinary efforts may result in a break-through in the under standing of the nature of mental disorder (see Wallace 1960 for anthropological review of the historical development of research). Unfortunately, however, many of the research pro jects in those new areas have been conducted in effect by single disciplines with little or no integration with their sister sciences, even where the representatives of the several disciplines sit to gether at a seminar table. Interdisciplinary investigations in the mental health area are faced with the problem of multiple causal and contributing factors. Although single factors have often been isolated and studied separately with the hope that these were causally sufficient variables, such uni-disciplinary studies have not been notably successful in dealing with mental illness.