Popular Reading Research Articles

General Principles of Sacramental Theology by Roger W. Nutt

Reviewed by: General Principles of Sacramental Theology by Roger W. Nutt Michael Heintz Roger W. Nutt General Principles of Sacramental Theology Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017 viii + 206 pages. Paperback. $34.95. In looking for an introductory text for a course in sacramental theology secundum mentem ecclesiae, the go-to volume has for some time been Colman O'Neill's Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, first published in 1964 but updated to accord with more recent liturgical and canonical material by Romanus Cessario in 1991. O'Neill has [End Page 113] subsequently published (1983) Sacramental Realism: A General Theory of the Sacraments. Students and teachers of sacramental theology would do well to keep these on their shelf. Paul Haffner's The Sacramental Mystery (1991) is another fine contribution to the subject, as is the late Stratford Caldecott's little book The Seven Sacraments: Entering the Mysteries of God (2006), which is more basic in tenor and directed at a more popular readership. The Regensburg theologian Johann Auer's volume, A General Doctrine of the Sacraments and the Mystery of the Eucharist, another trustworthy volume translated into English in 1995 (the German was published in 1971), has just been reprinted. However, those entrusted with teaching graduate students and seminarians will be delighted to know of Roger Nutt's new volume. Nutt, professor at Ave Maria University, has previously published a translation (the first in English) of St. Thomas's disputed question De unione Verbi Incarnati in the series dallas Medieval Texts and Translations (2015), so, unsurprisingly, his knowledge and use of Aquinas is deep and broad. Nutt's new book begins with a chapter on the nature of theology as a sapiential discipline, one which any serious theological student would do well to heed: what we call theology, and what St. Thomas calls sacra doctrina, is not merely one more subject to be mastered, nor another academic discipline among many others; what Nutt offers could (and perhaps should) serve as an introduction to just what theology is (and is not). Having established this, he relates this approach or methodology to the sacramental system of Catholicism (chapter 2). The remaining ten chapters are divided into two parts: chapters 3–6 treat the sacraments as a particular kind of sign, as well as sacramental matter and form, sacramental intention (in which he deals with liceity and validity), and their necessity. Chapters 7–11 address sacramental causality, sacramental grace, character, and the institution of the sacraments. Perhaps the richest section of the book is his treatment of the grace of the sacraments. Like St. Thomas, Nutt is careful about distinctions, and he employs such distinctions to clarify particularly knotty or contested questions (for example, whether sacramental grace is merely dispositive). It is also within these chapters that Nutt discusses [End Page 114] the classical distinction regarding what might be called aspects of each sacrament: sacramentum [tantum], res et sacramentum, res [tantum]. Again, Nutt deals with this in a way that nuances and deepens the reader's appreciation of such distinctions. The book concludes with a short essay "Principles of a Sacramental Spirituality," which forms—in light of the first chapter in particular—a lovely inclusio. In just over two-hundred pages, Nutt has offered the reader a solid, informed, and most helpful introduction to sacramental theology; what he does not do (nor does he claim to offer) is to address the particulars of each of the sacraments. His style is easy and accessible, his knowledge of the Tradition (St. Thomas in particular) is excellent, and, in a field that has witnessed a variety of approaches, which can leave matters confused and fuzzy, his approach is not polemical. When he does, for example, engage with Louis-Marie Chauvet (99–101), he does critically but also with fairness: he identifies a weakness in his metaphysics which leads (in Nutt's view) to deficiencies in Chauvet's understanding of sacramental causality. Nutt is clearly a student of Aquinas and his approach consistently throughout is Thomistic, though he also draws upon Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, and the Damascene (as, of course, did St. Thomas). Contemporary students of sacramental theology might do well also to consider...

Reading America: Citizenship, Democracy, and Cold War Literature by Kristin L. Matthews

Reviewed by: Reading America: Citizenship, Democracy, and Cold War Literature by Kristin L. Matthews Brian K. Goodman Matthews, Kristin L. 2016. Reading America: Citizenship, Democracy, and Cold War Literature. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. $90.00 hc. $29.95 sc. 222 pp. "In the war between capitalism and Communism," wrote the reformed Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers in 1952, "books are weapons, and, like all serviceable weapons, loaded." But as Kristin L. Matthews shows in her valuable study, Reading America: Citizenship, Democracy, and Cold War Literature, by the start of the Cold War books had been treated as loaded weapons for some time. During the Second World War, for instance, the Office of War Information distributed posters reminding American citizens that "BOOKS ARE WEAPONS IN THE WAR OF IDEAS" (22). What was different for Americans during the early Cold War was a new faith in the "seemingly unlimited power" of the United States, a flimsy confidence that still masked a lingering sense of cultural insecurity (11). In Reading America, Matthews introduces us to the extensive postwar "reading industrial complex" that responded to this paradoxical situation by further "weaponizing" long-standing American discourses linking literacy, citizenship, and freedom (18). All this hawkish language is a reminder that scholars of Cold War literary culture are one of the only groups as fond of using martial metaphors as Cold Warriors themselves. By now most recent scholarship in the field has left behind the master trope of "containment," an impressively flexible concept imported from US military and diplomatic strategy. But new research is still being pursued [End Page 571] in the shadow of the so-called "cultural Cold War," a framing that turns scholars into sleuths, sniffing around for evidence of covert CIA funding that might corroborate our most paranoid readings of the period's literature. Matthews successfully avoids this trap in Reading America, while still embracing one of the most promising trends in recent Cold War literary studies: a methodological turn toward book history and the comparative study of print cultures. But unlike recent works such as Greg Barnhisel's indispensable Cold War Modernists (2015), Matthews turns away from the "cultural war abroad," focusing instead on the battles over literacy and reading that raged on the "home front" (14, 16). Matthews begins Reading America by reconstructing the overlapping historical contexts that produced a reading boom in early Cold War America. In her introduction and first chapter, Matthews shows how a range of factors, including the paperback revolution, the G.I. Bill, the rise of New Criticism in universities, the Great Books Program, and popular reading clubs, put more books in American hands than ever before while also prescribing what it meant to be a "good" reader. Meanwhile, the postwar book market was flooded with best-selling reading guides, anticommunist primers, and works by panicked literacy experts with titles like What Ivan Knows That Johnny Doesn't (1961). Matthews describes the new Cold War consensus as the conviction that "reading particular texts in the right way could train Americans to understand, practice, defend, and spread democracy across the globe" (10). In subsequent chapters, Matthews does show how this consensus evolved and fractured over time, but her primary attention shifts to the function of reading within classic works of Cold War literature. For instance, in her second chapter, Matthews explores the "intersections among reading, maturity, and postwar character" in J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye (1951), an object of perennial interest for scholars in the field. But whereas previous works by Alan Nadel, Pamela Steinle, and Leerom Medovoi have focused on the public reception of Catcher in the Rye or the ways the book figured in wider cultural debates, Matthews turns inward, performing a counterintuitive reading of the text itself, in order to "illuminate" broader developments in Cold War reading culture (33). Far from characterizing Catcher in the Rye as a novel of rebellion, Matthews presents Salinger's prematurely gray protagonist Holden Caulfield as the fulfillment of the postwar ideal of the "mature citizen-reader" (42). Holden is a nostalgic and censorious reader, a cultural traditionalist [End Page 572] searching for stability and order in a discordant world. According to Matthews, Holden is essentially...

Emblem of Faith Untouched: A Short Life of Thomas Cranmer by Leslie Williams

Reviewed by: Emblem of Faith Untouched: A Short Life of Thomas Cranmer by Leslie Williams Fredrica Harris Thompsett (bio) Leslie Williams. Emblem of Faith Untouched: A Short Life of Thomas Cranmer. Eerdmans Publishing, 2016, 192 pp. ISBN 978-0802874184, $18.00. Why, I wondered, after Diarmaid MacCulloch's definitive scholarly study, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (1996), do we need another biography of Thomas Cranmer? As one of the most influential theologians and crafters of English Protestantism, Cranmer's life and legacy deserve much wider telling. Williams's short study, in style and intent, serves a much broader audience of curious readers. Professional scholars and more popular readers of history will find herein a refreshing account of this hero of the English Reformation. This readership will also include those interested in Anglicanism writ large, students curious about Tudor history, worshippers accustomed to liturgy shaped by the Book of Common Prayer, as well as those who simply enjoy reading lively historical biographies. Yes, there definitely is a place for Williams's engaging narrative of the life and times of Thomas Cranmer. The narrative moves briskly, presented free of footnotes and other interrupting academic notations, although a key to quotations and other references is found at the end of the book with brief "notes to pages." Williams's narrative flows forward in short engaging chapters depicting Cranmer's early life and intense scholarly formation at Cambridge. The author tells of his travels as a diplomat interacting with Continental reformers, his first and second marriages, his ability to survive enmeshed political and doctrinal rivalries, his avoidance whenever possible of conflict and plots that were endemic in Tudor royal courts, his natural diplomacy and preference for forgiveness, as well as his carefully shaped theological conclusions, which were deeply grounded in the authority of the Bible. One of the central dynamics in Cranmer's life is his slowly growing and eventually deep friendship with King Henry VIII. Here Williams is "deeply indebted" (1) to MacCulloch, whom she often quotes directly. One example is MacCulloch's apt description of the early relationship between Cranmer and the king as between a "timid lecturer and the self-righteous, Godobsessed royal bully" (80). Williams's attentive portrait of the king includes the ongoing efforts of Cranmer to ground his king in central aspects of the reformed faith and the protection Henry eventually provided Cranmer in court intrigues. The emotional story of Cranmer's presence as Henry's chaplain as the old king lay dying attests to the extent of their friendship. At times Williams tends to overdraw emotional dynamics, as when she notes, "Henry died with his only friend [Cranmer] by his side" (99). Accounts of Henry's final marriage, to Catherine Parr, provided emotional support, friendship, and happiness for the last four years of the king's life. Readers of Williams's narrative who are new to Tudor history will likely learn as much about King Henry VIII as about his archbishop. [End Page 460] After Henry's death, the significance of the archbishop's fidelity to the crown continued to direct Cranmer's allegiance to Henry's royal successors, whom he held as divinely appointed. Because Cranmer was a reformer, his second guiding principle, a deep-seated grounding in the authority of scripture, flourished during Edward VI's reign. Cranmer's liturgical brilliance led to the publication of prayer books for English worshippers, and reformers from Tyndale through Coverdale shaped various versions of the Bible in English. Conversely, during Mary Tudor's reign, Cranmer's legacy and theological emphases were overturned. The persecution of reform-minded bishops and ordinary believers alike intensified in the fires of Marian England. Williams is at her best detailing the high drama of Cranmer's and other reformers' degradation under Mary. During the final days of his imprisonment, Cranmer declines in body and mind. Williams reveals to us the despondent archbishop as he defends and then recants aspects of reformed theology, culminating in his dramatic and heroic withdrawal of his last recantation before being burned alive. Williams's energetic narrative and popularizing style accords well with the dramatic and gripping story she has to tell. The author sets forth clearly needed background for...

Cormac McCarthy's Literary Evolution: Editors, Agents, and the Crafting of a Prolific American Author

Cormac McCarthy's Literary Evolution: Editors, Agents, and the Crafting of a Prolific American Author

Speech audiometry test with picture-related sentence lists in Modern Greek for partially hearing children

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop Greek sentence-based speech audiometry test in quiet test for hearing-impaired (HI) children (G-SEBSAT).Methods: Seventy-six children were recruited following approval by the local ethics committee and after obtaining informed consent from their parents. The collection of vocabulary was based on showing pictures selected from popular reading materials in Greek to HI children. A grammatical content analysis was carried out to determine the average syntactic and morphological structures of the sentences used by the HI children. Ten picture-related sentence lists were developed based on the vocabulary and the grammatical analysis, and recorded by a male native speaker of standard Modern Greek. These were presented to both normal-hearing (NH) and HI children, and the average speech response threshold (SRT) as well as the slope of the SRT curve at the SRT level of 50% correct responses (S50) were recorded in both groups. Sentence lists were validated with respect to the variability of their difficulty within each group, as well the test-retest variability of the respective SRT scores.Results: The average SRT across all lists for HI children was 65.27 dB and the slope of the SRT curve at the SRT level of 50% correct responses was 3.11%/dB. The corresponding results across all lists for NH children were 17.66 dB and 9.7%/dB, respectively. The SRT of HI children were strongly positively correlated, in a statistically significant manner with the pure tone audiogram (PTA) in both the test and the retest sessions (test: r = 0.750, p < .0005; retest: r = 0.753, p < .0005). The Spearman’s correlation of the rankings of SRT values and the slope values was 0.998 and 0.997, respectively, for the HI and 0.939 and 0.88, for the NH group, indicating very low variability across the test and retest sessions. In addition, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the average SRT in NH children and the SRT residuals in the HI group indicated that the different sentences were of the same difficulty within each group. ((F(9,81) = 0.401, p = .930 and (F(9,93) = 2.241, p = .025, respectively).Conclusions: A validated G-SEBSAT was created in Greek for the first time. SRT and S50 values for both NH and HI children are comparable to similar tests developed in other languages.

Analisis Desain Sampul Novel Karangan Ayu Utami Ditinjau Dari Perspektif Desain Komunikasi Visual

Novel in Indonesia became a popular reading, one by novelist Ayu Utami. However, it turns out Ayu Utami create her own cover design of her novels. Writer interested to examine how to determine the cover design visualization contained in Ayu Utami’s novel that affect she make their own novel’s cover. The method used in this study include observational data collection, interviews, and literatures. The results of the study began seeing Ayu Utami’s novels that tell about the history, culture, sex and myths. In addition to getting entertainment, reading novels Ayu Utami also could add insight and information about the history and culture that has not been known. Each novel is written always do research beforehand. Almost the entire cover of the novel made by Ayu Utami. Researchers then describe what elements are there in Ayu Utami covers novel, includes illustrations, color, typography, and layout, and then analyze it. Conclusions from this research that works Ayu Utami’s novel illustrations is not entirely explanation contents story, but it contains meanings associative relationship exciting to be a conceptual work.

On the seductions of psychoanalytic story-telling: Narcissism and the problems of narrative

AbstractIn this paper, I argue for a particular reading of narcissism that challenges the privileging of narrative as a sense-making device, with important consequences for an evaluation of the story paradigm in psychotherapeutic work. I lean on the psychoanalytic mechanisms ofNachträglichkeitand trauma to trouble dominant therapeutic logics that support the primacy of the (narcissistically centered) narrative “I.” Rather than endorse the story of “me, me, me” that popular readings of narcissism invoke, I explore the possibility that, in psychoanalysis, narcissism’s modes destabilize the I, making the narrator constitutionally unreliable, and her accounts of all subject-object distinctions uncertain and constantly shifting.

An Analysis of the Text Complexity of Leveled Passages in Four Popular Classroom Reading Assessments

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the complexity of leveled passages used in four classroom reading assessments. A total of 167 passages leveled for Grades 1–6 from these assessments were analyzed using four analytical tools of text complexity. More traditional, two-factor measures of text complexity found a general trend of fairly consistent across-grade progression of average complexity among the four assessments. However, considerable cross-assessment variability was observed in terms of the size of increase in complexity from grade to grade, the overall range of complexity, and the within-grade text complexity. These cross-assessment differences were less pronounced with newer, multi-factor analytical tools. The four assessments also differed in the extent to which their passages met the text complexity guidelines of the Common Core State Standards. The authors discuss implications of the differences found among and within the classroom assessment systems, on one hand, and among the measures of text complexity, on the other.

Berkeley on Inconceivability and Impossibility

Contrary to a popular reading of his modal epistemology, Berkeley does not hold that inconceivability entails impossibility, and he cannot therefore argue the impossibility of mind‐independent matter by appealing to facts about what we cannot conceive. Berkeley is explicit about this constraint on his metaphysical argumentation, and, I argue, does respect it in practice. Popular mythology about the ‘master argument’ notwithstanding, the only passages in which he might plausibly seem to employ the principle that inconceivability entails impossibility are those that argue for the inseparability of primary from secondary qualities. However, an alternative reading of these texts is available that is both consistent with Berkeley's express modal epistemology and credible in its own right.

Translating the Life of Antichrist into German and Czech in the Early Modern Period

Based on a sociocultural and functional approach to the history of translation, this article introduces the Leben Antichristi by the German Capuchin and famous preacher Dionysius of Luxemburg, first published in 1682 at Frankfurt am Main, as an example of the transmission of formerly elite content to a popular readership via its translation into simple vernacular prose. It then discusses possible reasons why three Czech translations of the book, created independently during the eighteenth century and preserved in manuscript, were never printed, although the German version went through twelve editions and similar works by Dionysius's fellow brother Martin of Cochem were among the most often printed books of the Czech Baroque.

تصور مقترح لبعض القصص المصورة لأمیرات دیزنى وأثره فى تنمیة السلوک البیئى المسئول ووجهة الضبط الداخلیة لدى تلمیذات الصف الثانى الإعدادى

Suggested conception for some Pictorial stories of Disney princesses and its effect in developing Responsible environmental behavior and internal locus of control of Second Preparatory Female StudentsThe study aimed at Recognizing the effectiveness of using suggested conception for some Pictorial stories of Disney princesses in developing Responsible environmental behavior and Internal locus of control of Second Preparatory Female StudentsQuasi-experimental approach was applied on two research groups (control & experimental) using pretest-posttest technique. The sample consisted of (67) second preparatory female students from El Shaheed Hisham Shata preparatory school for girls, Giza governorate.Both the responsible environmental behavior and locus of control scales were applied before studying using the pictorial stories of Disney princesses, then the pictorial stories of Disney princesses was applied on the experimental group, then both scales were applied again. The researcher used Statistical Package for Social Science)SPSS (program to calculate arithmetic means , standard deviations ,T-test , ANOVA and Pearson correlation were used, where the results revealed thatthere is significant difference between the average grades of the control group and the grades of the experimental group at a level of (0.05) of responsible environmental behavior scale in the post-test for the favor of the experimental group and , there is significant difference between the average grades of the control group and the grades of the experimental group at a level of (0.05) of locus of control scale in the post-test for the favor of the experimental group ,and there is a statistically significant positive correlation between the performance of female students in both responsible environmental behavior skills and locus of control scales as well . The researcher recommended the importance of using the pictorial story, as a visual educational tool, and a popular reading for children because of its ability to motivate students , as well as it can serve as an intermediate step to difficult concepts .

African Indigenous Jurema: The Greatest Common Divisor of the Brazilian Minimum Religion

African Indigenous Jurema: The Greatest Common Divisor of the Brazilian Minimum Religion Nancy Cardoso and Cláudio Carvalhaes To Afonso Maria Ligório Soares who taught us to do theology as pilgrims, from tent to tent, in transitory ways, but animated, since our pilgrim bodies are always the home of the Spirit. Over the course of the last few decades, questions surrounding what encompasses a minimally Brazilian religion (MBR) have been discussed and debated in conjunction with the consolidation of the religious studies field. One of the most significant attempts to address the issue was articulated by Andre Droogers, who gathered contributions made during the 1970s and the 1980s in the Revista Religião e Sociedade (1987). Brazil is a country that has had to overcome its own self‐understanding as a Catholic Christian country and to acknowledge its religious polyphony over and above any attempt by the Church to establish cultural consensus. This process of acknowledgment remains an important task today, as this process is still incomplete and the religious field has only become increasingly complex. Carlos Brandão identifies “a great symbolic matrix of common use, onto which each group edits and adds its own repertoire of beliefs,” and Pedro Ribeiro de Oliveira considers that “…there should be more than one set of religious elements available to different religions,” suggesting that a possible MBR would stem primarily from popular Catholicism. Rubem Cesar Fernandes prefers to talk about a “common substrata capable of reaching an agreement among the many traditions” or “elements of general knowledge” that are shared by several religions with certain variations on the “relationship among each of the parties” (God, nature, human beings, deceased souls, and both positive and negative deities). He particularly debates the role and function of the “clergy” as a “translator” in relation to the religious mass seen as “polyglot,” yet unable to translate its contents on its own. Drooger, however, believes that the MBR is not dependent on intermediaries (translator priests), nor does it need recognition from so‐called institutionalized religions. Based upon this debate, Droogers proposes the following concept for MBR: It is a religiosity that is publicly manifested in secular contexts, that is conveyed by mass media, but also by ordinary language. It is part of Brazilian culture. It exists on a national level and can even serve nationalistic purposes. Since its inception, this debate has developed in many ways and has continued to inquire about Brazilian culture and what might be unique to it in terms of its relevance to the religious question. This process of actualization has taken two discernible paths: a descriptive research method based on science and methodologies used in anthropology, sociology, history, etc., and research centered upon particular subjects’ (women, black people, gays, etc.) modes of belief. While the first path has solidified the intuitions present among the “patriarchs” of religious studies, the second has acknowledged the divergence in dealing with religious power and its representations (class, gender, ethnic, etc.). Two important examples of this second research trajectory deserve to be mentioned here: Brazilian feminist and black theologies. Ivone Gebara highlights the experience of poor, black, native women in Latin America: prostitutes, women who were abandoned by their husbands, etc., and gives priority to women making choices for themselves as the first step toward determining the role and function religion serves for them. In this sense, a real “minimum” does not exist, but we should still ask what the “minimum” for women is. Gebara relativizes all efforts at a so‐called women's “popular reading of the Bible” and identifies a potentially more meaningful set of realities and power relations. Similarly, Afonso Maria Ligorio deconstructs the debate on syncretism and religious enculturation, asserting that most efforts to establish a viable “minimum” end up reinforcing the “maximum” religion and its capacity of annexation. To Ligorio, displacing the issue of enculturation as a means of correcting a decayed and flawed syncretism fails to deal with the power issues present in the religious sphere. Was it African and indigenous people who corrupted Portuguese Catholicism, or it was the latter who violated the ancient traditions of the former? This question highlights an ambiguous relationship, but loses its paradox to...

Ethics, Uncertainty, and Macroeconomics

In this article, I focus on the difference in moral judgment of macroeconomic interventions between the deterministic world of a thought experiment and the uncertain reality. The macroeconomic theory coined by Keynes is, in its most popular reading, deterministic and justifies interventionism. However, incorporating uncertainty into the analysis leads to the contrary result. Namely, if economic output is a random process, such as Gaussian white noise or a stochastic Markov chain, then intervening can bring either economic recovery or inflationary pressure and a next bubble. In the trolley‑problem philosophy, the one who pulls the lever instead of the trolley itself is believed to be guilty of the death of an innocent passer‑by standing on the side track. Similarly, if the Federal Reserve decided to intervene and failed (causing a bubble on the house market, instantiating), their monetary policy can be said to be a cause of the financial crisis. Therefore, governments should refrain from interventions.

Narrative Ambiguity and the Neoliberal Bildungsroman in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger

Narrative Ambiguity and the Neoliberal Bildungsroman in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger Swaralipi Nandi (bio) Almost signed off in the era of late modernity, the genre of the Bildungsroman has resurged to new prominence in the contemporary scene of neoliberalism. Novels like Peter Mountford's A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism, Elliot Perlman's Three Dollars, Hamid Mohsin's How to be Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, Hwee Hwee Tan's Mammon Inc., Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, and Vikas Swarup's Q&A all take up the form of the Bildungsroman to narrate the protagonist's growth in a neoliberal world order. Intricately associated with the rise of capitalism in Europe, the Bildungsroman is a narrative of a protagonist's normalization into the bourgeoisie social order. As Franco Moretti points out, the "classical" Bildungsroman coincides with the rise of market capitalism in the nineteenth century and the ensuing social transition from aristocratic to bourgeois domination; it is a genre that demonstrates the individual's integration into a transitioning society shaken by the "new and destabilizing forces of capitalism" (4). Extending the above genre definition, I propose to read the neoliberal Bildungsroman as a narrative of neoliberal subject formation, normalizing the protagonist into the new capitalistic social order. As the form of the Bildungsroman necessarily precludes a total internalization of "social norms" with "a force of conviction and optimistic clarity that will never be equaled again" (Moretti 16), the neoliberal Bildungsroman charts the protagonist's initiation into, fusion with, and active participation in the [End Page 276] normative ideology of neoliberalism. A potent example of this nascent genre, Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, stands apart from other allies like Mohsin's How to be Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and Hwee Hwee Tan's Mammon Inc. due to its narrative ambiguity. Unlike the above mentioned novels set in the neoliberal era that sincerely chart the protagonist's growth, or mock the entire venture, The White Tiger wavers between sincere victim testimony reaching resolution through the protagonist's stellar success and an unreliable narration laden with frivolity and sarcasm often in a manner of self-deprecation. I read this anxiety of the text to both conform and rebel against the idea of neoliberal subjecthood as symptomatic of the protagonist negotiating the demands of global capitalism and sociopolitical identity in the postcolonial nation state. Going against the popular reading of the novel as a criticism of neoliberalism, I read the novel as a complex dialectic between individualism and community, reflected in the anxiety of its narrative voice, which is resolved when the protagonist becomes capitalism's social avatar. Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger takes up the form of the Bildungsroman to narrate the story of its protagonist in a new, emerging, post-liberalization India. The Indian novel in English has recently moved beyond the shadow of Salman Rushdie and the generation of writers who mused over colonialism, the postcolonial nation state, and the Emergency period. The contemporary Indian novel in English captures the new tremors caused by the overwhelming influx of a global capitalism that is restructuring every aspect of Indian life. According to Rana Dasbupta, the change in trend is "an acknowledgement of the country's growing economic clout and its embrace of global capitalism—a fact that has also caused upheaval in its chaotic cities and social fabric." Asserting that the new Indian novel no longer consists of "family sagas" or "the colorful celebrations of Indian language and sentiment," Dasgupta draws attention to the emergence of the metropolitan novel that focuses on the dynamics of urban existence in a contemporary post-globalization India. Post-millennial Indian novels thus chronicle a metamorphosing India grappling with the forces of neoliberal globalization, formulating new notions of identity and citizenship, remapping the landscapes according to market imperatives, and witnessing a major upheaval in the socio-cultural-economic structure of their nation. With its characteristic focus on the life and growth of a single individual, a Bildungsroman like The White Tiger effectively embodies the changing [End Page 277] sensibilities of neoliberal India. Written in an epistolary form and addressed to the Chinese Premiere, who is both the guest on...

Familiarly Strange

Familiarly Strange Jill Powers (bio) The Babysitter at Rest Jen George Dorothy, a publishing project www.dorothyproject.com/?book=the-babysitter-at-rest 168 Pages; Print, $16.00 For her first collection of short stories, Jen George disregards all of the rules of basic storytelling to give us these five explorations of the modern Western woman's psyche. The result is surreal, uncanny, uncomfortable, indulgent, comic, and compelling. These stories tackle almost all the problems women begin to face as teens and continue to face in various forms throughout life—and they don't pretend there are simple solutions to any of those problems. They also don't sound like a whiny, woe-is-me diary or television drama, nor do they pretend the protagonist must overcome her issues in order to fulfill a higher purpose and become the nowclichéd heroine who is "not like most women." Instead, they demonstrate the perpetual nature of problems like sex, money, social expectations, appearances, reproduction, aging, and insecurity as they function inside the female mind. Readers feel alongside the narrators as they experience the need to fulfill adult expectations, the pressure of navigating the career world, the dependence and vulnerability of illness, the desire for motherhood, and the relationship between sex, love, and creativity. As serious as these themes might sound, the bluntness and impossibility of the storylines make them just funny enough to laugh at all of these issues while acknowledging their truth and universality. Each story is certainly about a woman, as most of the point-of-view characters openly discuss their vaginas (no pun intended), but whether or not it could be the same woman narrating all the stories is for the reader to decide. None of the women are named except Lee in the final story, "Instruction," and while the stories clearly do not progress chronologically through a single character's life, they are not entirely unrelated and could simply be out of order. All the narrators have similar voices, are of only slightly varying ages, and mention little about themselves beyond that they are insecure and have generally failed at life up to the current time, making them perfect canvases upon which any female reader could easily paint herself. This quality undoubtedly adds to the overall effect of the book as familiar and relatable despite its intense difference from anything else available for popular reading. Well-fitting for the titular story, "The Babysitter at Rest" is representative of George's surrealism as it is told through the eyes of the young woman who has been "reborn, but without birth and childhood," into a new world. She describes her age as "Seventeen. But I might be anywhere from seventeen to twenty-two. I think I have a birthday soon. I've heard talk of a cake at work. I may know more then." We follow her as she attempts to navigate her new, already failing career and hobbies, as she babysits a child who doesn't age, and as she sleeps with a much older, married man simply because he requests it and he's handsome. Wearing her bikini everywhere because her clothes have disappeared and because she looks good in it anyway, she learns not to ask questions that make "everything here fall apart." Although nothing seems to be within her control, she seems perfectly contented, as if she has achieved the common wish to leave behind all the complications of reality for a simple, straightforward way of life. Juxtaposing reality with vivid dreaming, George gives each story its own brand of surrealism and creates painful sores we like to touch. None of the stories are simple or quite like real life, but they're real enough that we want to keep figuring out what's going on, so there's plenty to keep both the heart and the brain occupied throughout subsequent readings. There are no neat, predictable endings, no comfort zones, and no need for either. We are glad to see that what is wrong with us also affects someone else, or at least one other person, and in the form of multiple short stories, we can believe that most people have...

H.C. Andersens Iisjomfruen und die Unterhaltungsliteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts

Abstract H.C. Andersen’s fairy tale The Ice Maiden is in many ways very modern, especially when we take into account its formal and rhetorical devices. The narrative is not invented by the author as the story is compound of travel journeys, popular readings of the time and so on. Andersen himself indicated some of his sources. In the following paper I would like to discuss the relationship between the fairy tale and the so called „Gebirgserzählung“ from the 18th and 19th century, which was extremely popular at the time. While the core of a “Gebirgserzählung” often consists in a young couple, that after many troubles in the end comes happily together, this is not the case in The Ice Maiden, as Andersen let the protagonist die. It looks as if Andersen would argue in favour of predetermination, based on Christian belief. However, this conclusion is not convincing because it fails to explain the obvious injustice of Rudy’s fate. In what follows I suggest a rhetorical explanation of the protagonist’s death. In such a view Rudy’s death is not to be understood as predetermined, but as a result of Andersen’s fear of his own modernity. What he demonstrates is how an entire story can be the result of other stories, how literature is based on literature. But the author himself seems not to be mature for this insight and that’s the reason why he let the protagonist die.

Loving Literature: A Cultural History

Loving Literature: A Cultural History

Misreading and the Marketplace: Dickens and Du Maurier in a Commercial Age

“Misreading and the Marketplace” explores how the culture of popular reading in nineteenth-century America played up a specific kind of critique: the refusal to share social anxieties at the heart of British novels. From excitement about the revolutionary mob that threatens Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities to reconsiderations of Svengali, the villain of George Du Maurier's Trilby, American reactions and revisions treated British fears playfully. I argue that this form of misreading reflected more than the simple desire for national distinction. Tension between American audiences and English novelists presented an exaggerated version of a gap between readers and authors that an emerging consumerist culture was making apparent throughout the transatlantic world. Understanding this broader context helps explain why the late works of both Dickens and Du Maurier seem to echo their American misreaders, reimagining social nightmares as pleasant fantasies.

Modeling User Engagement in Mobile Content Consumption with Tapstream Data and Field Experiment

Low engagement rates and high attrition rates have been formidable challenges for mobile apps and their long-term success, especially for those whose revenues come mainly from in-app purchases. To date, still little is known about how companies can comprehensively identify user engagement stages so as to improve business revenues. This paper proposes a structural econometric framework for modeling of consumer latent engagement stages that accounts for both the time-varying nature of engagement and consumer forward-looking consumption behavior. The present study analyzed a fine-grained mobile tapstream dataset on mobile users' continuous content consumption behavior in a popular mobile reading app. Our policy simulation enabled us to tailor, based on the model-detected engagement stages, an optimal pricing strategy to each consumer. Interestingly, we found that such an engagement-specific pricing strategy leads, simultaneously, to lower average prices for consumers and higher overall business revenues for the app. To further evaluate the effectiveness of our method, we conducted a randomized field experiment on a mobile app platform. Our experimental results provide more causal evidence that a personalized promotion strategy targeting user engagement stages can both decrease costs to app users and enhance overall business performance. Our structural-model- and field-experimentation-based findings are nontrivial and suggest, with respect to the crucial role of modeling user engagement, potential overall welfare improvements in the mobile app market.

Book Review: Book Reviews

Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: A Critical Edition with Modern Spelling. Edited by Arthur Stephen McGrade. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Three volumes, cxiv + 1100 pp. $450.00 (cloth).Richard Hooker and the Vision of God: Exploring the Origins of ?Anglicanism.' By Charles Miller. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2013. 350 pp. $50.00 (paper).Recent decades have witnessed a resurgence in serious academic study of Richard Hooker's thought, largely thanks to the publication of the multivolume Folger edition of Hooker's collected works between 1977 and 1998. This resurgence has been matched, however, with an inexorable decline in popular reading of Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity : the exorbitant cost of the Folger edition has kept it the preserve of academic libraries, and the rarity of earlier critical editions has also led to a waning influence. The past decade has seen various attempts to remedy this situation, but they all share a similar weakness of providing only abridged selections. While affordable, these abridged selections are arranged to suit the interests of political philosophers or popular readers who want an easy arrangement of what Hooker had to say about isolated theological ideas. As a result, such selective editions variously obscure the context, complexity, and interdependence of Hookers thought across the Laws. A. S. McGrade's new critical edition of the Laws and Charles Millers introductory text both attempt, in their own ways, to provide a more comprehensive view of Hookers theological vision at an affordable price and in an accessible way.A. S. McGrade, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, caps a lifelong academic love affair with Hooker by providing a cheaper (although still relatively expensive) version of the definitive Folger edition of Hookers Laws. It includes all eight books, modernizes the Elizabethan spellings, introduces the structure and content of the Laws, and offers critical appendices. Without doubt, McGrade's achievements deserve high plaudits and his critical edition should become the standard reference work for years to come. McGrade acts as the consummate teacher in his introduction, written in accessible and yet academically rigorous language, expressive of his contagious joy in Hooker and yet cognizant of Hookers limitations as a writer and thinker. McGrade covers the historical provocation for the Laws, tours the reader around an itinerary which takes in the broad themes and structure of each book, and considers Hookers multiple audiences, including posterity and the modern reader. Briefly and gently, McGrade gives a strong apologia why Hooker remains pertinent not only as a beautiful writer, but also as a thinker with beautiful ideas about public life and the common good.McGrade s textual expertise and sensitivity remains consummate in the new critical edition. Spellings are modernized word-for-word, without paraphrase or substitution, thereby respecting Hookers original syntax and yet rendering it easier for the modem eye to parse. Although some purists may be alarmed at the modem spelling, translations of other major early modem texts (of various languages) into modem English should ameliorate such concerns, and certainly helps reduce the sense of distance between Hooker and the modem reader. McGrade translates non-English material into the English vernacular in both the main text and in Hookers footnotes; the original texts are either given on the page or in an appendix. The critical appendices themselves exhaustively provide a glossary of terms, a guide to sources and people mentioned in the Laws, indices of scriptural citations, persons, and subjects, as well as a thorough bibliography. These appendices mean that the text of the Laws remains uncrowded with immediate exegetical gloss, but still rigorously supported when the reader wants explanation or help navigating the text. …