Literal Representation Research Articles

The Perception of Relationship Violence in the Lyrics of a Song

This article uses Q methodology, respondent questionnaires, and qualitative interviews to examine the relationship between the experience of victimization and how respondents interpret musical lyrics. Two factors representing different perspectives on the song, “I May Know the Word,” were identified in a prior Q study. Factor A interpreted the song as a literal representation of rape, battering, and sexual assault; Factor B viewed it as a more abstract conflict over decision making. Data from the current study show a significant correlation between Factor A and the number of specific abuse behaviors individuals had experienced. However, although individuals subjected to multiple types of abuse were more likely to interpret the song in a literal manner, they did not necessarily name their experiences as rape or violence. The literature on the effects of traumatic experience is explored to explain this apparent contradiction.

Nostalgia, the Classics, and the Intimations Ode: Wordsworth’s Forgotten Education

Between 1819 and 1824 Wordsworth undertook translation of Virgil's Aeneid, which eventually included Books 1 to 3 nearly complete and only two further, unconnected passages: brief fragment (six lines in English) from Book 4, and more substantial section (forty-six lines) from the eighth book. Wordsworth left no indication why he singled out the last passage for translation. It contains the scene, well-known though scarcely crucial to the plot of the Aeneid, in which King Evander gives Aeneas tour of his rustic settlement on what will later be the site of Rome. To the Tarpeian Rock their way they hold And to the Capitol now bright with gold,-- In those far-distant times spot forlorn With bramble choked and rough with savage thorn ... Conversing thus their onward course they bent To poor Evander's humble tenement; Herds range the Roman Forum; in the street Of proud Carinae bellowing herds they meet.... (1) W. Warde Fowler, in his monograph on Book 8, Aeneas at the Site of Rome, calls this passage a fine stroke which must have delighted the Romans of [Virgil's] own day. (2) Yet its appeal to Wordsworth is less obvious. One might think that, logically, the description of these rustic precursors to the glories of Rome would delight especially, or only, those who were familiar with the Capitol, the Forum, and the Carinae in all their glory. But to think thus is to misunderstand the workings of nostalgia. I would define nostalgia as an affection or desire, for what one remembers, but for what one feels one has forgotten. (3) No detailed reconstruction of the Roman Forum could give the modern reader so intimate sense of familiarity with it as Virgil's deconstruction. Virgil suggests the grandeur only by negating it (Herds range the Roman Forum), relying upon the reader's knowledge to provide the necessary contrasting image. Hence the modern reader actually derives more from this passage than would Roman with first-hand knowledge of the places mentioned. Familiarity with the great monuments of ancient Rome is so implicitly ascribed to the reader that we unconsciously assume it, and although we could therefore draw an accurate map of the Forum, knowledge of it comes to seem rather like something forgotten than like something never known. There is nothing logical, of course, in the feeling of having forgotten something one never really knew, but the nostalgic appeal of this scene from Virgil does depend on logic. Coleridge (whom Keats memorably accused of being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge) might have questioned Wordsworth's apparent preference for this passage, just as he criticized remarkably similar instance of paradoxical nostalgia, the Intimations Ode. In chapter 22 of Biographia Literaria, which enumerates some characteristic defects of Wordsworth's poetry, Coleridge aims his final and bitterest attack against the passage of the Ode which apostrophizes young boy as Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! because the child, according to Wordsworth, still remembers his pre-natal state. Coleridge objects that memory which never enters the consciousness is no memory: Children at this age give us no such information of themselves; and at what time were we dipt in the Lethe, which has produced such utter oblivion of state so godlike? ... But if this be too wild and exorbitant to be suspected as having been the poet's meaning; if these mysterious gifts, faculties, and operations, are accompanied with consciousness; who else is conscious of them? or how can it be called the child, if it be no part of the child's conscious being? (4) Coleridge's objections are certainly rational: the Ode is in many ways logically untenable. Wordsworth admitted that he did not profess to give literal representation of the state of the affections and of the moral being in childhood; the child's recollection of pre-existence, then, is to be taken literally. …

Homo narrans: Studien zur popularen Erzahlkultur (review)

Reviewed by: Homo narrans: Studien zur populären Erzählkultur Jack Zipes (bio) Homo narrans: Studien zur populären Erzählkultur. Edited by Christoph Schmitt. Waxmann: Münster, 1999. 431 pp. Though I am always suspicious of the quality of a Festschrift because the contributions tend to be very uneven and sometimes flimsy, this volume dedicated to Siegfried Neumann, one of the leading folklorists of the former German Democratic Republic, is truly outstanding and makes an important contribution to the study of the interaction between oral and literary traditions and their relationship to contemporary popular culture. Christoph Schmitt has gathered together twenty-three of the best scholars in the field from Germany and the US and has divided their essays into four parts: (1) Tellers, Collectors, Interpreters: Ways of Folklore Narrative Research; (2) Old Materials—Modern Themes: Folk Prose in Historical Context; (3) Media Transformations of Popular Narrative Materials—Storytelling in the Mass Media; (4) Transmission in the Region: The Culture of Narrative, Speech, and Song in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Since many of the contributions have a limited focus, connected to Neumann's research in the region of Mecklenburg and Pomerania, and may not be directly [End Page 123] pertinent to the work of readers of this journal, I shall primarily discuss the more general and accessible essays that offer new perspectives in the field of folklore and fairy-tale research. By far the most relevant essay in the first part is Ines Köhler-Zülch's "Der Diskurs über den Ton. Zur Präsentation von Märchen und Sagen in Sammlun-gen des 19. Jahrhunderts," which may serve to correct John Ellis's misleading speculations in his book, One Story Too Many, about the Brothers Grimm and folklore scholarship in Germany. Köhler-Zülch's thorough and careful research demonstrates that the Brothers Grimm, along with their compatriots, were fully aware of the difficulties in writing down and recording folktales and legends in keeping with the oral tradition. Their concept of a "faithful" and "true" rendition of a narrative had little to do with correct and literal representation but more to do with recapturing the "tone" of the story while remaining faithful to the contents. In the initial phase of establishing the field of folklore in Germany, scholars and collectors developed a discourse about "authentic" and "true" tales through correspondence and publications concerning standards of recording and editing tales that lasted throughout the nineteenth century. Köhler-Zülch analyzes the works of Johann Carl Christoph Nachtigal, Johann Gustav Büsching, Albert Ludwig Grimm, Heinrich Pröhle, and Ignaz and Joseph Zingerle among others to show how they all sought to cultivate a folk tone while editing the tales they recorded. In this regard, they became artists themselves, storytellers, who did not hide the fact that they were not concerned so much with publishing authentic texts but with re-creating texts that had an "authentic ring" to them. Of course, there was a danger in idealizing the German folk and creating a false if not mythic image of the way the folk told tales. One of the dangers of focusing too much attention on "pure" folk tones and tales is discussed in Kai Detlev Sievers's "Völkische Märcheninterpretationen. Zu Joachim Kurd Niedlichs Mythen- und Märchendeutungen," in which he examines the rise of Aryan ideology within folk collections, paying specific attention to the work of Johann Kurd Niedlich (1884-1928). More general and less ideological is Leander Petzoldt's "Zur Geschichte der Erzählforschung in Österreich," which provides a succinct and informative history of the oral tradition in Austria and reveals to what extent this tradition is still alive. In the second part of the book, which focuses on how traditional topics and themes are adapted and preserved in contemporary culture, Ingo Schneider uses a contemporary index of important legend types in his stimulating essay "Traditionelle Erzählstoffe und Erzählmotive" to show how pervasive traditional motifs and characters are in new legends even when they assume different functions in contemporary societies. Another example of how widespread traditional legends are in contemporary society is discussed by Wilhelm Nicolaisen in his fascinating article "Einbruch und Einbrecher in...

Representing Dynamic Mouse Commands in Static Displays: Developing Graphical Symbols

Participants used either a Likert scale or a ratio scale to rate their preferences for graphical symbols illustrating the mouse motions of click, double-click, drag, click and drag, and left click. Through an iterative design process, symbols were selected and modified as they were rated. After several iterations, 54 participants evaluated the accumulated symbol set. In general, participants preferred symbols that were less abstract and more literal representations of the intended mouse actions; this is contrary to how these commands have been illustrated in printed computer documentation. Intermediate abstract symbols were rated almost as high as the literal symbols, and had the advantage of illustrating some mouse commands that could not be easily created with a literal symbol. Several design recommendations for symbols in computer instructions and symbols for other purposes are offered.

Theorizing Latvian Lives: The Quest for Identity

This article examines the nature of contemporary Latvian life stories. These accounts of the Soviet invasion and its long aftermath constitute a hybrid genre which unites personal and collective experience. They are intended by their authors to provide a literal representation ofthe past but in the process ofacquiring coherence they come to act as potent carriers of literary and cultural meanings, which confirm personal identity and national loyalties. The authors are engaged in a quest for meaning in often disrupted and chaotic lives. The common structure of the stories which result from this quest reflects large-scale historical events such as the post-war deportations ofthe Balts, as well as the incorporation of literary and folkloric paradigms. Life stories form the core of this article. Their central position was dictated by the insistence of my informants who transformed a modest research project on neurasthenia into one which addressed fundamental problems of violence and destiny.1 My research was carried out between 1992 and 1993 when the euphoria of independence united Latvians in a common cause. It seemed as though floodgates to the past had burst open. Wherever I turned I encountered stories of the past so powerful and compelling that it was difficult to know whether they were pursuing me or I them. Each spoke of an individual life and yet rested on a common structure. My argument in this article is that the similarities between these life histories derive both from Latvian history and from membership of a symbolic and textual community. The collective nature of these narratives derives from several sources. Undeniably, narratives reflect similar experiences. However, in so far as they claim testimonial status, these stories assume a responsibility for representing Latvian destiny generally Thus individuals frame their accounts as typical of other Latvian lives. Since 1990 extensive publication of the lives of deportees and prisoners has unwittingly provided literary models of story-telling. Finally, but not least, stories and histories familiar from childhood listenings and readings are borrowed to create coherence. Such borrowings have historical precedents. The National Awakening of the 1860s had as one of its goals the rehabilitation of Latvian peasant identity and Latvian literature was central to this project. Whereas literature had earlier been a distinguishing feature of the Baltic Germans, the pastoral literature of the second half of the nineteenth century rehabilitated and ennobled the Latvian peasant. The collection and publication of folk songs or dainas begun in the 1870s by Krisjans Barons consolidated national identity.2 Their classification according to the life

The representation of nonstructural information in visual memory: evidence from image combination.

Two experiments investigated the differential representation of the figure and ground of a picture in visual short-term and long-term memory. It is known (Hitch, Brandimonte, & Walker, 1995) that subjects find it more difficult to combine mental images of two separately presented pictures in order to identify a novel form when the two pictures are incongruent in color (i.e., when a black-on-white line drawing has to be combined with a white-on-black drawing). In the present experiments, the figures were depicted in solid form to allow color congruity to be varied independently for figure and ground. Results showed a clear impairment in image combination when the to-be-combined figures were incongruent in color (black-on-gray and white-on-gray) but not when their grounds were incongruently colored (gray-on-black and gray-on-white). In this way, image combination was seen to be supported by a representation of the object depicted in the picture rather than by a literal representation of the picture itself (i.e., a pictorial code). In line with previous findings, the same representation was seen to support image combination based on short-term memory (Experiment 1) and long-term memory (Experiment 2), provided that in the latter case verbal recoding was precluded. When verbal recoding was allowed, image combination based on long-term memory was insensitive to color congruity, implying the involvement of a more abstract structural representation.

Gendering Modern Music: Thoughts on the Monteverdi-Artusi Controversy

This essay examines the presence of gender metaphors in the documents of the Monteverdi-Artusi controversy. Such metaphors include literal and figurative representations of sexuality and gender in the theoretical arguments on both sides; representations of gender, sexuality, and power in the oratione asserted to have governed the composition of the two most discussed works, the madrigals "Cruda Amarilli" and "O Mirtillo"; and representations of resistance to patriarchal authority in the armonia of both madrigals. Such examination shows (1) that the focus on these two madrigals by both parties to the controversy irresistibly sexualized "modern music" and feminized its sonorous traits by associating them with images of the sensual and disobedient body rather than the rational and controlling anima; (2) that the Monteverdi brothers' defense of the seconda prattica was a rhetorical effort to legitimate modern music as an alternative patriarchy; and (3) that these gender messages became inextricable from the style they were used to defend, with consequences for both seventeenth-century practitioners and twentieth-century scholars of early "modern music."

Literal and symbolic representations: Burke, paine and the french revolution

(1993). Literal and symbolic representations: Burke, paine and the french revolution. History of European Ideas: Vol. 16, No. 1-3, pp. 343-349.

Are movement parameters recognizably coded in the activity of single neurons

To investigate neural mechanisms of movement, physiologists have analyzed the activity of task-related neurons in behaving animals. The relative onset latencies of neural activity have been scrutinized for evidence of a functional hierarchy of sequentially recruited centers, but experiments reveal that activity changes occur largely in parallel. Neurons whose activity covaries with movement parameters have been sought for evidence of explicit coding of parameters such as active force, limb displacement, and behavioral set. Neurons with recognizable relations to the task are typically selected from a larger population, ignoring those cells with complex relations to the task and unmodulated cells. Selective interpretations are also used to support the notion that different motor regions perform different motor functions; again, current evidence suggests that units with similar properties are distributed over widely different regions.These coding issues are reexamined for premotoneuronal (PreM) cells, whose correlational links with motoneurons are revealed by spike-triggered averages. PreM cells are recruited over long times relative to their target muscles; they show diverse response patterns relative to the muscle force they produce; functionally disparate PreM cells such as afferent fibers and descending corticomotoneuronal and rubromotoneuronal cells can exhibit similar patterns. Neural mechanisms have been further elucidated by neural network simulations of sensorimotor behavior; the pre-output hidden units typically show diverse response patterns in relation to their target units. Thus, studies in which both the activity and the connectivity of the same units are known reveal that units with both simple and complex relations to the task contribute significantly to the output. This suggests that the search for explicit coding may be diverting us from understanding distributed neural mechanisms that operate without literal representations.

METALLEL: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO NON-LITERAL PHRASE INTERPRETATION

Metallel is a program that incorporates marker passing techniques within a preference/collative semantics framework. This allows for the simultaneous generation of literal and non-literal meaning representations, while allowing for a much greater degree of parallelism during processing. In addition, we have integrated metonymic and metaphoric inferencing into one procedure, arguing that at least some types of metaphor can be represented as parallel metonymies. A number of examples are presented which show that metallel's output is roughly equivalent to conventional, rule-based approaches to metonymy.

Notes Toward an Analytic Criticism of Photography: Seven Photos of Eugene Atget

Although historical, technical, and theoretical writing has always accompanied artistic photography, little sustained formal commentary exists. This article discusses seven photographs by Atget. It attempts to deepen understanding of those works and to exemplify a possible approach to photographic explication. All the photographs have symbolic meanings beyond their literal representation of the world. Applying Aristotle's conception of metaphor as proportion offers one way to understand those meanings. These partial analyses suggest that explication of photographs may improve our understanding of particular works and of symbolic meaning in photography generally.

Industrialization and Urbanization—the SENCSA Conference, University of Alabama at Birmingham, April 1987

Conference Report INDUSTRIALIZATION AND URBANIZATION—THE SENCSA CONFERENCE, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM, APRIL 1987 W. DAVID LEWIS Founded in 1979, the Southeastern Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (SENCSA) is an interdisciplinary organization that aims to bring together “scholars of literature, languages, history, philosophy, religion, music, art, architecture, science, and the social sciences for lively and provocative conferences.”1 Since holding the first of these meetings at Georgia Institute of Technology in May 1980, SENCSA has held one every year, with each conference devoted to a common theme. Considering that SENCSA’s April 1987 conference was at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, virtually in the shadow of the idle ironmaking installations that now constitute Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark, it is difficult to imagine a more appro­ priate theme than the one chosen: Industrialization and Urbaniza­ tion. Thirty-two scholars, most from southeastern institutions but some from colleges and universities outside the region, presented papers on a variety of topics ranging from “The New Industrialism and Pre-Raphaelite Art” (Robert Alan Donovan, SUNY at Albany) and “The Machine in Wessex: Hardy, Industrialization, and Urban­ ization” (Joan Weatherly, Memphis State University) to “Influenza in Manchester, 1918-1919” (Fred R. van Hartesveldt, Fort Valley State College) and “Johannesburg on the Veldt: The Birth of the City of Gold” (Dalvan M. Coger, Memphis State University). The sessions were punctuated by held trips to such local attractions as Sloss Furnaces. Excellent arrangements contributed further to the success Dr. Lewis is Hudson Professor of History and Engineering at Auburn University. He is the author of Iron and Steel in America (Wilmington, Del., 1976) and is currently writing a history of Sloss Furnaces. 'See the Editorial Note in the first (1987) volume of SENCSA’s annual journal, Nineteenth Century Studies.©1989 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/89/3003-0007$01.00 628 Industrialization and Urbanization 629 of an impressive and enjoyable three-day event. Inevitably, the thirty-one papers presented during the course of the proceedings varied in the degree to which they provided fresh insights into the cultural influence of industrialization and urbanization, but even those that seemed less original than the best were characteristically thoughtful and well prepared. The four papers in the opening session, “The New Society Takes Shape,” were typical of the overall quality of the conference. In a thoughtful presentation entitled “Out of Place, Out of Mind: Dis­ placement in Regency Art and Society,” Joel Haefner (Iowa City, Iowa) observed that inaccuracies in the works of Cobbett and other early-19th-century writers regarding the tangible results of industri­ alization reveal that the social “displacement” they discerned was “not physical so much as experiential,” part of a “re-mapping of the mental and imaginative mind of the Regency reader.” Surveying key works by such writers as Wordsworth and Lamb, and drawing on the insights of such scholars as Gaston Bachelard, Haefner contended that the physical places one encounters in Regency literature—a ruined cot­ tage, for example, or a deserted mansion—should be seen not as truthful or literal representations of fact but as “internalized struc­ tures,” an “architecture of the imagination.” Haefner’s discussion was reminiscent of Piranesi’s carceri, the engravings of William Blake, Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher,” and other symbol-laden products of the human imagination that reveal a deep artistic response to social and technological change. It provided fresh insight into an important dimension of the Romantic reaction to the Industrial Revolution. Similarly enjoyable was “Economic and Literary Perspectives on Victorian Industrialization” by Philip M. Holleran and Lowell T. Frye (Hampden-Sydney College). The underlying theme was the way in which such essayists and novelists as Carlyle and Dickens misperceived the aims of Smith, Malthus, and other classical economists by assuming that these exponents of the “dismal science” were trying to defend the evils of industrial society. Instead, Holleran and Frye argued, they were honestly concerned about the plight of the wretched multitudes who suffered from industrialization, but they were also convinced that self-discipline and a true perception of basic economic laws provided the only way out of a bad situation. In their words...

Models of memory: information processing.

A complete understanding of human memory will necessarily involve consideration of the active processes involved at the time of learning and of the organization and nature of representation of information in long-term memory. In addition to process and structure, it is important for theory to indicate the ways in which stimulus-driven and conceptually driven processes interact with each other in the learning situation. Not surprisingly, no existent theory provides a detailed specification of all of these factors. However, there are a number of more specific theories which are successful in illuminating some of the component structures and processes. The working memory model proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) and modified subsequently has shown how the earlier theoretical construct of the short-term store should be replaced with the notion of working memory. In essence, working memory is a system which is used both to process information and to permit the transient storage of information. It comprises a number of conceptually distinct, but functionally interdependent components. So far as long-term memory is concerned, there is evidence of a number of different kinds of representation. Of particular importance is the distinction between declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge, a distinction which has received support from the study of amnesic patients. Kosslyn has argued for a distinction between literal representation and propositional representation, whereas Tulving has distinguished between episodic and semantic memories. While Tulving's distinction is perhaps the best known, there is increasing evidence that episodic and semantic memory differ primarily in content rather than in process, and so the distinction may be of less theoretical value than was originally believed.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Wosene Kosrof of Ethiopia

Wosene Kosrof is an Ethiopian artist who understands the visual power of language. He knows that there was a time when words were like and would suddenly come alive, and what people wanted to happen could happen when all you had to do was say it,'1 and so he uses words for their intrinsic magic as well as for their and symbolic significance. Drawing his own Amharic calligraphy with its verbal and visual richness, he has created a body of work that has a dynamic syntax of meaning, form and tradition. He says that Amharic calligraphy, operating a design level, has its literal representation, and on a figurative level the syllables are abstractions: at times they transform into human figures; at times they become architectural forms.... By combining the calligraphic symbols, painted in vibrant colors, blacks, whites, and golds, I am conjuring up spells that induce new perceptions, new insights into life, new powers to transform ourselves. They call out against oppression and apartheid; they call out for human dignity and human rights. The spells are cast visually to generate hope, renewed life, and rebirth. The 'evil eye' or 'magic eye' is present in each work to draw the viewer into participating in the ritual. And another element of Ethiopian art, namely the magic scroll, is embedded in many of the paintings.2 The artist uses Amharic characters like tracers to reassert the

The Politics of Pornography: A Critique of Liberalism and Radical Feminism

The nature and significance of pornography are controversiaL Con trasting liberal, conservative and radical feminist views on the relationship between sexuality and pornography are analysed. The radical feminist definition of pornography and the associated attempt to distinguish pornography both from sexual realism and from erotica is examined. Radical feminist arguments purporting to show pornography causes sexual violence against women are criticised on the grounds that they are inconclusive, and anyway rest on the liberal way of drawing the private-public distinction. Whilst the argument that pornography is offensive may usefully be invoked to condemn the open display of hard-core and sexually violent porno graphy, it is of limited use to feminists since it too rests on the liberal private-public dichotomy, which feminists are committed to dis pensing with. There is a consistent and distinctively feminist thesis that pornography is harmful in constituting a serious moral affront to women. This argument has some force, but is flawed sometimes by confusion between the fantasy content of pornography and literal representation, sometimes by a simplistic view of how fantasy will be realised in male sexual behaviour.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF EXPRESSIVITY IN DRAWING

Summary. To trace the development of expressivity in children's drawings, 128 children, 16 each at the mean ages of 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 16, 20 were asked to create a series of drawings depicting expressive qualities (e.g., happy, sad) in both trees and lines. Drawings were first scored in terms of the accuracy of both expression and representation (trees, lines). Successful expressive drawings were then scored in terms of strategy utilised: literal representation (e.g., crying face for sad), abstract expression (e.g., drooping lines for sad), and content expression (e.g., a barren tree for sad). Finally, drawings scored as abstract expression were rated as to the types of abstract contrasts used (e.g., angle/curve, big/little, upward/downward). The results document a developmental trend from an initial ability to produce abstract expression based, in part, on amodal similarities (e.g., big for loud) toward the production of more complex multi‐dimensional types of abstract expression, and increasing integration of representational ability and expressive ability in the form of content expression.

Building Walls and Jumping over Them: Constructions in Franz Kafka's "Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer"

Franz Kafka's work has always seduced us into metaphor. Always partly anchored in our notion of the real, always simultaneously inscribed in a mentality beyond, his novels and stories invite an interpretative activity that will explain the fantastic in terms of the real. Hence the frequency with which we ask of an image in Kafka, or of an entire text, What does it mean? Why the cockroach? for example. In responding to the question, we construct a second world, parallel to the text, which accounts as fully as possible for any troublesome mystery which the text introduces. Our goal is demystification, and our assumption is that the text is parable, a symbolic system whose terms transfigure literal representation. Most criticism of the short story Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer, written in 1917, makes this assumption. Typically, it asks, What is the wall? Herbert Tauber is not unusual in his assertion:

The Strange Irregular Rhythm: An Analysis Of The Good Soldier

In his appreciative portrait of Theodore Dreiser, Ford Madox Ford recorded how in 1914, long before they ever met, he had read with emotion Dreiser's novel, The Titan, and then had written a laudatory review of it. Six months later in this country Dreiser read Ford's new novel, The Good Soldier, also with emotion and also to write a review. Here the similarity ends, however, for Dreiser was irritated by Ford's novel and especially by the portrayal of John Dowell, an expatriate from Philadelphia in “the United States of North America” (p. 60). This character, claimed Dreiser, “is no American. He is that literary packhorse or scapegoat,” the “Englishman's conception of an American husband.” In a sense this is quite true. No American would make the comment that Dowell does in analyzing his wife: “She did not want much physical passion in the affair. Americans, you know, can envisage such unions without blinking” (p. 79). Obviously such a conception, if taken as an attempt to state the literal truth about this country, must have sounded to a contemporary reader as though its author's acquaintance with America were limited to the novels of Henry James. Actually, of course, as an impressionist novel The Good Soldier does not intend to give a literal representation of the problem it explores. And since, as Ford emphasized in his portrait, he and Dreiser were temperamentally different, we should not be surprised at Dreiser's irritation or his final complaint that the novel as a whole is “cold narrative and never truly poignant” because the “formal British leanings” of the author “will not let him loosen up and sing.”