Characters Face Research Articles

BECKETT'S TELEVISION PLAYS AND KAFKA'S LATE STORIES

Stage Plays and Television Plays Beckett's late plays have tendency to turn into television plays; even those works which were produced in theatres and were not broadcast at all, seem to be television-plays. Hasn't Footfalls, though produced stage, the character of quiet piece for television? Not and What Where were performed stage before and after they were broadcast, but are they not for television? Eh Joe is subtitled A Piece for Television, Ghost Trio and ...but the clouds... are subtitled a play for television. Nacht und Traume, which has no subtitle, is undoubtedly work for television: The duplication of person into (A) and self (B)1 is possible only in television, that is, in the field of electronic video-technique which allows electronic montage (it was recorded with two cameras). Nacht und Traume records pure images, pure visual elements; it is sort of 'painting the screen',2 silent painting ? in slow motion. These pieces also recall real paintings which Beckett based his visions.3 What Where, though first produced as stage play, was in way right from the beginning made for television, as the Suttgart production shows: Bim, Bern and Bom are imaginations of Bam, they are dreamt selves of Bam, which can most adequately be represented by images the screen, by electronic 'apparitions'. Barn's face is blown-up like the dreamt self in Nacht und Traume and placed next to the faces of the other characters by electronic montage. The faces are illuminated and disappear again in darkness like candles that are extinguished. Barn's words I switch on make it clear that the faces shown (as well as the voices) are pure imaginations. On the other hand, the television plays can ? if desired ? be produced stage (Eh Joe, Ghost Trio, ...but the clouds..., Nacht und Traume): some have indeed been produced stage (Quad/Quadrat, What Where, Not I, even Nacht und Traume).4 The producer has only got to introduce voice off/ voice over (i.e. voice from off-stage), to use the and off of spotlights (and not so much the actor's movements coming stage or going off), and to mark one of the characters as the dreamer ? by immobilizing him or presenting him with head inclined in front of the stage (...but the clouds..., What Where). But does that not mean that we are

Pleistocene horses from Tarija, Bolivia, and validity of the genus †Onohippidium (Mammalia: Equidae)

ABSTRACT The rich Pleistocene (Ensenadan) mammalian fauna from Tarija, Bolivia, contains abundant fossil horses. Traditionally, it has been stated that three genera, Equus and the hippidiforms Hippidion and Onohippidium, and as many as five species are represented by the equids in the Tarija fauna. Recently, it has been proposed that Onohippidium is a junior synonym of Hippidion and thus there is only one valid genus of hippidiform at Tarija. The present study reports new data from upper and lower dentitions, metapodials, and the skull (particularly the preorbitai facial fossa) showing that three monospecific equid genera are present in the Pleistocene of Tarija, including the primitive hippidiforms Hippidion principale and Onohippidium devillei, and the advanced equine Equus insulatus. The genus Onohippidium is indeed valid and distinct from Hippidion based on facial characters, dental pattern, and metatarsal proportions. Comparisons with relevant equids from North America confirm that the hippidiform horses share synapomorphies with Pliohippus and that they diversified in North America during the late Miocene prior to dispersal to South America before, or about, 2.5 myr ago, at the beginning of the Uquian (late Pliocene). Equus, which shares synapomorphies with North American Dinohippus, apparently was a later immigrant, first appearing in South America at the beginning of the Ensenadan (early Pleistocene), about 1.5 myr ago.

The many faces of character.

The many faces of character.

The many faces of character.

This article discusses the many definitions of character in the psychological and nonpsychological literature. A comprehensive, working definition for character is offered that integrates these definitions, the key points of the authors in this issue, and previous treatments of this topic. The major

Aspen Marooney by Levi S. Peterson

Reviews 89 Title character Antonio Montoya is a long-dead distant cousin of Ramona. In the mid-1920s Antonio was Guadalupe’s arbiter of disputes and local historian. Now, seventy years later, Antonio’s journal is unearthed in the ruins of the old town hall. In the journal’s dank pages Ramona comes to relive Guadalupe’s past and, not unsurprisingly, in pon­ dering it finds a meaningful place for herself in the current village’s life. Vivid descriptions of northern New Mexico coupled with a dozen or more well-drawn major and supporting characters prove Collignon’s two strongest points. Collignon knows the land and the people. However, both Publishers Weekly and the New York Times Book Review faulted The Journal of Antonio Montoya for its lack of plot. If the truth be told, they’re right. After the middle of the tale, you want something more than you’re getting, you want Collignon to push himself and his story harder and farther into the realm of literary magic. And because he doesn’t, you’re disappointed. Nonetheless, Rick Collignon’s first novel is a dazzling study in geo­ graphic place and characterization. JAMES B. HEMESATH Colorado Springs, Colorado Aspen Marooney. By Levi S. Peterson. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1995. 216 pages, $15.95.) In his latest novel, Levi Peterson uses the tableau of a forty-year high school class reunion to explore the tension between how we would like to live our lives and how we actually do. Where, between passion and moral­ ity, do each of us exist and how comfortable are we in the world we have, over the years, created for ourselves and our loved ones? Have we been able to learn the lesson of life, which, according to Aspen, is “to get the better of ourselves”? And, finally, when ourselves get the better of us, to whom are we accountable? As with other Peterson works, Aspen Marooney offers a realistic por­ trait of rural Utah life—but this time the backdrop is as colored with classism as it is with religion. During their high school years Durfey Haslam and Aspen Marooney were forbidden by her parents to date—‘“When the Haslams marry . . . their wives sink to their level. I’ve never known of a case where it was the other way around’.” But they did much more than date. Ultimately, though, they don’t marry. Instead they wonder about what might have been. For forty years. And when they finally reunite, the 90 Western American Literature years have washed the passion and intimacy away ... or have they? It’s hard to guess what might happen. Since Levi Peterson doesn’t create main characters who can ignore their moral consciousness, the only question that remains is “How will each of the characters face the past and continue to live in the present?” Peterson’s characters answer this question in honest, thought-provoking ways. When Durfey rejoins his family in Cedar City (where they are attend­ ing the annual Shakespeare festival) he sums up his class-reunion experi­ ence by saying, “I’ve been surveying the earth from the perspective of the Class of ’51. . . . It’s a strange angle to see things from.” It may seem strange to Durfey, but for Levi Peterson’s readers it will seem oddly familiar. JANE REILLY Utah State University Tales of Burning Love. By Louise Erdrich. (New York: HarperCollins, 1996. 452 pages, $25.00.) It’s a gutsy move to name a book Tales ofBurning Love. The title sug­ gests a torrid read, full of incendiary passion. And that’sjust what we get in Louise Erdrich’s new novel, which more than lives up to its inflamma­ tory moniker. Houses burn down, passions heat up, and religious zealots spontaneously combust during the course of this rollicking story of jeal­ ousy and desire and love. The fifth volume in her series of interconnected novels, Burning Love is the story of five women who love one man, a ne’r-do-well, mixed-blood mountain of a man named Jack Mauser. The richly inventive plot twists and turns with all the subtle (and not so subtle) subterfuges of passionate attachment...

Lovers, Clowns, and Fairies: An Essay on Comedies

Through dreams and shadows and strangeness, through blinding charms and eye-opening counter-charms, through moments of mortification and laughter thus Stuart M. Tave traces the journey of the lovers, clowns, and fairies who populate comedies from Midsummer Night's Dream to Waiting for Godot. Tave avoids the pitfalls of theory, taking instead a close look at particular works to give us a sense of the relations between certain dramas and novels that are called The result is a wonderfully readable book that renews our delight in the enchanting possibilities of literature. Midsummer Night's Dream, in its perfection, is Tave's point of departure. Its characters fall neatly into the three groups of Tave's title and fulfill to perfection their functions of desire, foolishness, and power. From the magical concord of Shakespeare's resolution, Tave moves to works whose character face ever greater difficulties in reaching a happy conclusion. From Jonson and Austen to Chekhov and Beckett, he meets comedies on their own terms, illuminating the complex and individual genius of each. A masterpiece of practical criticism, Lovers, Clowns, and Fairies rediscovers the pleasure of reading comedies.

Children's Empathic Responses to Emotional Complexity

The aim of this study was to assess the empathic reactivity of children when confronted with two different emotions felt by the same character. A total of 90 girls, divided into three equal groups aged 4, 6, and 8 years, were asked to verbally respond to a series of fictitious stories illustrated by a picture where the character's face was left blank. Four of these episodes implied one simple emotion, and the remaining four were complex episodes where the situation potentially induced two opposite emotions within the character, either successively or simultaneously. Empathy was scored according to (a) the match between the emotion identified in the character and the one reported by the subject, and (b) the interpretation given for the subject's reaction. Both the quality of the match and the level of interpretation from self-to event-to character-centred justifications-were found to increase with age, for complex as well as for simple emotions. However, children of all three age-groups displayed less empathic capabilities when witnessing complex rather than simple episodes, given the more demanding task involved in recognising and sharing emotional complexity. Finally, successive emotions appeared more difficult to cope with than simultaneous emotions, but this decalage may be due to the content of the stimuli used in this study.

A taxonomy of the emotions of literary response and a theory of identification in fictional narrative

A taxonomy of emotions of literary response is presented. Some emotions occur as readers confront a text: they depend on curiosity as new material is assimilated to schemata, or on dishabituation as schemata accommodate. Further modes of emotion arise if readers enter the world of a story: they arise as a writer represents eliciting patterns of emotion and the reader responds with sympathy as story characters face these patterns, from personal memories of emotion, and by identification with characters' goals and plans. Based on cognitive theory and literary criticism, a theory of identification in fictional literature is presented, derived from Aristotle's concept mimesis. The usual translations, ‘imitation’ or ‘representation’, are misleading: mimesis means something closer to ‘simulation’, as in computers. Fictional simulations run on people's minds. For them to run successfully readers (a) adopt a character's goals and use their own planning procedures to connect actions together meaningfully, (b) form mental models of imagined worlds, (c) receive speech acts addressed to them by the writer, and (d) integrate disparate elements to create a unified experience. In providing materials for these functions, great writers allow readers to respond creatively, to feel moved emotionally, to understand within themselves some of the relations between actions and emotions, and sometimes to undergo cognitive change.

Tetrasomy 21 pter-->q22.1 and Down syndrome: molecular definition of the region.

Down syndrome is usually caused by complete trisomy 21. Rarely, it is due to partial trisomy of the segment 21q22. We report on a 33-month-old girl with tetrasomy 21 pter-->q22.1 resulting from an extra chromosome idic(21)(q22.1). She has craniofacial traits typical of Down syndrome, including brachycephaly, third fontanel, upward slanting palpebral fissures, round face, and protruding tongue. Speech development is quite delayed whereas motor development is only mildly retarded. The molecular content of the extra isodicentric chromosome was defined by molecular genetic investigations using 13 single copy probes unique to chromosome 21, and SOD1 expression studies. The child was found to have 4 copies of the region defined by D21S16 (21cen) through D21S93 on 21q22.1 and two copies of the remaining region defined by SOD1-->D21S55-->D21S123. In view of the recent assignment of Down syndrome facial characters to the 21q22 region, defined in part by D21S55, it is significant that this child shows a subset of Down syndrome facial manifestations, without duplication of this region. These results suggest that genes contributing to the facial and some of the hand manifestations of Down syndrome also exist in the chromosomal region proximal to D21S55 in band 21q22.1.

The Dialectics of Space in Synge's The Shadow of the Glen

The conflict between staying and leaving in Synge's plays has, so far, attracted a great deal of critical notice. It has become a commonplace that his main characters face a crucial choice: either to stay within the boundaries of a certain community or to abandon it for wandering or for death. At the same time, a number of Synge's thematic preoccupations, such as the passing of time, the fear of loneliness, and the transience of love, have repeatedly been connected to this choice. This article, using The Shadow of the Glen as a paradigmatic expression of fundamental tensions in Synge, attempts a redefinition of the very same conflict between staying and leaving, by setting it into a different methodological context. While not ignoring its thematic importance, I treat the conflict as a major structural antithesis organizing this particular play, and Synge's drama as a whole, in terms of an opposition between the mimetic space (that which is made visible and represented on the stage) and the diegetic space (that which is referred to by the characters). The opposition between these two forms of dramatic space is also associated with the general tendency of the main characters to "lose" their mimetic dimension and become purely diegetic.

Character States, Morphological Variation, and Phylogenetic Analysis: A Review

The step in cladistic analysis that has received least attention is delimitation of char- acter states, there usually being little justification for their delimitation. It is generally assumed that states of cladistic characters are discrete, even when variation is quantitative. I show here that a majority of the character states of obviously quantitative characters used in lower-level cladistic studies in botany over the last generation are ambiguous even when ingroup variation alone is analyzed. Consideration of variation in the outgroup may compromize either the states recognized in the ingroup and/or the polarity that they are subsequently assigned. Furthermore, many so- called qualitative characters are based on a quantitative phenomenological base filtered through the reified semantic discontinuities of botanical terminology; such characters face the problems of their more obviously quantitative relatives. Methods for delimiting states within quantitative char- acters are examined. Some produce gaps in the variation by redefining the character, scoring the intermediates in a distinctive fashion, performing phylogenetic analyses within the terminal taxa, or changing the hierarchical level at which the variation is evaluated. Others produce states by manipulation of the statistical properties of the variation of the ensemble of taxa being studied. These latter methods often allow greater resolution of the phylogeny, but at the cost of lowering the significance of the most parsimonious tree. The underlying assumptions of the two sets of methods are briefly analyzed. Problems manifest in the division of continuous variation into char- acter states suggest a reappraisal of the early steps of cladistic analysis; in practice, character states often seem to be delimited in conjunction with developing ideas of the phylogeny, rather than in a step prior to a phylogenetic analysis. It is recommended that character states be delimited by carefully analyzed discontinuities (not necessarily absolute gaps) in the variation, attention having been paid to variation in the outgroup, and that morphological characters in general are assumed to be quantitative unless demonstrated otherwise. Explicit justification for the delimitation of char- acter states should be given as a matter of course in all phylogenetic studies.

The Bay of Contented Men

Witty and seductive, inventive and disturbing, The Bay of Contented Men ranges in location from east to west coast Australia, to the United States, Japan, and Hong Kong. This is the neighbourhood of edgy suburbanite Australians whose desires and misadventures are conjured here into intriguing fictions. Robert Drewe's characters face the confrontation of gender, race and generation with an ironic desperation born of love, lust and wistful memory.

Stephen Crane , and: New Essays on "The Red Badge of Courage" , and: Realism, Writing, Disfiguration on Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane (review)

Reviewed by: Stephen Crane, and: New Essays on "The Red Badge of Courage", and: Realism, Writing, Disfiguration on Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane Thomas Kent Bettina L. Knapp . Stephen Crane. New York: Ungar, 1987. 198 pp. $15.95. Lee Clark Mitchell . New Essays on "The Red Badge of Courage."Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 150 pp. pb. $7.95. Michael Fried . Realism, Writing, Disfiguration on Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. 215 pp. $29.95. Crane scholarship continues to advance steadily, and three recent books (actually two books and a long essay) contribute to this advance in very different ways. Although all three texts concentrate predominantly on Crane's fiction, they differ markedly in their aims and methodologies. Bettina L. Knapp, for example, provides a general introductory overview of Crane's life and work, an overview aimed primarily at readers who are unfamiliar with Crane's writings. Lee Clark Mitchell's collection of six essays offers an updated perspective on some of the more recent critical approaches to The Red Badge of Courage. Finally, in the most provocative and theoretically sophisticated of these three texts, Michael Fried deconstructs Crane's "thematics of writing," and, as might be expected in such a reading, he discovers the paradox that Crane's writing must efface and repress itself in order to be writing at all. Bettina L. Knapp's Stephen Crane contributes to the "Literature and Life: American Writers" series, and, for the most part, it speaks to a popular audience. The book provides a general introduction to Crane's life and works, and it includes segments devoted to Crane's biography, the novels, the poems, and the tales. The first segment relates the well-known story of Crane's life: his picaresque journey through different educational institutions; his trials and tribulations as a young reporter; his development as a writer; his financial problems; his sickness and his death. For readers who know next to nothing about Crane, this account provides an adequate and readable sketch of his life. The final three segments address Crane's works, and these segments are divided into chapters that give short publication histories and general summaries of the major texts. "Part II: The Novels" contains chapters on Maggie, The Red Badge of Courage, George's Mother, The Third Violet, Active Service, and The O'Ruddy. Part III discusses Crane's collections of poetry, The Black Riders and War Is Kind. Part IV includes chapters on Tales of Adventure, The Monster, and The Whilomville Stories, and other tales of war. [End Page 662] Although the commentary that accompanies the summaries of these texts will surprise no one who is familiar with Crane scholarship, the book does discuss briefly some of the traditional critical appraisals of Crane's writings. As a book designed to stimulate interest in Crane's literary legacy, Stephen Crane provides a good general introduction to Crane's life and works. Unlike Knapp's Stephen Crane in both methodology and scope, New Essays on "The Red Badge of Courage," edited by Lee Clark Mitchell, is an introductory collection of essays that provides a selective overview of the well-known hermeneutic and historical problems raised by The Red Badge of Courage. In fact, the strength of this collection resides in its breadth of coverage; the essays range from straight-forward textual and historical criticism to an attempt at deconstructive analysis. Hershel Parker, for example, traces the tortuous publication history of The Red Badge of Courage and argues convincingly for the supremacy of the original manuscript over the Appleton version. In addition to relating a brief account of Crane's life, Mitchell, in his "Introduction," examines The Red Badge of Courage from the point of view of reception aesthetics and finds that "by subtly disrupting literary conventions, [Crane] presents an analogue for his readers of the very experience his characters face." In "The American Stephen Crane: The Context of The Red Badge of Courage," Andrew Delbanco attempts to place the novel in its nineteenth-century cultural and historical context. He argues that "Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge out of and about a crisis of faith—both about God and about God's instrument...

Kafka's Rhetorical Moment

Much of Kafka's fiction exploits language whose performative status is ambiguous–language that Paul de Man calls “rhetorical”–to generate a peculiar and characteristic narrative “space” in which Kafka's stories operate. Speech-act theory helps to clarify the way in which problems arising from language become the central problems that Kafka's characters face. In particular, the distinction between illocutions and perlocutions provides an analytic tool that reveals Kafka's abiding concern with the “gap,” or “aporia,” produced by assertions, requests, commands, and other illocutionary acts that turn out not to assert, request, or command anything the reader or listener can pin down. This tool helps us discover the linguistic sources for the bewilderment and anxiety that characterize Kafka's fictional world.

La Rencontre inachevée: Etude sur la structure de La Princesse de Cleves

In writing La Princesse de Clèves Mme de Lafayette has reduced the novel to a series of scenes in juxtaposition. Each one of the scenes represents the state of mind of the heroine of the novel in its content as well as in its form. The essential trait of the central character is her refusal to accept an encounter with the man she loves, an encounter that would realize her greatest desire. Thus Mme de Lafayette makes each one of the encounters, forced upon the two persons in love by their life within a closed society, an “imperfect encounter”: she places her two characters face to face but withdraws from them an element—on each occasion a different one—of their social or psychological personality. After a series of such “unfinished” confrontations, presented in a dramatic sequence, she makes us understand that the final separation is the necessary conclusion: the perfect encounter could never be attained. (In French)

Confrontation And Escape In Two Social Dramas

Like Ibsen in A Doll's House (1870), John Osborne in Look Back in Anger (first produced in 1956) offered a "revolutionary" play, one destined to create not only a literary sensation but social excitement as well. Both plays seem to have filled similar places in the literary history of their times; both were taken as manifestoes of significant new ways of thinking and feeling. The specific social situations they reflect are, of course, radically different, and the sensation Osborne created was minor in comparison to Ibsen's-partly, one assumes, because by the mid-twentieth century the world had become thoroughly accustomed to sensations; partly, certainly, because Look Back in Anger is a far less successful piece of dramaturgy than the earlier play. The relative weakness of Osborne's play seems (rather surprisingly, considering the drama's superficial tone of loud assurance) a result of the playwright's fundamental lack of clarity about his characters and their meanings. The central action of Look Back in Anger takes an opposite direction to that of A Doll' s House; the opposition may reflect the difference between acceptable "radical" attitudes in the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. But Osborne's "reply" to Ibsen is weak both ideologically and dramatically; its dramatic technique, superficially similar to Ibsen's, focuses attention on its inadequacies of conception. The issues characters face are fundamentally similar in the two plays; no character is able to face them with complete success. Ibsen manipulates his cast to reveal this fact; Osborne seems unwilling to explore the fact's significance.

Luck and Fortuitous Circumstance in Persuasion: Two Interpretations

A striking feature of Jane Austen's Persuasion is the way the action so frequently leads to the brink of disaster. Often the characters face situations whose only results, seemingly, can be misery, waste, and suffering. Other commentators of course have noticed this dark, menacing quality of the novel. Joseph Duffy, for example, points out the frequency of symbols of death and decay,' asserts that the heroine, Anne Elliot, comes face to face with what James called the mysteries abysmal, 2 and defines the novel's world as one in which life is precarious, the consequences of apparently reasonable choice are sometimes unreasonable, [and] benign forces do not lavish on the well-intentioned person fabulous and fortuitous rewards. ' Yet, though the novel borders on tragedy, the events invariably take a happy turn, and Jane Austen leads the reader eventually to the felicitous conclusion he expected all along. It is true that the ending does not result from the reasoned and well-intentioned choices of the characters; yet, by the end of the novel, everyone is appropriately rewarded, and the rewards seem, to a great extent, to be fortuitous. Andrew Wright emphasizes this point in his discussions of Persuasion: Anne almost loses him [Captain Wentworth] forever [the dark possibility]; it is a set of very fortunate (and fortuitous) circumstances-the renting of Kellynch to his sister's husband, his own remarkable success in the Navy, the fall of Miss Musgrove at Lyme-that finally brings them together again.4 Wright, however, never analyzes thoroughly these fortuitous circumstances,

On the cranial and facial characters of the Neandertal race

As a result of a detailed comparison of the calvarium of the Neandertal race with that of the aborigines of South Australia, it is shown that a much closer resemblance exists between them than has hitherto been supposed, especially as regards the calottal height, calottal index, Schwalbe’s (“bregma”) angle, the bregma index, the frontal and orbito-frontal angles, the superior (“lambda”) and inferior inion angles, and the fronto-parietal index. The chief differences are to be found in the magnitude of the cephalic index, the continuity of the frontal torus, and the deeply impressed character of the frontal fossa. Comparisons based on the glabella-inion line are misleading, owing to the inconstancy in position of the inion. In the absence of any fixed point in the skull, the centre of figure of the median longitudinal section is chosen for a point of reference, and a radius drawn from this to the basion as an initial line for the measurement of polar co-ordinates.

VII. On the cranial and facial characters of the neandertal race

So long as the Neandertal skull was the only known example of its kind, the precise value of the evidence it affords as to the history of the human race was open to question, since among the hordes of primitive men who occupied the soil of Europe in early palæolithic times there were probably many individuals distinguished by characters more or less out of the common, and to one of these exceptions the Neandertal skull might by some odd chance have belonged. Now, however, since our knowledge has been enlarged by the discovery of similar skulls or fragments of skulls at Spy, Krapina, and elsewhere, the Neandertal calvarium no longer stands alone, and we are at present in possession of sufficient material to pursue our investigations into these oldest of human remains with the confident assurance that we have to do, not with extreme forms or exceptional sports, but with fairly average examples of a once existent race. Under the stimulus of renewed interest awakened in consequence, the Neandertal skull, and others related to it, have been made the subject of fresh studies, of which the elaborate memoirs of Schwalbe are the first fruits.