Literary Sketches Research Articles

Les voyageurs du temps by Philippe Sollers

Les voyageurs du temps by Philippe Sollers

Rethinking Sōseki's theory

This paper builds on the discussion of Bungakuron in Origins of Modern Japanese Literature (1993). It focuses on Sōseki's collaboration with Masaoka Shiki to revive haiku and the links that Sōseki found between the haiku-related genre of shaseibun (literary sketches) and the grotesque, loosely plotted realism of Laurence Sterne. Like Bakhtin, Sōseki recognizes something in early novelistic forms that would later be disciplined out. Furthermore, this paper argues that in the preface to Bungakuron Sōseki provides both an encomium to his dead friend Masaoka and a prescient announcement of the ‘end of literature’, perceived 100 years early from his vantage point as a non-Western subject witnessing the ‘end of empire’ in London.

Body-mind-spirit intervention for IVF women.

Literature supports the efficacy of psychosocial intervention for infertile women. An eastern body-mind-spirit group intervention has been developed to help infertile women in the Chinese population cope with the distress arising from IVF treatment. The eastern body-mind-spirit group intervention adopts a bio-psycho-social-spiritual health model, recognizing the strong association between mind, body, and spirit. Chinese philosophies and concepts of health will be integrated into the intervention, helping participants to regain balance and harmony both within themselves and between them and the environment. In this paper, a revisiting of assumptions, therapeutic goals, and the therapeutic process underlying this model are outlined. Program evaluation in terms of descriptive literary sketch done by the participants will be listed so as to illustrate the clinical process. It was shown and reflected that the eastern Body-Mind-Spirit approach could enhance the holistic health of IVF women. Further investigation on the program efficacy is then suggested.

Munch: in his own words

Just as Leonardo da Vinci studied the recesses of the human body and dissected cadavers, I try to dissect souls said Edvard Munch (1863-1944), Norway's greatest artist and tortured genius. In this study Munch's own soul is laid bare through the first English translation and analysis of diaries, literary sketches and letters, presented together with his most important artistic works. Preserved in the archives of the Munch Museum in Oslo, to which they were presented by the artist himself, Munch's writings give a unique insight into one of the most fascinating aristic minds of the 20th century. Munch was as influenced by the literary and philosophical context of turn-of-the-century Europe as he was by his artistic milieu, and by his own admission, several of his major works began as literary sketches. Beautiflly illustrated with drawings, paintings and Munch's own photography, this book presents an intimate portrait of the artist's life - the early death of his mother, his childhood illnesses, his tragic love affair - through his own philosophical and literary pieces. Interweaving Munch's artistic and literary experiences, these texts provide a commentary on his works and personal philosophy, on the works of his contemporaries (Van Gogh among others), and on the sensibilities of his friends and family. Munch: In His Own Words brings the world of the artist vividly to life.

Vignettes for the Year 2000: Theory and Methods Foreword

The vignette series concludes with 22 contributions in Theory and Methods. It is, of course, impossible to cover all of theory and methods with so few articles, but we hope that a snapshot of what was, and what may be, is achieved. This is the essence of “vignettes” which, according to the American Heritage Dictionaty, are “literary sketches having the intimate charm and subtlety attributed to vignette portraits.” Through solicitation and announcement, we have collected the Theory and Methods vignettes presented here. The scope is broad, but by no means exhaustive. Exclusion of a topic does not bear on its importance, but rather on the inability to secure a vignette. Many topics were solicited, and a general call was put in Amstut News. Nonetheless, we could not get every topic covered (among other factors, time was very tight). There is some overlap in the vignettes, as the authors, although aware of the other topics, were working independently, and there are places where information in one vignette complements that in another. Rather than edit out some of the overlap, I have tried to signpost these instances with cross-references allowing the reader the luxury of seeing two (or even three) views on a topic. Such diverse accounts can help to enhance our understanding. As I hope you will agree, the resulting collection is nothing short of marvelous. The writers are all experts in their fields, and bring a perception and view that truly highlights each subject area. My goal in this introduction is not to summarize what is contained in the following pages, but rather to entice you to spend some time looking through the vignettes. At the very least, you will find some wonderful stories about the history and development of our subject. (For example, see the vignettes by McCulloch and Meng for different histories of the EM algorithm.) Some of the speculation may even inspire you to try your hand, either in developing the theory or applying the methodology. The question of in which order to present the vignettes was one that I thought hard about. First, I tried to put them in a subject-oriented order, to create some sort of smooth flow throughout. This turned out to be impossible, as the connections between topics is not linear. Moreover, any absolute ordering could carry a connotation of importance of the topics, a judgment that I don’t feel qualified to make. (Indeed, such a judgment may be impossible to make.) So in the end I settled for an alphabetical ordering according to author name. This is not only objective, but also makes the various vignettes a bit easier to find.

Uncollected Early Prose of Katherine Anne Porter

As critical and popular interest in Katherine Anne Porter's writing grows, readers naturally wish to see more of her work. This volume brings together twenty-nine pieces dating from before 1932, none of which appeared in her collected works and many of which are published here for the first time. Both fiction and essays are covered. The fiction includes the published stories The Shattered Star, The Faithful Princess, The Magic Ear Ring, The Adventures of Hadji, and the first version of Hacienda, along with six previously unpublished stories drawn from Porter's papers. The essays include her monograph Outline of Mexican Popular Arts and Crafts, her first two essays on Mexican politics, her first two book reviews, and several literary sketches with Mexican themes. All these pieces belong to Porter's apprenticeship as a creative writer. Thus, they offer new insights into her artistic development and her relationship with Mexico, a place that, as she later said, influenced everything I did afterward.

THE SUBVERTED GAZE: HAWTHORNE, HOWELLS, JAMES AND THE DISCOURSE OF TRAVEL

The stereotype is the word repeated without any magic, any enthusiasm, as though it were natural, as though by some miracle this recurring word were adequate on each occasion. . . . Nietzsche has observed that "truth" is only the solidification of old metaphors. So in this regard the stereotype is the present path of "truth, " the palpable feature which shifts the invented ornament to the canonical, constraining form of the signified. 1 Roland Barthes We need a critical theory of guidebooks.2 Paul Fussell I American representations of European travel in the latter half of the nineteenth century reveal a problematic tension between pleasure and anxiety. While the inscription of travel originates in the pleasures of visual engagement with an old and richly suggestive culture, the descriptive focus on "place" is often disrupted or postponed by a dilatory articulation of generic constraints which preclude a prompt, original or accurate rendering of the object of the touristic gaze. Traditionally, the travel sketch has been regarded as a leisurely, amateurish mode of discourse intended to "involve the mind in the eye's delights," and which "served as a critical exercise that activated and sharpened the discriminating eye."3 While Thomas A. Pauly correctly insists that the literary sketch privileges "a calculated incompleteness" and "a tentative mode of perception," critical inquiry into this complex genre needs to go further in examining travel writers' anxious awareness of the limits of, and obstacles to, representation.4

Balzac’s Dolls and Other Essays, Studies, and Literary Sketches by Greg Boyd

90 Western American Literature. BRIEF NOTICES Artifacts. By B. J. Buckley. (Saratoga, Wyoming: The Willow Bee Publishing House, 1987. 80 pages, $8.95.) Robert Roripaugh said of B. J. Buckley that she has a “distinctive voice and poetic consciousness.” I agree. In the title poem “Artifacts,” in “Pre­ history: A Fairy Tale,” and in “Roadkill,” Buckley speaks in a voice as sparklingly clear as a Wyoming winter night. However, her strength becomes a weakness in this little book, as every poem, no matter what the subject, echoes the same voice. While this makes for a consistent and even tone, it also makes for some impatience on the part of the reader as her reading progresses. I wanted to read a different reaction occasionally; I wanted more than just a bittersweet, funereal sort of musing. Buckley does have promise as a poet, how­ ever. She handles images well, turning words into memorable phrases: “mar­ bles unearthed in the garden like seeds of statues.” —Charlotte M. Wright Balzac’sDolls and Other Essays, Studies, and Literary Sketches. ByGreg Boyd. (Daphne, Alabama: Legrete Press, 1987. 145 pages, n.p.) This is, as Boyd states in his foreword, a literary sampler. In fifteen chap­ ters he covers such varied subjects as “The Contemporary American Prose poem,” two often-dismissed stories of John Steinbeck (“Breakfast” and “The Snake”), and the work of Charles Baudelaire. Of special interest to WAL readers is his essay review of three books by Charles Bukowski, in which he calls Bukowski “an artist condemned to live and create in an ugly world, a man given too few choices in an absurd society.” Balzac’sDolls also includes a short review of Marine Robert Warden’sBeyond the Straits, another work known to WAL readers. Though I found fault with the book’s format, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of literary criticism between the book’scovers. —Charlotte M. Wright Cowboy. By Bernard Wolf. (NY: Morrow, 1985. 76 pages, $13.00 cloth.) A tribute to a changing way oflife in the West, Cowboy combines Bernard Wolf’sstraightforward text and telling photos to capture the grit and love and work cowboying demands. Leading the reader through the spring roundup, branding, cutting and tagging of calves, through the challenge of the rodeo, and through one man’s struggle to save his ranch from the mining claims sur­ rounding his land, Cowboy cleanly portrays a vanishing tradition in western American life. —ScottCheney ...

Cowboy by Bernard Wolf

90 Western American Literature. BRIEF NOTICES Artifacts. By B. J. Buckley. (Saratoga, Wyoming: The Willow Bee Publishing House, 1987. 80 pages, $8.95.) Robert Roripaugh said of B. J. Buckley that she has a “distinctive voice and poetic consciousness.” I agree. In the title poem “Artifacts,” in “Pre­ history: A Fairy Tale,” and in “Roadkill,” Buckley speaks in a voice as sparklingly clear as a Wyoming winter night. However, her strength becomes a weakness in this little book, as every poem, no matter what the subject, echoes the same voice. While this makes for a consistent and even tone, it also makes for some impatience on the part of the reader as her reading progresses. I wanted to read a different reaction occasionally; I wanted more than just a bittersweet, funereal sort of musing. Buckley does have promise as a poet, how­ ever. She handles images well, turning words into memorable phrases: “mar­ bles unearthed in the garden like seeds of statues.” —Charlotte M. Wright Balzac’sDolls and Other Essays, Studies, and Literary Sketches. ByGreg Boyd. (Daphne, Alabama: Legrete Press, 1987. 145 pages, n.p.) This is, as Boyd states in his foreword, a literary sampler. In fifteen chap­ ters he covers such varied subjects as “The Contemporary American Prose poem,” two often-dismissed stories of John Steinbeck (“Breakfast” and “The Snake”), and the work of Charles Baudelaire. Of special interest to WAL readers is his essay review of three books by Charles Bukowski, in which he calls Bukowski “an artist condemned to live and create in an ugly world, a man given too few choices in an absurd society.” Balzac’sDolls also includes a short review of Marine Robert Warden’sBeyond the Straits, another work known to WAL readers. Though I found fault with the book’s format, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of literary criticism between the book’scovers. —Charlotte M. Wright Cowboy. By Bernard Wolf. (NY: Morrow, 1985. 76 pages, $13.00 cloth.) A tribute to a changing way oflife in the West, Cowboy combines Bernard Wolf’sstraightforward text and telling photos to capture the grit and love and work cowboying demands. Leading the reader through the spring roundup, branding, cutting and tagging of calves, through the challenge of the rodeo, and through one man’s struggle to save his ranch from the mining claims sur­ rounding his land, Cowboy cleanly portrays a vanishing tradition in western American life. —ScottCheney ...

Portraits and Essays: Historical and Literary Sketches of Early Spanish America

Portraits and Essays: Historical and Literary Sketches of Early Spanish America

ESSAYS AND LITERARY SKETCHES

ESSAYS AND LITERARY SKETCHES

I. S. Makovsky. Sound reflexes during removal of the temporal regions of the cerebral hemispheres in dogs. Thesis. St. Petersburg

The author, at the suggestion of Prof. IP Pavlova, set himself the goal of studying the properties of the so-called artificial conditioned reflexes to a break in sounds. Having prefaced a brief literary sketch of the doctrine of conditioned reflexes, the author describes the methodology for studying the mentioned reflexes in four dogs. At the same time, one dog developed a sedative conditioned reflex to a break in the sound of a chromatic pipe; two dogs developed an acidic (with hydrochloric acid) conditioned reflex to the stop of the metronome sound, and the fourth dog developed a sedative conditioned reflex to the stop of the metronome sound. A conditioned reflex to a sound break was developed in such a way that minute after the sound break, which lasted 1 minutes, the dog was given either 2.0 t. economic powder (1 tsp. meat por.+2 tsp. suharnago), if she developed a sedative reflex, or poured into her 5.0 0.25% solution of HC1, if she developed an acid reflex.

On the question of the influence of intestinal infection on the liver

Doctor. Gas. 1903. Nos. 35-36.Having found out with a brief literary sketch that in the question of the role of the liver in infection from the intestine, the meaning of the state of the liver itself in the fight against infection is not sufficiently defended, the author wants the pathological and histological study of the case presented to him to contribute to this issue.

A case of gastropexy

Abstracts. Surgery.Prof. V.I. Razumovskiy. A case of gastropexy. Chronicle of Russian surgery. 1901 Book. 2nd.Giving a literary sketch of a new operation - gastropexia (Durex was the first to produce it in 1895) and briefly outlining the symptomatology of this suffering, as well as operational methods for it, according to Rowsingy, the author cites his case, which has already been tracked for 7 months.