Reorganization Strategies Research Articles

Mesoscale Reorganization of the Depolymerized Aluminosilicate into Single-Crystalline Hierarchical Zeolite.

Controllable synthesis of hierarchical zeolites from natural aluminosilicate minerals is considered an efficient and eco-friendly approach for the production of high-performance zeolites, but its synthesis mechanism is still obscure. Herein, we take the synthesis of a single-crystalline hierarchical NaA zeolite using submolten salt depolymerized kaolin (SMS-K) as the sole source of silicon and aluminum via a mesoscale reorganization strategy as an example to elucidate the reorganization process. Comprehensive morphological and structural analyses reveal that sodium-rich voids in SMS-K facilitate concurrent assembly both within the interior and at the interface of the amorphous gel, leading to the formation of numerous nanoparticles with short-range order which assemble into single-crystal nanocube NaA zeolites with intracrystalline mesopores. By harnessing confinement effects, SMS-K modulates the growth of nanoparticle sizes and enhances the intimate interconnection of nanocubes, thereby yielding NaA zeolite aggregates that exhibit hierarchical porosity, encompassing micro-, meso-, and macropores. This study offers the potential for designing and precisely controlling the fabrication of hierarchical zeolites derived from natural minerals.

BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE: URBAN VIOLENCE IN THE CITY OF CAMPINA GRANDE-PB

Urban and rural violence in Brazil affects the development and appropriation of public spaces. Rising crime generates fear, reducing interaction in urban environments and favoring their privatization. Campina Grande, a medium-sized city, faces challenges typical of large centers, such as violence that restricts the use of public areas. This study analyzes how violence influences the appropriation of these spaces, highlighting socioeconomic, legal, and ideological factors that shape their perception and use. The study seeks to understand the impact of violence on quality of life and the right to the city, exploring urban reorganization strategies. The research uses data from public agencies, such as IBGE and the Ministry of Justice, as well as academic sources, to map neighborhoods with the highest crime rates. The study reveals that violence in Campina Grande has fluctuated over the last two decades, with an increase until 2016 and a recent recovery. However, vulnerable areas such as Bodocongó and Malvinas remain impacted, with insecurity and a lack of infrastructure limiting the use of public spaces, reinforcing urban segregation. Even with the reduction in violence rates, the perception of insecurity still hinders social interaction in these places.

Turnaround Strategies and Performance of Kenya Planters Cooperative Union in Nairobi County, Kenya

This study sought to establish the influence of turnaround strategies on performance of Kenya Planters Cooperative Union. The specific objectives guiding the study were to assess the influence of restructuring strategy, reorganization strategy, repositioning strategy and diversification strategy on performance of Kenya Planters Cooperative Union. The resource-based view theory, contingency theory, institutional theory, and balanced scorecard theory all served as the study's guiding theories. The research design used for this study was a descriptive survey. The study's target population comprised all 815 people who work for the organization. A desired sample size of 268 respondents was reached by proportionate stratified sampling technique. With the aid of semi-structured questionnaires, primary data was gathered. To evaluate quantitative data, descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation were used. In the inquiry, two inferential statistics were used: correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis. The study found that Kenya Planters Cooperative Union's performance was positively and significantly impacted by restructuring strategy, reorganization strategy, repositioning strategy, and diversification strategy. The analysis found that the organization can reduce operating costs for the business and retail network by implementing a restructuring approach. The organization can respond to the financial challenges and pressures it is now experiencing by reorganizing. Based on the study findings, it is recommended that Kenya Planters Cooperative Union should evaluate its strengths and weaknesses by looking at how well and how poorly the current organizational structure accomplishes business goals.

DRPSO:A multi-strategy fusion particle swarm optimization algorithm with a replacement mechanisms for colon cancer pathology image segmentation

Colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) is a type of colon cancers with a high mortality rate. Its early symptoms are not obvious, and its late stage is accompanied by various complications that seriously endanger patients' lives. To assist in the early diagnosis of COAD and improve the detection efficiency of COAD, this paper proposes a multi-level threshold image segmentation (MIS) method based on an enhanced particle swarm algorithm for segmenting COAD images. Firstly, this paper proposes a multi-strategy fusion particle swarm optimization algorithm (DRPSO) with a replacement mechanism. The non-linear inertia weight and sine-cosine learning factors in DRPSO help balance the exploration and exploitation phases of the algorithm. The population reorganization strategy incorporating MGO enhances population diversity and effectively prevents the algorithm from stagnating prematurely. The mutation-based final replacement mechanism enhances the algorithm's ability to escape local optima and helps the algorithm to obtain highly accurate solutions. In addition, comparison experiments on the CEC2020 and CEC2022 test sets show that DRPSO outperforms other state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of convergence accuracy and speed. Secondly, by combining the non-local mean 2D histogram and 2D Renyi entropy, this paper proposes a DRPSO algorithm based MIS method, which is successfully applied to the segments the COAD pathology image problem. The results of segmentation experiments show that the above method obtains relatively higher quality segmented images with superior performance metrics: PSNR = 23.556, SSIM = 0.825, and FSIM = 0.922. In conclusion, the MIS method based on the DRPSO algorithm shows great potential in assisting COAD diagnosis and in pathology image segmentation.

Difluorocarbene-induced [1,2]- and [2,3]-Stevens rearrangement of tertiary amines

The [1,2]- and [2,3]-Stevens rearrangements are one of the most fascinating chemical bond reorganization strategies in organic chemistry, and they have been demonstrated in a wide range of applications, representing a fundamental reaction tactic for the synthesis of nitrogen compounds in chemical community. However, their applicabilities are limited by the scarcity of efficient, general, and straightforward methods for generating ammonium ylides. Herein, we report a general difluorocarbene-induced tertiary amine-involved [1,2]- and [2,3]-Stevens rearrangements stemmed from in situ generated difluoromethyl ammonium ylides, which allows for the rearrangements of versatile tertiary amines bearing either allyl, benzyl, or propargyl groups, resulting in the corresponding products in one reaction under the same reaction conditions with a general way. Broad substrate scope, simple operation, mild reaction conditions and late-stage modification of natural products highlight the advantages of this strategy, meanwhile, this general rearrangement reaction is believed to bring opportunities for the transformations of nitrogen ylides and the assembly of valuable tertiary amines and amino acids. This will further enrich the reaction repertoire of difluorocarbene species, facilitate the development of reactions involving difluoromethyl ammonium salts, and provide an avenue for the development of this type of rearrangement reactions.

Combinatorial metabolic engineering of Streptomyces sp. CB03234-S for the enhanced production of anthraquinone-fused enediyne tiancimycins

BackgroundAnthraquinone-fused enediynes (AFEs) are excellent payloads for antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). The yields of AFEs in the original bacterial hosts are extremely low. Multiple traditional methods had been adopted to enhance the production of the AFEs. Despite these efforts, the production titers of these compounds are still low, presenting a practical challenge for their development. Tiancimycins (TNMs) are a class of AFEs produced by Streptomyces sp. CB03234. One of their salient features is that they exhibit rapid and complete cell killing ability against various cancer cell lines.ResultsIn this study, a combinatorial metabolic engineering strategy guided by the CB03234-S genome and transcriptome was employed to improve the titers of TNMs. First, re-sequencing of CB03234-S (Ribosome engineered mutant strains) genome revealed the deletion of a 583-kb DNA fragment, accounting for about 7.5% of its genome. Second, by individual or combined inactivation of seven potential precursor competitive biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) in CB03234-S, a double-BGC inactivation mutant, S1009, was identified with an improved TNMs titer of 28.2 ± 0.8 mg/L. Third, overexpression of five essential biosynthetic genes, including two post-modification genes, and three self-resistance auxiliary genes, was also conducted, through which we discovered that mutants carrying the core genes, tnmE or tnmE10, exhibited enhanced TNMs production. The average TNMs yield reached 43.5 ± 2.4 mg/L in a 30-L fermenter, representing an approximately 360% increase over CB03234-S and the highest titer among all AFEs to date. Moreover, the resulting mutant produced TNM-W, a unique TNM derivative with a double bond instead of a common ethylene oxide moiety. Preliminary studies suggested that TNM-W was probably converted from TNM-A by both TnmE and TnmE10.ConclusionsBased on the genome and transcriptome analyses, we adopted a combined metabolic engineering strategy for precursor enrichment and biosynthetic pathway reorganization to construct a high-yield strain of TNMs based on CB03234-S. Our study establishes a solid basis for the clinical development of AFE-based ADCs.

Large-Area Flexible Carbon Nanofilms with Synergistically Enhanced Transmittance and Conductivity Prepared by Reorganizing Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Networks.

Large-area flexible transparent conductive films (TCFs) are highly desired for future electronic devices. Nanocarbon TCFs are one of the most promising candidates, but some of their properties are mutually restricted. Here, a novel carbon nanotube network reorganization (CNNR) strategy, that is, the facet-driven CNNR (FD-CNNR) technique, is presented to overcome this intractable contradiction. The FD-CNNR technique introduces an interaction between single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) and Cu─-O. Based on the unique FD-CNNR mechanism, large-area flexible reorganized carbon nanofilms (RNC-TCFs) are designed and fabricated with A3-size and even meter-length, including reorganized SWNT (RSWNT) films and graphene and RSWNT (G-RSWNT) hybrid films. Synergistic improvement in strength, transmittance, and conductivity of flexible RNC-TCFs is achieved. The G-RSWNT TCF shows sheet resistance as low as 69Ωsq-1 at 86% transmittance, FOM value of 35, and Young's modulus of ≈45MPa. The high strength enables RNC-TCFs to be freestanding on water and easily transferred to any target substrate without contamination. A4-size flexible smart window is fabricated, which manifests controllable dimming and fog removal. The FD-CNNR technique can be extended to large-area or even large-scale fabrication of TCFs and can provide new insights into the design of TCFs and other functional films.

Multi-Modal Disordered Representation Learning Network for Description-Based Person Search

Description-based person search aims to retrieve images of the target identity via textual descriptions. One of the challenges for this task is to extract discriminative representation from images and descriptions. Most existing methods apply the part-based split method or external models to explore the fine-grained details of local features, which ignore the global relationship between partial information and cause network instability. To overcome these issues, we propose a Multi-modal Disordered Representation Learning Network (MDRL) for description-based person search to fully extract the visual and textual representations. Specifically, we design a Cross-modality Global Feature Learning Architecture to learn the global features from the two modalities and meet the demand of the task. Based on our global network, we introduce a Disorder Local Learning Module to explore local features by a disordered reorganization strategy from both visual and textual aspects and enhance the robustness of the whole network. Besides, we introduce a Cross-modality Interaction Module to guide the two streams to extract visual or textual representations considering the correlation between modalities. Extensive experiments are conducted on two public datasets, and the results show that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on CUHK-PEDES and ICFG-PEDES datasets and achieves superior performance.

Improving the Use of Innovative Methods in Employee Management in Enterprises

Objectives: In this article, the primary focus revolves around understanding the process of reorganizing a company's employees and management within the context of economic globalization. This involves comprehensive examination across various phases of economic development, including production, distribution, exchange, and consumption.
 
 Methods: The scientific concept employed for managing employees emphasizes innovation and represents a synthesis of the most effective methods utilized in enterprises. This approach incorporates elements from economic, social, and organizational perspectives. The distribution and exchange of employees within enterprises and organizations are explored as integral components of the reproduction process, occurring in the labor market during the second and third stages and concluding in the consumption stage through the utilization by production entities.
 
 Results: At the present stage of personnel management system development, numerous methodologies, approaches, and innovations significantly contribute to the qualitative and operational study of any management system. From a systematic standpoint, the company's personnel management system is viewed as a complex structure comprising subsystems, components, elements, and a network of connections between them.
 
 Conclusion: In conclusion, the personnel management system can be perceived both as an independent system and as an integration of multiple areas representing components of a smaller system. This article emphasizes the importance of adopting a systematic approach to study and understand the intricate dynamics of personnel management, paving the way for effective reorganization strategies in the face of economic globalization.

Simultaneously promoting the surface/bulk structural stability of Fe/Mn-based layered cathode for sodium ion batteries

Layered sodium iron manganese oxide cathodes have attracted great interest owing to their high specific capacity and cost-effective metal resources, while the detrimental phase transitions and surface structural degradation severely limit their commercial applications. In this work, the bulk and surface structure stability of a P2-Na0.67Fe0.5Mn0.5O2 cathode can be synergically enhanced by a one-step Li/Nb co-doping strategy. Structural characterizations reveal that Li doping promotes the formation of P2/O3 biphasic structure and makes the unfavorable P2-OP4 phase transition convert into a smooth solid-solution reaction. Nb doping enhances the mobility of sodium ions and forms strong Nb-O bonds, thereby enhancing the stability of the TMO2 layer structure. In particular, the Nb element induces the surface reorganization of an atomic-scale NaNbO3 coating layer, which could effectively prevent the dissolution of metals and surface side reactions. The synergistic mechanism of enhanced electrochemical performance is proved by multiple characterizations during cycling. As a result, the as-prepared Na0.67Li0.1Fe0.5Mn0.38Nb0.02O2 exhibits improved capacity retention of 85.4 % than raw material (45.7 %) after 100 cycles at 0.5C (1C = 174 mA g−1) within 2.0–4.0 V. This co-regulating strategy provides a promising approach to designing highly stable sodium-ion battery cathodes. Furthermore, a full cell of Na0.67Li0.1Fe0.5Mn0.38Nb0.02O2 with hard carbon displays excellent cycling stability (85.1 % capacity retention after 100 cycles), making its commercial operation possible. This synergistic strategy of biphasic structure and surface reorganization is a critical route to accelerate the application of layer oxide cathodes.

Barnes & Noble, Inc.: charting the growth strategy

Research methodology The case is written based on publicly available data from primary sources like the company’s annual reports and presentations and from secondary sources, as indicated in the references. Case overview/synopsis Barnes & Noble Inc. (B&N), one of the oldest and largest American retail booksellers founded in 1917, was facing a grim business situation underpinned by a fall in demand, a change in consumer preference and stiff competition. After almost a century of being in the business, B&N was experiencing a fall in market share and weak stock market performance. In 2019, the company was sold to Elliot Advisors – a hedge fund – for US$638m. With the appointment of new chief executive officer (CEO) James Daunt in August 2019, a man known for the turnaround of similar businesses, B&N expected its business’s revival and reorganization strategy to turn profitable. Its long-term strategy of beating competitors with its offerings’ sheer volume and low prices was no longer viable. The turmoil was compounded by top management crises with the repeated changes and ousting of several CEOs in a short span, alongside the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. Daunt was considering how to overcome the crisis and act fast to reposition the company and regain the loyalty of its customers. Was there more that the company could do to improve the company’s position and restore profitability? Complexity academic level The case can be used in strategic management and entrepreneurship classes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The case can be used in an investment analysis and management course to teach students the industry analysis technique using Porter’s five forces model.

EVALUATING TURNAROUND STRATEGIES AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE IN A SMALL BUSINESS–A STUDY OF EKO SUPPORT SERVICE LIMITED.

Numerous associations today experience authoritative decay sooner or later in their life cycles as a result of both outside and inside factors. Much of the time, associations face decline when they neglect to perceive and adjust to outer and interior tensions that compromise the association's presence. The reaction to such circumstances is quite often a significant amount of work to "turn the organization around". This study seeks to examine the effects of turnaround strategies on organizational performance of Eko Support Service Limited. The researcher used a structured questionnaire to collect data. The population of the study was 400 and a sample of 200 respondents was obtained via the Taro Yamane formula. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as simple percentages and the relationship between the variables of the model was tested using linear regression analysis. The study found that there is a positive and significant effect of diversification strategy on market share (R2 = 0.127, at p<0.05) and the F-Value yielded 9.335. The result of hypothesis 2 also indicates a positive significant effect of retrenchment strategy on profitability (R2 = 0.388, at p<0.05) and F-Value yielded 60.793 and lastly, top management re-organization strategy has a significant effect on organizational efficiency (R2 = 0.116, at p<0.05) and F-Value yielded 13.034. The study, therefore, concludes top-level management have significant roles to play indecision-making and conceptual skill regarding turnaround strategies and their applicability. The study recommends that top management re-organization in terms of structure, people, leadership, and organizational culture should be given priority in times of distress as this has proven to be a measure to improve organization efficiency.

The Relationship between Operational Synergy and Firm Performance: A Review of Literature

Theoretical and empirical evidence has documented erratic and fluctuating firm performance amongst financial firms worldwide and across different economic sectors. The need to stabilize firm performance has instigated a variety of corporate reorganization strategies including Mergers and Acquisitions. However, theoretical and empirical literature has not been quite categorical on the link between operational synergies (arising from Mergers and Acquisitions) and firm performance. Firms have increasingly inclined towards operational synergy to enhance firm performance. Operational synergy has consistently improved firm performance outcomes in most firms. However, while numerous studies have examined the relationship between operational synergy and performance, there exists a need to synthesize and consolidate the findings across diverse contexts and economic sectors. Hence, the purpose of this review was to determine the relationship between operational synergy and firm performance via desktop review. The study was informed by three theories; The Theory of Misvaluation, The Hubris Theory and Stakeholder Theory. The review adopted a positivist research philosophy and desktop review design via evidence-based approach. The Study Documents that operational synergy has a significant effect on firm performance. Additionally, the review finds that firms which actively pursue operational synergy strategies exhibit improved financial performance, cost reduction, streamlined processes, and higher customer satisfaction. The study further finds that firms which successfully achieve operational synergy, particularly through mergers and acquisitions, have a tendency to outperform their competitors financially, with improved profitability, cost efficiency, and overall financial performance. Hence, the study recommends that firms should prioritize the development and implementation of strategies that foster operational synergy such as promoting a culture of collaboration, communication, and integration across different operational functions. Keywords: Operational synergy, Organizational effectiveness, Integration, Efficiency, Review of literature, Performance

Carrier Dynamics Mechanisms in Bi‐Based Photocatalytic Materials

Bi‐based nanomaterials have unique physicochemical and structural properties, allowing them to respond to visible light effectively. The Bi‐based semiconductors can be used for degradation of pollutants, reduction of CO2, nitrogen fixation, and decomposition of water, having the strong potential to address environmental pollution and energy shortages. However, the large‐scale application is still limited by the separation and transfer of electron–hole pairs. Herein this review article, carrier dynamics are studied from three perspectives, including structural modulation, atomic conformational reorganization, and surface modification. The relevant mechanisms of different strategies are mainly highlighted, the variations of carrier motion or lifetime are explored, and the progress in practical studies is elucidated. The structural modulation strategy is first introduced, including different dimensional structures and heterogeneous junctions. Further, the atomic conformational reorganization strategy is presented, including Bi‐rich strategies, doping, and vacancy defects. Additionally, the surface modification strategy is outlined, including facet engineering, loading of semiconductor cocatalysts, precious metals, or single atoms. Finally, these strategies are summarized for regulating carrier dynamics and the outlook with the main research trend, providing more inspiration for designing desirable Bi‐based semiconductors.

UWB NLOS Recognition Based on Improved Convolutional Neural Network Assisted by Wavelet Analysis and Gramian Angular Field

In the ultra-wide band (UWB)-based indoor wireless positioning scene, non-line-of-sight (NLOS) is a common phenomenon due to the existence of the obstacles and it may result in the significant positioning errors. So it is an important research issue to recognize the UWB NLOS signals from the line-of-sight (LOS) signals. As an emerging deep learning technology, convolutional neural network (CNN) has been applied successfully to handle this issue. However, the traditional CNN omits the influence of measurement noises and does not consider the mining of the signal’s temporal relationship. To solve this problem, a UWB NLOS recognition method, called wavelet Gramian CNN (WGCNN), is proposed by integrating the wavelet analysis and the Gramian angular field (GAF). Firstly, the discrete wavelet transform is used to extract the trend curve of the channel pulse response (CIR) signals by eliminating the measurement noises. Further, two GAFs, consisting of Gramian angular summation field (GASF) and Gramian angular difference field (GADF), are introduced to transform the one-dimensional CIR signal into the two-dimensional images, which describe the temporal correlation of the signals. Moreover, a GAF image re-organization strategy is designed to capture the key sub-images to eliminate the influence of invalid image parts. Finally, the re-organized sub-images are fed into the CNN model to build a LOS/NLOS classifier. The experiments are performed on a benchmark data set provided by the EU "Horizon 2020" programme, and the results shows that the proposed WGCNN method has higher recognition accuracy than the traditional CNN method.

Autonomous Navigation System of Indoor Mobile Robots Using 2D Lidar

Significant developments have been made in the navigation of autonomous mobile robots within indoor environments; however, there still remain challenges in the face of poor map construction accuracy and suboptimal path planning, which limit the practical applications of such robots. To solve these challenges, an enhanced Rao Blackwell Particle Filter (RBPF-SLAM) algorithm, called Lidar-based RBPF-SLAM (LRBPF-SLAM), is proposed. In LRBPF, the adjacent bit poses difference data from the 2D Lidar sensor which is used to replace the odometer data in the proposed distribution function, overcoming the vulnerability of the proposed distribution function to environmental disturbances, and thus enabling more accurate pose estimation of the robot. Additionally, a probabilistic guided search-based path planning algorithm, gravitation bidirectional rapidly exploring random tree (GBI-RRT), is also proposed, which incorporates a target bias sampling to efficiently guide nodes toward the goal and reduce ineffective searches. Finally, to further improve the efficiency of navigation, a path reorganization strategy aiming at eliminating low-quality nodes and improving the path curvature of the path is proposed. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, the improved algorithm is integrated into a mobile robot based on a ROS system and evaluated in simulations and field experiments. The results show that LRBPF-SLAM and GBI-RRT perform superior to the existing algorithms in various indoor environments.

Agritourism resilience during the COVID-19 crisis

Resilience is critical to the sustainability of the tourism industry, which was made particularly evident during the COVID-19 crisis. COVID-19 impacted all sectors of the tourism industry revealing previously unknown strengths and weaknesses. Through a longitudinal qualitative approach, we identified the evolving challenges and coping strategies of agritourism operations under the COVID-19 crisis in North Carolina, USA. The results indicate that agritourism operations not only withstood the health crisis but also advanced the management of their operation and customer satisfaction through diversification and reorganization strategies. We use chaos theory to show how agritourism operations took advantage of the context of uncertainty to employ practices that ultimately showcased their resilience.

Modulating the electronic configuration of Co species in MOF/MXene nanosheet derived Co-based mixed spinel oxides for an efficient oxygen evolution reaction

Mixed Co-based spinel oxides were synthesized via a simple MOF/MXene pyrolysis–reorganization strategy, which revealed that the coupling effect between Co3O4 and Co2TiO4 is crucial for improving OER activity.

Space-Time Super-Resolution for Light Field Videos.

Light field (LF) cameras suffer from a fundamental trade-off between spatial and angular resolutions. Additionally, due to the significant amount of data that needs to be recorded, the Lytro ILLUM, a modern LF camera, can only capture three frames per second. In this paper, we consider space-time super-resolution (SR) for LF videos, aiming at generating high-resolution and high-frame-rate LF videos from low-resolution and low-frame-rate observations. Extending existing space-time video SR methods to this task directly will meet two key challenges: 1) how to re-organize sub-aperture images (SAIs) efficiently and effectively given highly redundant LF videos, and 2) how to aggregate complementary information between multiple SAIs and frames considering the coherence in LF videos. To address the above challenges, we propose a novel framework for space-time super-resolving LF videos for the first time. First, we propose a novel Multi-Scale Dilated SAI Re-organization strategy for re-organizing SAIs into auxiliary view stacks with decreasing resolution as the Chebyshev distance in the angular dimension increases. In particular, the auxiliary view stack with original resolution preserves essential visual details, while the down-scaled view stacks capture long-range contextual information. Second, we propose the Multi-Scale Aggregated Feature extractor and the Angular-Assisted Feature Interpolation module to utilize and aggregate information from the spatial, angular, and temporal dimensions in LF videos. The former aggregates similar contents from different SAIs and frames for subsequent reconstruction in a disparity-free manner at the feature level, whereas the latter interpolates intermediate frames temporally by implicitly aggregating geometric information. Compared to other potential approaches, experimental results demonstrate that the reconstructed LF videos generated by our framework achieve higher reconstruction quality and better preserve the LF parallax structure and temporal consistency. The implementation code is available at https://github.com/zeyuxiao1997/LFSTVSR.

Miscellaneity and Apocrypha in Chaucer's Works (1532)

abstract: The miscellany has, historically, been treated as a category of remainder in catalogs of both manuscripts and printed books. Miscellanies are those volumes that, because of their inherently mixed character, do not fit neatly into other categories. However, this practice risks making miscellanies appear to be haphazard or accidental productions. Recent studies of such books have begun to excavate the strategies of assemblage, borrowing, and reorganization that mark their production. These strategies are not restricted to those books we now term miscellanies; frequently, they can also be discerned in books that fit more comfortably into other categories. How might our view of early books and the circumstances of their making shift if we centered the practices associated with miscellanies? As a case study, this essay will consider manuscripts and early printed editions of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, tracing the significant commonalities between early copies of Chaucer's writings, in what might be termed "miscellaneous contexts," and the large printed folios that proudly announce themselves as "Chaucer's works" while still containing significant material attributed to other authors. Ultimately, taking the variance within the corpus of early Chaucer books into account, Cook argues for the quality of the miscellaneous as a potentially more useful framework for literary history than the more static category of the miscellany.