Intellectual Realm Research Articles

The Play in the Mirror: Lacanian Perspectives on Spanish Baroque Theater (review)

380BCom, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Winter 1997) examination. Occasionally, alas (though fortunately not often), a more or less traditional reading ofthe play in question is merely tricked out in a few theoretical furbelows; the analysis in such cases does not really grow out of or depend upon the theory, which could have been dispensed with, without noticeably affecting the conclusions reached. As an introduction to modern theoretical approaches to the comedia, this volume has a couple of other problems as well. Some ofthe theoretical approaches illustrated are no longer exactly on the cutting edge of modern critical theory. And several ofthe essays, in somewhat different form, have already appeared elsewhere. Nevertheless, I would recommend the collection , despite the drawbacks. The lucidity of the theoretical synopses, and the cogency ofsome ofthe individual textual analyses, would make the volume highly useful in any graduate class on the Golden Age comedia. And the essays' overall, albeit sometimes implicit, call on students of the comedia to keep abreast of developments in critical theory seems likely to remain necessary and timely. Barbara E. Kurtz Illinois State University Stroud, Matthew D. The Play in the Mirror: Lacanian Perspectives on Spanish Baroque Theater. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1996. Cloth. 242 pp. Of the many theorists whose works inform contemporary literary criticism , including that of Hispanists, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan may well have the most forbidding reputation. Relatively few Golden Age scholars have ventured into this intimidating intellectual realm. Students of the comedia can thus profit from Matthew Stroud's The Play in the Mirror and will surely welcome both Stroud's ability to articulate Lacanian ideas methodically and his insightful application ofthem to several works. The Play in the Mirror's brief opening chapter enumerates the fundamental premises of Lacan's formulation of the subject, then in chapter 2 Stroud elaborates upon and demonstrates Lacanian subjectivity through the journeys toward greater self-knowledge experienced by Calderón's characters in La vida es sueño. Through the process of signification, they all must break free of the egoistic imaginary order and submit themselves to the symbolic order represented by civilization in order to play their proper roles Reviews381 in society; in doing so, they must accept the Other's desire as their own and act accordingly, as the play's concluding reconciliations and marriages demonstrate. Chapter 3, entitled "Love and Desire," explains how both these emotions result from the inescapable lack at the core of the subject. Desire is the attempt to achieve individual completion by (again) adopting the Other's desire as one's own, while love is the attempt to become whole by being loved. Due to inevitable conflicts between the imaginary, symbolic, and real, neither goal can ever be fully realized. The characters in La dama boba and El caballero de Olmedo, in search of wholeness, do not understand why contentment eludes them. Only the security of the symbolic order offers an apparent escape from this dilemma, as can be seen in La dama boba's concluding — and possibly less than completely fulfilling — marriages . For Stroud, however, this comedy is less illustrative of desire's true trajectory than the tragic El caballero de Olmedo, in which Alonso and Inés's passion conflicts with the symbolic order as embodied by her father's intention that she marry Rodrigo; desire cannot be satisfied in either the imaginary or symbolic realms and leads inexorably to death. Chapter 4, "Honor, Ethics, and Tragedy," continues to explore the insufficiency of the symbolic order to satisfy or control desire. Masculine honor in the Golden Age comedia, Stroud points out, partakes paradoxically of both the imaginary and symbolic registers, on one hand egoistically asserting individual autonomy and on the other submitting unquestioningly to various cultural imperatives. It is this paradox which is embodied by El castigo sin venganza's Duke ofFerrara, an egoistic individual expected to represent the symbolic order ofhis realm. The play's final tragedy results from the intersection of these registers and their imperatives when the Duke confronts desire in the form of his wife and illegitimate son's treasonous adultery . A secreto agravio, secreta venganza raises for Stroud the question of prudence, a symbolic virtue which...

A short sketch of Stackelberg’s career

Reports that standard accounts of the life of Heinrich von Stackelberg, a brilliant theoretical economist, are full of errors and lacunae. In addition, claims that many writers in the English language literature have seriously misjudged his economics because they make the unwarranted assumption that there must be a close relationship between a person’s scientific work in economics and his politics ‐ he was a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Fills some of the gaps in the accounts of his life, and presents evidence about his attitude towards Jews and that he may also have been part of the German resistance to Hitler and the Nazis. Concludes that the political and intellectual realms of his life often were separate ‐ and that both changed over time.

:Styles of Scientific Thinking in the European Tradition

Leonard Burnand and Adrien Paschoud (eds), Espaces de la controverse au seuil des Lumieres (1680-1715), Paris, Honore Champion, 2010, pp. 216, hb. euro45.00, ISBN: 978-2-7453-2055-1This collection of articles - stemming from a conference at the University of Lausanne - aims both at interdisciplinarity and coherence, an ambitious goal when dealing with a topic as vast as that indicated by the title 'Spaces of Controversy at the Threshold of Enlightenment'. The individual chapters explore religious disputes - a crucial facet and maybe a paradigm for all early modern controversies - as well as those pertaining to literature, politics, opera, history and science. The coherence is provided by a common reflection on controversies as a historical object in itself, on their structure, mechanisms and possible scholarly approaches to their study. It is also ensured by the narrow time period (respected by most contributors), considered to have heralded a 'crisis of European consciousness', and therefore particularly significant for studying public polemics, be it at the national level or broader, as this collection does.An introductory chapter by Christian Jouhaud sketches out some crucial general methodological considerations in approaching controversies, related to their double status as both writing and action. Although the examples he quotes - the literary quarrels around Guez de Balzac or the libertine poet Theophile de Viau, the religious polemics pitting Pascal against the Jesuits - do not pertain chronologically to the threshold of Enlightenment, they provide an apt framework for understanding a phenomenon which involves individuals, groups and institutions, which may touch on specific issues or vast fields of allegiance, and which is not easily interpreted through individual texts alone. Controversy, he reminds us, may be a stake in various domains (he links the prominence of polemical rhetoric in Jesuit teaching and writing to their need to sustain polemical debates against protestants); it might be a constant undertone in certain personal memoirs (as with the embattled Cardinal de Retz), or an institution that shapes individual authorial strategies. Its structure is necessarily triadic and involves an implicit audience - sometimes a virtual public opinion - alongside the two parties. It rests on accepted, ritualized, forms and exchanges. Finally, texts - often the historian's only source - are to be considered less as traces or artifacts than as words in action. Therefore, in the words of the historian A. Lilti whom Jouhaud quotes, 'controversies are not so much a coherent object ... as a method of analysis, a possible entrance point for understanding the workings of an intellectual realm' (p. 13). Jouhaud's remarks are further explored and complemented in the ensuing chapters which open up the 'spaces of controversy' into a subject matter considerably broader than a simple polemical form of writing, showing that such disputes pertain to vastly different disciplines, that they are dictated by the logic of institutions as much as by personal strategies, and that they are therefore to be studied not only as arguments about ideas but as actions in a personal trajectory, as well as in an entire social and cultural field.The following chapter by Alain Cernuschi expands those insights on a lesser episode in the famous seventeenth-century French literary 'Quarrel of the Ancients against the Moderns', provoked by the birth of the French opera. Contextualizing the opponents' attitudes, Cernuschi shows that the controversy which pitted the 'Moderns' against the 'Ancients', and sometimes aligned them in unexpected ways, demonstrated an equal lack of understanding in regards to opera. This novel art form was negatively compared to both theatre and music, and its joining of singing, music, dialogue and performance was judged an obstacle to appreciating each of the arts involved. Paradoxically, opera's combined impact on the senses was best appreciated by its harshest opponent, the Church dignitary and mouthpiece, Bossuet. …

Education and cognitive development: A natural experiment.

Using an arbitrary cutoff date, school districts regulate which children will begin school. This natural experiment was used to examine effects of age- and schooling-related influences on memory and 3 levels of phonological segmentation in children who just made vs. missed the cutoff. Group comparisons over time permitted assessment of schooling influences and Age X Experience interactions. Short-term memory was enhanced by grade one schooling, with no evidence of an Age X Schooling interaction. For phonological segmentation, both schooling- and age-related influences appeared, with unique patterns for each level of segmentation. The cutoff method proved sensitive to important changes in cognitive skills during this age period. In many Western societies, the period from late preschool through early elementary school is characterized by widespread, perhaps qualitative, shifts in children's cognitive, social, and moral functioning. Collectively, the changes have been referred to as the 5-7 shift (White, 1965). In the intellectual realm, children's thinking has been described as becoming more logical (Piaget, 1960) and more abstract (Rogoff, 1981); memory performance improves as rehearsal and organizational strategies become more active (Bjorklund, 1987; Ornstein & Naus, 1978); language skills become more reflective and refined (Read & Schreiber, 1982); and increased metacognitive skills yield greater planning, control, and evaluation over the sequencing of cognitive acts (Case, 1985; White, 1965). Although their uniqueness may be challenged, the existence of major changes between ages 5 and 7 is not in dispute. However, the relative contribution of maturation versus experience (e.g., schooling) has not been resolved. For most of the past 2 decades, the maturationalist view has dominated theory and research. The work of Piaget and others (Case, 1985; Kagan, 1984) has emphasized regular, uniform, and seemingly universal changes in thinking across the age range that appeared internally driven and controlled by a maturational timetable. Nevertheless, recent findings have revealed that specific learning experiences may play a crucial role in the growth of selected cognitive skills. First, cross-cultural research has documented major differences between schooled and unschooled children in growth of perceptual and memory skills, concept development,

Geheimräte gegen Geheimbünde: Ein unbekanntes Kapitel der klassisch-romantischen Geschichte Weimars (review)

256 Book Reviews erotics to all of Goethe's writing. The Roman Elegies make clear that the erotic experience brings classical art and literature to life and allows one "to see with feeling eye, and feel with seeing hand." This merging of the touchoriented sensory realm and the sight-oriented intellectual realm enables the poet to write, tapping out hexameters on the slumbering lover's back. In the Venetian Epigrams, the poet answers repeated questions about the presence of low-class girls in his works with the response that, in contrast to Midas, what he touches becomes, in his hands, lively poetry. In "Das Tagebuch," the erotic encounter causes physical impotence, then memories of past passion, and then the power to write. Again and again, Goethe's texts assert the importance of erotics for literature. The true merit of this collection is that it urges the reader to consider whether Goethe's erotic poetry is not in fact simply another name for Goethe's collected works. Whitman College Robert Tobin Wilson, W. Daniel, Geheimräte gegen Geheimbünde: Ein unbekanntes Kapitel der klassisch-romantischen Geschichte Weimars. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991. 391 pp. In his painstaking archival investigations of the seamier side of Weimar cultural politics during the 1780s and 1790s, W. Daniel Wilson has uncovered aspects of Goethe's and Carl August's dealings with the literary and professorial intelligentsia of the duchy that do not conform to traditional monumentalizing depictions of classical Weimar as a center of liberal tolerance . No doubt it will come as a surprise to many readers to learn not only that the Duke and his most trusted privy councilor joined the local chapter of the Illuminati—a particularly secretive German outgrowth of the Freemasons —in the early 1780s, but that their main intent seems to have been to keep an eye on suspicious activities. What otherwise might have remained a rather arcane incident in German intellectual history—the Illuminati were disbanded officially in 1785-86 due to internal quarrels and outside pressure from the Bavarian government, which accused them of irreligious and insurrectionist aims—took on disquieting tones in the 1790s when conservative and reactionary German publicists launched accusations that the Illuminati were in fact still in operation and had been responsible for inciting the French Revolution. As a result of Wilson's findings, it becomes clear that in addition to covering up all traces of their illuminist past, Carl August, Goethe, and other chief officials in Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach also took care to demonstrate that Weimar was not a hotbed of revolutionary propaganda by monitoring and suppressing anything even remotely resembling support for events in France following the outbreak of war; indeed, some of the strictest instructions regarding surveillance of French "sympathizers" such as Herder came from Carl August while he 'was away serving as a Prussian general in the summer and fall of 1792. Goethe Yearbook 257 Already the first sentence of Wilson's preface serves as a clue that the revelations to come are meant at least in part as a further demolition of the already tottering "Klassik-Legende": "Für Außenstehende ist die an Besessenheit grenzende Beschäftigung mit Goethe ein faszinierendes Phänomen, denn in anderen westlichen Kulturen findet man kaum eine ähnliche Belastung der nationalen Identität durch eine übermächtige literarische Persönlichkeit " (9). Wilson, however, is not so much interested in levelling personal accusations against Goethe or his princely patron as in investigating the institutional mechanisms that enabled the channeling and control of oppositional thought and behavior by the state at the very time and place when the notion of artistic and individual autonomy was being developed. The activities of Carl August and his ministers, in other words, are seen not as atypical, but rather as all too typical of power constellations in late eighteenth -century German principalities. This eminently Foucauldian mode of thought is also evident in Wilson's discussion of the internal organization of the Illuminati, which bore an uncanny resemblance to the absolutist society they were attempting to supplant : although the ultimate aim of the society was the elimination of states and princes—as formulated in founder Adam Weishaupt's "Anrede an die neu...

The Relationship Between Mathematics and Music: Secondary School Student Perspectives

Human creativity has always involved a cross-pollination of the disciplines in the generation of new ideas and products. In his time, Leonardo DaVinci made his genius known through his work as a painter, sculptor, musician, inventor, engineer, astronomer, and geologist. Centuries later, Albert Einstein, though a physicist primarily, considered it second nature to explore philosophy and music. In today's world, however, few find the time to fully explore other fields of interest. The average doctor may play a musical instrument in his spare time, and many a politician may find it enjoyable to dabble in art, but seldom is a well-rounded liberal arts education encouraged beyond the undergraduate level. The reason for this, perhaps, is that people have begun to perceive the various spheres of as a good deal more separate than did either DaVinci or Einstein. Howard Gardner won critical acclaim in the worlds of education, psychology, and cognitive science for his book, Frames of Mind (1985). The book is based upon the theory that exists in seven spheres, and that one's intellectual competence in a certain discipline need not be related to one's competence in another. Students and others having difficulties in a certain subject might willingly accept such a theory, for it strongly encourages them to look for their strengths in other areas. However, it is equally important to encourage such persons to take their area of strength and apply it to their area of weakness rather than to allow themselves to be discouraged by what might be surface difficulties. Only when one understands all the applications of a specialty can one begin to appreciate its full value and vast possibilities For these reasons it is essential that today's young people become aware of the breadth, as well as the depth, of their favorite academic disciplines. Even Gardner dares not overlook important links between disciplines. As he states: One of the great pleasures in any intellectual realm inheres in an exploration of its relationship to other spheres of intelligence (p. 126). Most probably, it was this same opinion that led the great DaVinci to use scientific study of anatomy to produce some of the world's greatest art with unmatched precision.

A pictorialSpeculum Principis: the image of Henry II in Cod. Bibl. Vat. Ottobonensis lat. 74, fol. 139v

Abstract Devised in the sophisticated intellectual realm of the Regensburg scriptorium of St Emmeram, the illumination with a portrait of Emperor Henry II is a unique conflation of quotations from various texts and images caused by very specific political constellations. It is primarily based on Carolingian admonitory texts, that is, Furstenspiegel or specula principum and on Carolingian and Ottonian imagery. It was interpolated ad hoc into a Gospel text donated to the monastery of Montecassino. After 1126-1127, the date of its removal from its original destination, the manuscript began to exercise considerable influence as a pictorialization of regal and/or imperial principles. Undoubtedly, its imperial pedigree, in combination with the exemplary character of the admonitory textual sources, added to its importance and supported the model role of the illumination for other patrons who also harkened back to Carolingian traditions of the Renovatio Imperii, such as the Staufer Emperor Frederick II and Philip...

Do children with constitutional delay really have more learning problems?

To assess the effects of constitutional short stature on intellectual, academic and visual-motor functioning, we administered a battery of psychological tests to a group of 24 such children. Their responses were compared to those of 23 subjects with normal height matched for age, sex and socioeconomic status. Contrary to the conclusions of uncontrolled studies, our data showed short and control groups to be comparable on all variables. While children with constitutional delay have been shown to exhibit low self-esteem and high levels of internalizing behavior problems, these difficulties do not appear to intrude significantly into the intellectual or academic realms.

Lewis Carroll: a study of mathematical inhibition.

Carroll's mathematical abilities appear to have been severely constrained--subject simultaneously to inhibition and distortion. Through an analysis of his informal commentary on his relation to mathematical puzzles I have attempted to understand and explain the nature of these inhibitions and distortions. Particular attention to his metaphor of the "mental bun," and his use of this metaphor, has led me to conclude that the mathematical puzzle served, for Carroll, distinctly fetishistic functions. This interpretation dovetails with Greenacre's early intuition about the prevalence in his literary work of fantasies and preoccupations reminescent of clinical experience with fetishism. The connection argued here between inhibitions and distortions in the sexual and intellectual realms suggests, as a domain for further inquiry, the possibility of a more general investigation into the role of sexual fantasies in intellectual activities.

Schizophrenia in adolescence

The emergence of schizophrenic psychoses during middle and late adolescence poses the question of how adolescence as a developmental stage is related to the emergence of severe psychopathology. This paper examines several possible explanations for adolescence as the beginning of the high-risk age, particularly for the schizophrenias. After discussing the nature of adolescence as distinguished from puberty, and then considering the nature of schizophrenia, we report some data from a long-range study of young adult psychiatric patients, both schizophrenic and nonschizophrenic. Our data support the idea that serious psychopathology-not only schizophrenia-occurs in a setting of poor competence in a variety of crucial skills which include the social, intellectual, and physical realms. The demands made on adolescents by societal expectations for independence and role establishment summon a variety of competencies. Where these competencies are dysfunctional, societal demands strain an already vulnerable youth, and potentiate disorganization.

Metoposcopy and Kindred Arts

August 5, 1968, marked a significant event in the history of science, for on that date was published in<i>JAMA</i>(<b>205</b>:470) the first controlled study in metoposcopy. The reader may immediately ask, what is that? Indeed, the people of the world can be divided into two classes—those who know the meaning of "metoposcopy" and those who do not. The first group comprises a handful of antiquarians. Everyone else falls into the second group. The term might thus seem to have little general appeal, but I nevertheless suggest sound reason for discussing it: metoposcopy forms a part of the vast intellectual realm that interpenetrates the history of thought and the history of science. This is the realm of the occult that bridges the gap between magic and science. "Metoposcopy" means literally the observation of the forehead, and the term refers to the information about the past and the future that

The Emergence of the First Social Order in the United States

T HERE. have been two conscious or unconscious social orders in the United States, where another great crisis is now forcing men to reexamine the philosophies of their predecessors. The first of these began with the Stuart Restoration and ended in I865; the second emerged slowly between I823 and i86I, took definite economic form in i865, and reached the acme of its power, if not its end, in I929. There are many serious thinkers in the American intellectual realm to-day who feel that a -third social order is slowly emerging, that democracy is going to be tried at last on a national scale. Hence it may not be out of order to describe and assess the first phase of 'the old plantation life which began when the Clarendon Code was applied to England, assumed a more dogmatic and arbitrary character soon after a clever New Englander showed the South Carolinians how to make a thousand bales of cotton grow where one had grown before, and came to its tragic end when Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. If one would understand the making of the social and cultural life of the Old South, he must study the troubled Europe from which our model-setting ancestors came during the seventeenth century. There the wars for religious libertie's were paralleled by the economic and social disasters due to the incoming shiploads of gold and silver from Central and South America. And while wars created artificial markets that suddenly collapsed, and the discovery of vast stores of the precious metals upset the value standards of the time, the rapid growth of English industry and drastic changes in agricultural life added to the social chaos from which hundreds of thousands of the more ambitious unemployed of Western Europe escaped to the stormy islands of the West Indies or the dangerous forests of North America. The common man of the

Hebrew and Egyptian Apocalyptic Literature

The long-accepted theory that Hebrew literature is largely the product of Babylonian influences is now discredited, both because of the unquestionable originality of Hebrew thought, in general, and in particular because the use of cuneiform models and materials is recognized to have been greatly overrated. Eventually Amurru or Khatti or Caphtor may be found to have made important contributions in the intellectual realm, as they have in the material, but at present the most powerful antidote for Pan-babylonianism is to be found in Egypt. Not that the view is returning which once prevailed among the Greeks, that all culture and wisdom came from the valley of the Nile, but the extent and importance of its influence, especially in Palestine, is becoming more and more evident.