Romantic Aspirations Research Articles

Love On The Different Spectrum

People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have often been wrongly viewed as asexual. However, research suggests that their romantic and sexual experiences are more nuanced and deserving of further exploration. By addressing these areas, the study aimed to foster a more supportive and understanding environment for individuals with ASD as they navigate the complexities of relationships. This study delved into the romantic and sexual lives of young adults with ASD, focusing on a young man to understand how his condition influenced his partner preferences and relationships with friends, classmates, and family. Through a semi-structured interview and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), the study uncovered three key themes: (a) navigating social interactions and boundaries; (b) understanding love and relationships; and (c) desires and expectations in relationships. These insights highlighted the need for tailored sex education, family support, and positive media portrayals. According to the study, a male adolescent with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has difficulty interacting socially, particularly when it comes to recognizing cues and establishing limits with others. His romantic aspirations may be impacted by his inability to comprehend emotions and the impact of societal prejudices. The results show that to normalize his experiences and promote healthy relationships, family support, specialized sex education, and favorable media portrayals are essential.

Michael Tippett: Specification of the Work for Orchestra and Soprano "Byzantia"

The purpose of the research is to reveal the deep image-sound layers and features of the Irish bardic tradition in the work of M. Tippett through the prism of the work for orchestra and soprano "Byzantium". The methodological basis of the research is historical-conceptual, hermeneutic method and comparative analysis of factual data based on the works of Thomas Weiskel, David Clark, Edward Venn, and Meirion Bowen. Scientific novelty. For the first time in the Ukrainian art history segment, M. Tippett's work for orchestra and soprano "Byzantium" was analysed with an emphasis on the dramaturgy of the composition, cyclical elements, metaphorical sound images, symbolism and characteristic features of the musical and poetic tradition of Irish bards. Conclusions. Biographical collisions of M. Tippett influenced his creative aspirations and attitude to the surrounding world. M. Tippett's aesthetic views are a dialogue between romantic aspirations and sceptical realism of the modern era. Michael Tippett's musical language absorbed both tradition and the entire palette of accumulated world musical experience, as well as duality of meanings, symbolism, imagery and conflict. The work analyses the composition for orchestra and soprano "Byzantium" by M. Tippet, which is based on the mosaic of images, the logical sequence of musical motifs, and cyclicity. It is necessary to highlight the fragmentary nature of musical sections, variable motifs, the presence of contrasting material, the symbolism of magical, changing life force as secular ephemerality, the destruction of the musical text using the technique of expansion and fragmentation. Thus, the composition "Byzantium" is a reincarnation of Irish cultural nationalism in the aspect of traditional forms of bardic poetry. The musical language of M. Tippett in the work "Byzantium" is based on the forms crystallised by the work of L. Beethoven and updated by the musical context of modern and postmodern.

The Pursuit of (Idealistic) Love

This scholarly article seeks to elucidate the protagonist of the television series "The Pursuit of Love" through the prism of the quintessential Byronic heroine. Through empirical evidence, this paper establishes that Linda exhibits attributes inherently aligned with the Byronic archetype, predominantly highlighting her distinct individualism and her defiance against societal conventions. Furthermore, this discourse demonstrates Linda's propensity to be overwhelmingly swayed by deep-seated passions, centralizing her existence around the quest for idyllic romantic affections. This paper underscores the tragic repercussions of Linda's unwavering dedication to this idealistic pursuit of love, wherein she becomes disillusioned by her own romantic aspirations, consequently leading to her alienation from her cherished ones.

The seasons in the cycle of the poems “About Natureˮ by Konstantin Sluchevsky: the author's concept of the universe

This article analyses the poems dedicated to spring, summer, autumn, winter. The study of seasonal lyrics by Konstantin Sluchevsky reveals the connection of the lyrical hero of his works with the emotional state and philosophical reflections of the “timelessnessˮ era human. The author of the article reveals both traditional and innovative approaches to creating landscape lyrics, analyses “cross-cutting motifs”, eternal themes, mythopoetic images of “river”, “water”, “sun”, “earth”, “world of treesˮ. The study draws attention to the specific style of the poet – the complicated construction of metaphors, the use of sound writing, the personification of natural phenomena, endowing traditional poetic images with non-traditional properties. The author of the article proves that the cycle “About Natureˮ can be considered as a reflection of Sluchevsky’s philosophical position, who perceives life in all its versatility and completeness. The poet reflects the tragic perception of the earthly existence of human and the inevitability of death in many works. At the same time, his works contain both the motif of resignation to the inevitability of suffering and readiness to calmly accept them, as well as a romantic aspiration to other “happy”, but “foreign” worlds, an understanding of death as a possible liberation of a person from the shackles of tragic earthly existence.

“I have a certain standard:” HBCU women's heterosexual aspirations and identity negotiation

AbstractObjectiveThe present study expands scholarship on collegiate relationship formation by exploring heterosexual Black HBCU women's romantic aspirations for identity formation.BackgroundCollegiate environments structure sex and dating. However, extant research has not adequately considered how racialization matters for gendered relationship formation in these contexts and has yet to establish how racial, gender, and class identity formation and performance converge to structure Black college women's relational desires and opportunities.MethodThe study uses 30 in‐depth interviews with cisgender, heterosexual Black women at an HBCU to investigate their romantic and sexual experiences and expectations.ResultsHBCU women's romantic aspirations were organized by their race, gender, and aspirant class locations. They identified committed, monogamous, equitable relationships with similarly situated Black men as a relational ideal. Nonetheless, women expressed barriers to obtaining this relationship structure within their campus landscape and sought to otherwise negotiate romantic opportunities in accordance with respectable middle‐class Black feminine identities.ConclusionHBCU women's characterizations of ideal partnerships revealed the ways existing race, class, and gender structures are simultaneously accepted, reified, and problematized in Black women's identity negotiation through collegiate romance. Though HBCUs seem ideal for satisfactory sexual and romantic connections for Black middle‐class aspirant women, inequities on and off‐campus and rigid standards for respectability leave women with limited opportunities to obtain all they desire.

Vojislav Ilić: The Poetry of Contradictions and Synthesis

This article deals with the correlation of the work of Vojislav Ilić, the most signifi cant Serbian poet of the late nineteenth century, with various literary trends: classicism, romanticism, realism, and the Parnassian-Symbolist school. Various points of view have been expressed on this issue for a number of years. V. Ilić is recognised mainly as a romantic with some authors noting inherent features of classicism, aestheticism, and symbolism in his work (Dragiša Živković and Dragiša Vitošević), some noting a closeness to realism and a break with romanticism (Jovan Deretić), and others recognising and at the same time denying Ilic’s belonging to any of these trends (Milorad Pavić). The syntheticity of Ilic’s talent is also noted, although the question of its nature is not considered (Regina Friedrikhovna Doronina). In this article, the starting point is the romantic principle in Ilić’s poetry and, owing to the spirit of the times, the further gradual overcoming of his romantic aspirations. Rejecting the subjectivity of romanticism, the poet turns to the early experience of his father, the famous poet Jovan Ilić, that is, to the experience of “objective lyrics” of the 1820s–40s. The appeal to antiquity, to the cult of tangible beauty, the perfection of the art form brought V. Ilić closer to the Parnassians, which naturally led the Serbian poet to symbolism. At the same time, V. Ilić, in the spirit of the modern development of national literature, also turns to realism, including “folkloric”, to a critique of the social foundations of the surrounding reality, to the social landscape. However, in general, the landscape descriptive lyrics of V. Ilić, often perceived as a manifestation of realistic tendencies, mean at the same time a return to the ancient idyll, and thus the approach to poetry of the Parnassians, who were close to the static idyllic landscape. In the landscape poetry of V. Ilić, his highest creative achievement, a synthesis of subjective and objective principles, modernity and antiquity, national traditions and experience of modern Western European literature, is manifested.

Revising Alfred, Lord Tennyson: A Closer Look at Two Color Line Stories “The Wife of His Youth” and “Cecily’s Dream” by Charles W. Chesnutt

This article explores an African American writer’s revision of a famous English poet Tennyson whose versified medieval portrait of the Arthurian legend appears in Idylls of the King as well as other poems. The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899), a story collection by African American author Charles Chesnutt (1858–1932), addresses parameters contextualized in the aftermath of slavery such as esthetic notions of beauty tied to whiteness and intra-racial inequality. The final failure of two protagonists, a man and a woman, to fulfill their romantic aspirations of whiteness connects the collection’s titular story to “Cecily’s Dream.” In addition to the color-line theme, however, Chesnutt is motivated to refer to the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), including moments in which chivalric codes of honor, whiteness and flawed courtly love are idealized. Tennyson’s parabolic poems provide Chesnutt’s intertextual scheme to engage the implied reader by renewing, transforming and also subverting the motif of courtly love in these Arthurian idylls.

Archives of the Dispossessed

Archives of the Dispossessed

Paradoxes of the 1968 Events in the Interpretation of Paul Ricœur’s Student

The author considers the reasons and problems of civil unrest in France in the end of the 1960s. The author analyzes sources of revolutionary movement and comes to a conclusion that initially spontaneously developed events had no concrete political plan and organized guidance, its purposes had utopian character, methods of fight were mainly anarchical. Activity was motivated with romantic aspiration to freedom, reforming society, counteraction to totalitarianism, commercialism, social injustice, obsolete rules of life. Participants of events fondly believed that the spontaneous protest and refusal of submission to any established order automatically will lead to awakening of consciousness and transformation of social life. As a result, they faced an inevitable paradox of revolutionary movement. Approving need of use of violence for the purpose of opposition to violence from the government, revolutionaries destroy public order and a legal state for creation of the new world of freedom that leads to the enormous growth of violence, chaos, and unfreedom and causes in society fear and nostalgia of order. The author examines Ricœur’s position during revolutionary events in France. The philosopher evaluates the experience of his own work for the reorganization of education system (aiming to strengthen horizontal relations) as a fundamental failure. Nevertheless, as the author of the article claims, in the sphere of philosophy Ricœur created the profound and far-sighted conception of criticism of transformation, this conception is based on the principle of the conflict of interpretations and allows to resist destruction, to constructively rethink and improve society management system.

Концепція циклізації прелюдій Ф. Шопена та їх взаємозв’язки із циклом «Добре темперований клавір» Й. С. Баха

The purpose of the article is to disclose the unique features of a cycle of Preludes by F. Chopin and to define their internal interconnection with a polyphonic cycle “The well-tempered clavier” by J.S. Bach. The methodology of the work is complex; it lies in the combination of the basics of musicological, artistic, historical and cultural research; it is based on the positions of the intonational approach of Asafiev’s school and his successors. The scientific novelty of the research is defined by its analytical approach, concentrated on revealing Bach’s and romantic principles of cyclization that lets us determine in Preludes of F. Chopin different edges of an image, which are difficult to see while their consideration out of the context of the cycle formation as a whole. Conclusion. In Preludes op. 28 F. Chopin clearly made succession of chromatic 24 keys, with respect to the above-mentioned cycle of J.S. Bach. The structural and semantic interconnection of the prelude-fugue is suggested not only by the character of the idea, that is by something lying out of the “subject” of the work. Orientation on Bach’s cycle is “programmed” in the First Prelude and can be traced throughout all 24 plays. However, by establishing an obvious sign of resemblance, F. Chopin also differentiated the method of Bach’s baroque and logic of romantic aspiration to Beauty, to space immensity of the image. Beauty and spaciousness of overhead sense from the times of the ancient rhetoric were symbolized by the fifth intervalics: the fifth circle determined core interval construction of Preludes by F. Chopin, keeping separate from the mechanic movement of a step progression in the chromatic scale in the works of J.S. Bach. In connection with the underlined intonational junction of the major thematic “joints” of the work, denoted by the symbolism of “bachianism” and genre interconnections, the abovementioned Preludes by F. Chopin are considered as authorial composed cycle. Its essentials are “through” lines of semantic and intonational development, which are embedded in a musical work by its artistic nature and the stylistic setting of romantic aesthetics, organically “interwoven” with the pre-symbolic indicators of the contemporary art of “Pre-Raphaelites”.

Falling in love with robots: a phenomenological study of experiencing technological alterities

AbstractIs it possible for human beings to establish romantic relationships with robots? What kind of otherness, or alterity, will be construed in the process of falling in love with a robot? Can a robotic companion mean more than being a tool for house-work, a caretaker, an aid of self-gratification, or a sex-doll? Phenomenological analysis of love experience suggests that romantic feelings necessarily include experiencing the alterity of the partner as an affective subjectivity that freely, willingly, and passionately commits to its partner. The romantic commitment is expected to stem from the sentient inner selves of the lovers, which is one of the features that robots are lacking. Thus the artificial alterity might disengage our romantic aspirations, and, as argued by many, will make them morally inferior to intraspecies love affairs. The current analysis will restrain from ethical considerations, however, and will focus on whether robots can in principle elicit human feelings of love.

Первая фортепианная соната в творчестве Франца Шуберта как импульс для развития жанра

Research objective. The study is aimed at consideration of the features of the sonata genre and its internal properties on the example of the first sample in the works of F. Schubert, representing the beginning of the composer’s active search in the cyclical content of the work. A holistic analysis of the work and all its constituent parts is carried out, both from the point of view of cyclical commonness and their internal independence. The characteristic features of the genre, shaping, as well as the specifics of texture, main structural principles of thematism and harmony, which make it possible to determine the special intermediate position of the composer’s art across classicism and romanticism, are considered. The methodology is based on the use of system and structural, historical and analytical methods, which made it possible to identify both traditional and non-standard techniques in the construction of the sonata genre. The scientific novelty. For the first time, on the basis of a detailed study of F. Schubert’s first piano sonata, it is proved that this work demonstrates a new approach to the interpretation of the sonata cycle – interrupted, open, as if unfinished, reflecting the searches of the early romantic and reflecting the aesthetics of romanticism. There is a destruction of tradition alternation of genres between parts of sonata: fast – slow, slow – fast. Conclusions. The three-part construction of the first sonata by F. Schubert creates a feeling of dramatic incompleteness, tonal openness. The first part is created in the sonata form. Here, along with the composer’s romantic aspirations, clearly defined classical tendencies are also manifested. The second part is written in a complex three-five-part form with clear signs of rondo. There is an impression that the work has no finale, since it ends with a minuet in a dominant key. An unusual combination of parts in the cycle takes place: the first part is the sonata form, then the andante and the minuet. The tempo plan of the sonata, as if makes up for the state of “no ending” and is typical for many cycles: quick – slow – quick. This testifies not so much to the classical tendencies of constructing a cycle with a contrasting alternation of parts (as musicologists usually believe), but rather to the cyclical search for the composer. As such he perceived imperfect reality, uncertainty of the future, its unpredictability.

A Deviation from Romantic Self: The Body, the World and the Social in Tennyson’s In Memoriam and Maud

ABSTRACTThe paper examines how Tennyson seeks to establish his own poetics both under the influence of Romantic poetry and against it, with special focus on Tennyson’s conception of the transcendental in In Memoriam and Maud. His ambivalent attitude towards Romantic poetry, which is noticeable in his earlier works, is heightened in In Memoriam where he questions the transcendental in connection with the death of Hallam. He tries to reconcile the transcendental with the social by revealing his strong attachment to the body. In the poem, the body is represented as the medium through which the transcendental is merged with the social. He further develops this idea in such a way that gives rise to a collectivism, by which Tennyson can reconcile the absolute with the earthly or commonplace. This reconciliation is reinforced in Maud, which depicts a Romantic protagonist accepting the collective and expresses Tennyson’s attitude to Romantic aspiration.

Romantic Poetry and Victorian Nonsense Poetry: Some Directions of Travel

This essay explores links between Victorian nonsense poetry and poetry of the Romantic period, with a focus on narratives of quest, voyaging and escape. It discusses brief instances from various writers of the two periods and moves on to a more developed comparison between Wordsworth and Edward Lear, centring on ‘The Blind Highland Boy’. The comparison between periods leads to an argument that self-critique and scepticism were quite robustly in place from the start in the Romantic period, and that obstacles to sense could at times be experienced not just as perplexity but as enjoyment shared with an audience. It also points to a further appreciation of some of the less canonical works by the most canonical writers, and suggests a tradition in which Romantic aspiration was often coolly linked to a sense of absurdity.

Pragmatic tradition or romantic aspiration? The causes of impulsive marriage and early divorce among women in rural Malawi

1.IntroductionThe last decades of the 20th century have seen important shifts in the way young people meet, marry, and interact with their spouses in sub-Saharan Africa. Recently, social scientists have taken an interest in the rise of romantic courtship and companionate marriage (Cole and Thomas 2009; Hirsch and Wardlow 2006; Padilla et al. 2007). This spike in interest, however, should not obscure the fact that the defiant appropriation of romantic love by young generations has been happening for nearly a century and might have become an African tradition in itself (Thomas 2009). First through literature, then through photography (Behrend 1998), films from India (Fair 2009), and more recently through mobile phones (Archambault 2011), social media, and Nigerian blockbusters (Abah 2009), young Africans avidly consume narratives of romantic love and create their own.While unions based on love and companionship are highly desired in most young adult relationships in sub-Saharan Africa (Clark, Kabiru, and Mathur 2010), there is little consensus as to whether modern unions or traditional marriages are more stable. Goode (1993) and Takyi (2001) contend that unions with low involvement from kin are inherently less stable, while Jones (1997) believes that such unions are more stable as the couple is likely to be more mature and compatible. Changes in the nature of unions and their implications for divorce are of special concern in countries like Malawi, where divorce rates are high and where divorce and remarriage are linked to poorer health outcomes for both women and children (Boileau et al. 2009; Clark and Brauner-Otto 2015; Reniers 2003).In this paper we interrogate the phenomenon of early divorce as a primary component of overall union instability, and as a prism that reveals changes in the ways young people meet and marry. We explore three aspects of early divorce in Malawi. First, we show that much of this high divorce rate in Malawi is driven by early divorce, defined as unions ending within the first three years. Second, we use discrete-time survival analysis to identify which relationship characteristics are associated with early divorce. We find that couples who have known each other for only a short time and whose relationship is not embedded in family ties are much more likely to divorce early. Finally, we turn to qualitative data to make sense of these volatile relationships as part of young women's transition to adulthood.Although we set out to determine whether early divorce was driven by traditional or modern marriage practices, we instead find that early divorce most often results from impulsive marriages that correspond to neither fully traditional nor modern unions. Impulsive unions are not embedded in family and community ties, but neither are they rooted in deep affective ties between individuals. This kind of marriage, between people who are not particularly invested in each other and whose families have little or no stake in making the relationship work, are particularly fragile and tend to dissolve rapidly. They reflect hybrid patterns of courtship and spouse selection in which traditional ideas about what makes a good spouse collide with contemporary ways of knowing a person's character.2.BackgroundIn this section we provide information about marriage in Malawi, including definitions of what we mean by 'traditional' and 'modern' forms of marriage.2.1Defining 'modern' and 'traditional'Most discussions of romantic love and changes in affective patterns rest, more or less explicitly, on the opposition between a 'traditional' form of marriage and a 'modern,' romantic, or companionate alternative. Wardlow and Hirsch (2006) define companionate marriage as a relationship in which emotional closeness is the basis of a union, its mode of operation, and a key measure of its success. In companionate marriages the conjugal partnership is privileged over other family ties, and personal fulfillment takes precedence over social reproduction. …

What’s love got to do with it? Adolescent romantic networks and substance use

This study examined how romantic aspiration network characteristics at the individual level (in-degree and out-degree) are associated with substance use (i.e. smoking and drinking) among a cross-sectional sample of US adolescents (10th grade, n = 1523) from 4 high schools in Los Angeles. Findings highlighted that, with an increase in out-degree (romantic aspiration nominations made), adolescents in our sample were less likely (OR = .824, CI = .688–.986, p < .05) to report smoking in the past 30 days. Additionally, with an increase in in-degree (romantic aspiration nominations received), adolescents were more likely (OR = 1.186, CI = 1.04–1.36, p < .05) to report drinking in the past 30 days. We conclude that romantic aspirations/relations influence adolescents’ substance use behaviour (i.e. smoking and drinking alcohol), particularly because of the intensity of such relationships and the desire to please or be acceptable to the other person. Moreover, understanding adolescents’ aspirations/relations can be useful for the development of intervention/prevention programmes to target adolescents’ substance use.

Have We Gone Too Far with Resiliency?

Are we spending too much of our energies charting and applauding the ability of individuals, families, and groups to successfully sustain societal abuse, hardship, and injustice? It has been because of the fear of this possibility that I have never been a big advocate of what is known in the helping professions as “resiliency.” My goal here is not to argue for the abandonment of efforts to enhance resiliency. Instead, my intent is to caution social workers about it. I suggest that we as social workers think more critically about the implications of our advocacy and interventions. Resiliency can be thought of as the ability to withstand bad things happening to you without the expected devastating outcomes. Advocates of resiliency typically attempt, through internal changes of the individual or the strengthening of some environmental support, to allow the person to withstand some negative force and manage to “beat the odds” of negative outcomes (Garmezy, 1974). For sure, withstanding hardship and beating the odds of falling victim to difficult situations are noble as well as romantic aspirations—they have, in fact, a certain quixoticism associated with them. Those in the helping professions who work with poor populations of color have, for some time now, advocated, studied, and talked about resiliency. I believe that we have perhaps taken the resiliency perspective too far. At times, it seems as though we have lost sight of why people need to be resilient in the first place. We too seldom ask the difficult questions, such as “Why do most of our efforts to teach and promote resiliency focus on the poor and, particularly, poor people of color?” “Why do these populations need to be so imbued with resilience and what are called ‘protective factors’ (from whom and what are we protecting them)?” In discussing my reservations about resiliency, I have sometimes used the imagery of a group of children being lined up and each hit on the head with a baseball bat. Researchers then examine this traumatized group in an attempt to determine which few do not have the expected outcome, such as a large knot on the head or a fractured skull. Having once identified this group of atypical positive deviants who are hard headed, exceptional in some way, or just plain lucky, we then attempt to identify which single factor or cluster of factors allowed these “exceptional” children to avoid the natural consequences of being hit on the head with a baseball bat. We then proceed to devise ways to impose or transfer this “strength, skill, or talent” to the majority group of normal children—who are behaving as one should, having been hit on the head with a baseball bat. Clearly, this approach is unfair as it puts the onus of responsibility for averting the trauma on the potential victim. We must ask ourselves: Does this approach enable the victimizers to continue with their bludgeoning of poor groups and at the same time vitiate the demand for greater societal equity and change? Over the years, I have witnessed many people who have overcome astronomical odds to be modestly successful. But the question is: Why must so many poor people and individuals of color be so skilled, so talented, so adaptive, or—as in the case mentioned earlier—so hard headed? Our efforts to promote strength and resiliency models seem to have blurred our vision and taken our eyes off of the big picture, which is to reduce suffering by promoting greater social justice and societal equity. I believe that the seductiveness of resiliency theory has lulled many who attempt to help those at risk of hardship into taking their eyes off those who are swinging the baseball bats. Our rather limited success at significantly improving the lives of minorities and poor people while using this focus suggests that we need to sustain a balanced perspective. We certainly should continue to look for strengths and protective factors, but we must be more willing to acknowledge the problems that the poor and minority

Twenty Thousand Mornings: An Autobiography by John Joseph Mathews (review)

Reviewed by: Twenty Thousand Mornings: An Autobiography by John Joseph Mathews James H. Cox Twenty Thousand Mornings: An Autobiography. By John Joseph Mathews. Edited by Susan Kalter. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. 302 pages, $29.95. Twenty Thousand Mornings is volume 1 of a projected but never completed three-volume autobiography that Osage author John Joseph Mathews began writing almost fifty years ago on June 1, 1965. This edition is the product of Susan Kalter’s meticulous archival and editorial work on the drafts that Mathews sent to publishers in 1967. Volume 1, which Mathews titled Boy, Horse, and Dog, covers his childhood to 1920. Literature is an important touchstone for the young Mathews. He shares fond memories of his early school days, including a teacher, Mrs. Tucker, who reads Jack London’s The Call of the Wild to the class, and he describes the annual family Thanksgiving celebrations at Aunt Sue’s, where he recalls staring at “a leather-bound book with uncut leaves” that was either Vanity Fair or David Copperfield (55). Mathews was a socially active young man, whether he was working as a soda jerk or playing high school football and basketball, but he calls himself a loner who enjoys riding on the prairies and through the blackjacks of the Osage Nation with only his dog, Spot, accompanying him. Sketches full of specific, concrete detail rather than extended narratives dominate Twenty Thousand Mornings. Even tragic moments, such as the death of his father in March 1915, while he was a freshman at the University of Oklahoma, take only a few pages. When five or six Osage elders from the Big Hills division of the tribe come to stand in front of his father’s portrait and chant what Mathews calls the Song of Death, they are an uncomfortable reminder of the family’s loss. In one of the most compelling sections, Mathews tells the story of his training as a pilot in the early years of aviation. After Mathews completed ground school in Austin, Texas, in 1917, the Army sent him to Kelly Field in San Antonio for flight school. His instructor tells him “to watch ever’thing I do,” but Mathews observes, “I forgot everything except the fact that I was at last brother to the golden eagle, who circled so arrogantly above the Osage prairies, taunting me for my earth-anchored stodginess” (182–83). An order to report to Langley Field produces visions of flying over Cairo in support of Field Marshal Allenby and the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. Upon arrival in Virginia, however, the field commander at Langley does not have any orders for Mathews. He does not get deployed overseas, and “when the Armistice came there was [End Page 439] a feeling of incompleteness and regret and just a faint touch of uneasiness which one might experience if one had been a slacker” (227–28). These moments of joy and disappointment exemplify a life that was full of adventure but also of intense frustration at unrealized dreams. Twenty Thousand Mornings is two recovery projects in one. In her introduction, Kalter draws on Mathews’s diaries, which are also in the Western History Collection at the University of Oklahoma, to reveal parts of his life not covered in the autobiography. She takes as one primary focus his struggle to become a successful writer. The financial difficulties he had in the late 1940s were discouraging, as were the three rejections of the autobiography. Mathews also rants about the state of publishing in the late 1960s in a passage that reveals the lingering influence of reserved Victorian-era values on his social views. Yet in the autobiography, he speaks frankly about his sexual desire for individual young women, University of Texas coeds, and “Wing-Wacks,” a term he uses to describe young women who like pilots. He also has romantic aspirations to chivalry, gallantry, or knight-errantry. A careful study of his treatment of gender and sexuality, as well as his thoughts on race, will illuminate his other works, especially the novel Sundown (1988). Kalter concludes the introduction with the assertion that financial worries and family obligations kept Mathews from a more successful writing career...

The Gothic-Romantic Nexus: Wordsworth, Coleridge, "Splice" and "The Ring"

fundamental drives in vexed relationship between and Gothic modes symbolic discourse in late 18th and early 19th centuries, I want to argue here, has survived, surprisingly intact, in fictions and especially films 21st century. Romanticism as I view it, just to be clear, includes a wide range work across several genres characterized by what Wordsworth makes his and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads in an 1802 revision his Preface to Second Edition: throwing over common--or already extraordinary--situations a certain coloring by which initial focus perception acquires an unusual aspect because the manner in which we associate ideas in a state excitement and proceed to infuse and alter initial focus with those associations (Wordsworth, Prose, 281-82). This is very combination echoed in Biographia Literaria (1817) when Coleridge values both exciting sympathy reader by a perceived adherence to truth as it is perceived and yet lending the interest novelty provided by the modifying colors reminiscent heightening earthly to suggest supernatural in old romances medieval and even Shakespearean times that had been revived in later 18th century (Coleridge, Biographia, 168). Although this attempt at bridging perceived reality and a quasi-mythic exaltation it. by has been (I think rightly) viewed by Forest Pyle as an ideological construct that addresses [extreme] fissures social at time by trying to compose a coherence that strives to heal, or at least cover, those fissures, even though reality as perceived is already ideologically and thus socially inflected (Pyle, 3), no scholar, 1 think, would deny that Romantic aspiration works towards abolishing 'immeasurable gulf between true and good while simultaneously articulating link between world and mind by striving to sublimate former by way latter (Pyle, (5), even if that means, as in Byron, revealing irony distance that still yawns between one pole and other. In Wordsworth's The Thorn, for example (Lyrical, 103-10), published in first Lyrical Ballads 1798 and only somewhat revised thereafter, juxtaposition a petrified old plant and grieving and guilt-ridden Ray point to abandonment and debasement rural people because a changing economy, supposedly revolutionary wars that have turned into renewed oppression, and inequities class structure, all now in question, as they deserve to be. Yet this poem ultimately turns its litany losses into object an act sympathy that both embraces and rises above it all in a transubstantiation horror and pain that makes both Martha and thorn, in poet's monumentalizing their recurring appearances and stories about them, what Slavoj Zizek has called a sublime object, albeit of ideology. If such claims and writings can be deemed quintessentially Romantic, there seems little distinction between that mode and Gothic--or rather neo-Gothic launched most influentially by Horace Walpole's novella Castle Otranto, especially its Second Edition 1765 with a new Preface that bore a subtitle (A Gothic Story) never used as a generic label before but printed bigger than its title in subsequent editions (Walpole, Castle, 3). That Preface defines this new literary species as a crossgeneric blend two kinds romance, ancient and modern, whereby latter, in which nature is sometimes ... copied with success, Walpole admits, is conjoined with imagination and improbability former, so much so that the powers fancy, as in old romances, have liberty to expatiate through boundless realm invention while the mortal agents' in story behave according to rules probability in more realistic middle-class novels, even when they face stupendous phenomena ghosts and other supernatural hauntings recollective old Catholic fantasies now disbelieved in more enlightened times (Walpole, Castle, 9-10). …

Master of the Line:

Rabindranath Tagore emerged as an artist quite late in his life—in the late 1920s—but once he began to seriously pursue his new passion, he produced an astounding number of drawings, paintings and etchings that testify to his greatness as an artist, and his standing as a precursor of modern Indian art. Yet, Tagore did not offer any theory of art, neither did he write extensively on his own art beyond making occasional comments on his style and his satisfying pursuit of art. Still, a careful study of his writings on art does reveal a theoretical underpinning that appears predominantly romantic – with its emphasis on sublimity, beauty, truth, simplicity and universality. His vision of art however, accommodates his constantly evolving perceptions of art, and allows him, at times, to deviate from an earlier view or search for separate nuances within art practices of his time. A close look at Tagore’s art reveals that many of its defining characteristics lie outside the ideas that he propagates in his writings and lectures on art. The paper will examine these differences and try to understand how his art and aesthetics make a fine balance between tradition and innovation, while being sensitive to romantic aspirations and modernistic sensibilities.