Specific Writers Research Articles

Some Aspects of Hellenism in the Early Greek Church Historians

Studies dealing with the attitudes of various writers of the patristic period towards Hellenism, including the aspect ofpaideia, have tended to concentrate, up to the present, on a specific writer or time-span. It is no accident that fourth-century writers have loomed large in recent investigations in this area, since the fourth century was pivotal in determining Christian attitudes to pagan literary traditions. Here it is my aim to draw attention not to a single writer or period but rather to the representatives of a Christian literary genre, and to discuss their stance with regard to Hellenism, in particularpaideia. My choice falls on the Greek ecclesiastical historians; although they have been scrutinised increasingly in the past twenty years, their collective attitude to Hellenic culture or Greek letters has not yet received a separate study. Those early Greek historical works that have survived to us more or less intact — the histories of Eusebius of Caesarea, Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Theodoret of Cyrus, and Evagrius Scholasticus — provide us with a more reliable overall picture of the Hellenism of their composers than, for example, the fragmentaryChurch Historiesof Philostorgius and Theodore Lector; taken together, they give us at the same time a useful chronological spread from the early fourth to the late sixth century. The crucial questions to be posed are to what extent these writers deemed Hellenism to be compatible with ecclesiastical historiography, and how typical their perspective on Hellenism was of their own times. Where appropriate, we shall also try to ascertain how these church historians stand with regard to using classical citations and references in their narratives, how they view the classical past, and what their attitude is towards non-Greek culture.

Close and Strange Relations: The Signs and Shape of American Literature

Michael Davitt Bell. The Development of American Romance : The Sacrifice of Relation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. 291 + xiv pp. Giles Gunn. The Interpretation of Otherness: Literature, Religion, and the American Imagination. New York : Oxford University Press, 1979.250 + x pp. John T. Irwin. American Hieroglyphics: The Symbol of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics in the American Renaissance. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1980.371 + xii pp. These three critical books deal in diverse ways with the reading of American literature, especially the literature of the nineteenth century. At first glance, the approaches of the three critics do not offer a clear common denominator. Irwin writes about hieroglyphics and other linguistic signs, Gunn about religion and "otherness," and Bell about the mode of romance. But all three focus on the major writers of the period (with the exception of one notable novelist), and all three are concerned with the relation of literature to something else: Irwin, with the relation of linguisitc signs to art and to the world in general, as well as to the works of specific writers; Gunn, with the relation of art, and especially literature, to what he calls the "Other"; and Bell, with the "sacrifice of relation" of literature to the common-sense world in the nineteenth century. The first two critics deal with a number of disciplines: linguistics, psychology, music, theology, literary theory and the history of religion. Bell, though he is concerned rather more with purely literary questions, begins the study of American romance by considering the Common Sense and Associationist philosophers of the eighteenth century.

Computerized Specification System Saves Resources

Application of a computer-aided specification preparation system, known as EDITSPEC, results in production of higher-quality project specifications and uses 30 percent fewer resources. Specifications produced by EDITSPEC are more complete, accurate, and consistent. Use of EDITSPEC reduces the elapsed time, specification writer and typist time, and costs required to produce a project specification. Change orders due to specification errors are reduced, thus lowering total construction costs. Preparing Corps of Engineers guide specifications, program-oriented guide specifications, and project specifications with EDITSPEC are discussed. The benefits and operation of EDITSPEC are also described.

Editor's Comment

Editor's Comment The essays published in this number of SAF were submitted in response to our announcement of a special issue on "New Approaches to American Fiction." We have chosen the best of the articles submitted even though this qualitative selection did not allow us to cover all of the currently prominent "new" approaches. We trust that the essays published will be of interest to our readers for what they have to say about specific writers and works and for what they suggest more generally about the applications of recent critical theories to American fiction. Although this special number represents our current emphasis on innovative interpretive strategies, we welcome the submission of articles and notes that utilize "new approaches" as they emerge in the future. + * · Northeastern University, in cooperation with the Hemingway Society and the John F. Kennedy Library, will host the Second Biennial Hemingway Conference May 21-23, 1982, in Boston. In addition, we will host another conference entitled "Emerson and the American Renaissance" on June 12-13. Anyone interested in attending either event should contact the Editor as soon as possible. Attendance will be limited for both conferences. * * * The College of William and Mary announces a program of study leading to the degree of Master of Arts in American Studies beginning in the Fall Semester of 1982. Offered in cooperation with Colonial Williamsburg, the program will afford students interested in early American life ample research opportunities. The program is not, however, focused on a single period; applications are welcome from students with interests in all periods. Financial aid, in the form of fellowships and research assistantships, will be available. Fellowships pay full tuition and provide stipends up to $3,000. For further information write Director, Program in American Studies, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va. 23185. * * * The American Transcendental Quarterly is soliciting manuscripts for a special issue on unrecognized women writers in nineteenth-century New England. Critical essays and notes, papers using nineteenth-century diaries and journals, and other contributions of interest on "minor" or previously unpublished women will be considered. Manuscripts should not exceed 30 pages and should be prepared in accordance with the AfLA Handbook ; the contributor's name and affiliation should be typed only on a cover sheet. The deadline for contributions is December 1, 1981. Address all correspondence to Women's Issue ATQ, Department of English, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island, 02881. * * * It was with deep personal sadness that I learned last spring of the death of Charles T. Davis, Director of the Afro-American Studies Program at Yale and a member of our board of Advisory Editors. I studied American poetry and Afro-American Literature with him when I was a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, and I came to know well the special feelings of respect and affection he engendered in students and colleagues alike. Later, when he had assumed his position at Yale, our relationship continued through activities surrounding SAF and through our mutual interest in Richard Wright. Charles Davis was a gifted and inspiring teacher, a pioneer scholar of Black Studies, a brilliant reader of dialect poetry, and, perhaps above all, a gentleman. There is no replacing him. We grieve at his loss, and we send our most heartfelt sympathies to his family. J.N. ...

The Impact of Option Expirations on Stock Prices

One of the innovative and successful new markets developed in recent years has been the registered exchange for the trading of option contracts. Key innovations provided by the option exchanges include the standardization of some contractual terms and the creation of a central clearing corporation to serve as issuer and obligor of each option contract, thus severing the contractual link between a specific option writer and buyer. These changes have facilitated the trading of existing call options in the secondary market and have provided increased liquidity, continuous public reporting of prices, better information on trading volume and open positions, and reduced transaction costs.

Abū Ḥayyan al-Tawḥīdī and the Brethren of Purity

Since the famous tenth-century man of letters Abū Hayyān al-Tawĥīdī (Ca. 320/932–414/1023) named four specific contemporary writers as the authors of the otherwise anonymous encyclopedic work Rasā'il Ikhwān al-Safā', it became almost traditional for both medieval and modern scholars to accept his story as fact.

The Axial Strength and Behavior of Cylindrical Columns

This paper describes tests of large-diameter, fabricated, tubular columns with essentially pin-ended conditions. Measurements of residual stresses were made in addition to the behavior, strength, and manner of failure of these members. The maximum strength of the columns is compared with the CRC basic column-strength curve. Introduction The use of fabricated tubular columns is a growing phenomenon in structural engineering. Currently, columns phenomenon in structural engineering. Currently, columns with relatively large diameters are commonly used in offshore structures and have increasing applications in various other civil engineering structures. Two primary design problems emerge with the use of these columns. On one hand, the designer is faced with an immediate lack of reliable design guidance. The lack of experimental evidence on probable strength levels for these columns hinders specification writers in their attempts to provide designers with safe but relatively economical column design guidance. On the other hand, there is also a major lack of knowledge about the behavior of such tubulars under various axial loading situations. Realizing the foregoing deficiencies, several designers of offshore platforms began a critical review of this situation in the early 1970's under the auspices of the API's Task Group on Fixed Platform Criteria. One of the major outgrowths of this review was the recognition of the need for more basic information regarding the probable ultimate strengths and corresponding design probable ultimate strengths and corresponding design strengths of axially loaded, fabricated tubular columns. This led the API to fund a major research project at Lehigh U. in 1974. Included in the Lehigh program is an experimental investigation to provide much-needed testing data; a theoretical investigation into column behavior throughout the entire range of loading up to and beyond the ultimate load; and the development of the necessary background information to allow specification writers to properly assess both the strength and behavior of properly assess both the strength and behavior of fabricated, tubular columns. Selection of the column dimensions for testing was predicated on the desire to force inelastic column buckling failures, as opposed to situations where local buckling might play a major part in the failure. This paper discusses the experimental phase of the research program. Included in the investigation was an experimental determination of residual stresses in a typical fabricated tubular column used in offshore oil structures, and the testing of 10 full-scale columns under axial load and pin-ended conditions. Scope and Design of Specimens Fabricated tubular columns commonly used on offshore structures are usually fabricated from flat steel plate that is formed into circular elements, such that the width of the plate becomes the height of the element. The ends of the plate are then longitudinally joined by welding. The completed element is known as a "can" and is generally about 3 m (10 ft) long. By joining a number of cans end to end with circumferential or girth welds, a column of any length may be formed. The longitudinal welds in the cans are staggered, and it is common for the longitudinal weld in one can to be about 180 degrees out of phase with the longitudinal weld in the next can. JPT P. 239

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby and the Imagination of Wonder

formulate an interpretation of a book which attempts explain why we keep coming back it, suspend usual critical apparatus and simply try concentrate on those details, selective as they may sometimes be, which shape or determine way a particular book reads us as well as we read it. I regard this, in fact, as an indispensable part of critic's total job of work. For criticism does nor end with explication, it only begins there. It ends, if at all, only with an account of how specific books, writers or traditions somehow reorder mental, emotional and spiritual furniture of our lives, somehow move us, if ever so slightly, accept new ideas of order, fresh reconceptions of what will suffice. In this, one of its furthest reaches, act of criticism is very like act of love: The critic finds himself in paradoxical situation of seeking preserve and enhance memory of something he cherishes only discover in process that this response has been compelled almost from very beginning by an odd sense that he is merely reciprocating in kind. Hence, as much as critic should strive, in Matthew Arnold's words, to see object as in itself it really is, there comes a point in his negotiations with certain literary texts when his comprehension inevitably will, and necessarily should, be determined as well by how object sees him.' Though few may wish go quite as far as Leslie Fiedler, there is still a certain warrant his confession that the truth one tries tell about literature is finally [no] different from truth one tries tell about indignities and rewards of being kind of man one is-an American, let's say, in second half of twentieth century, learning read his country's books.2 What Fiedler is suggesting has been beauti-

Baroque Once More: Notes on a Literary Period

T HE suspicion with which some scholars regard the concept of literary period is to some extent justified, rooted as it is in healthy critical instincts. If such terms as Renaissance, Baroque, and Romanticism are nothing more than arbitrary labels, we may well dispense with them. If, on the other hand, it is contended that such terms have a kind of absolute reality as designations of rigidly definable entities, the qualities of which are consistently and uniformly present in all works belonging to a given period, we may very justly reject the whole notion. To the extent that hostility toward period terms reflects a concern for the artistic uniqueness of individual authors and works, it is commendable. Nevertheless, it is possible to formulate and apply a concept of period without falling into the errors of either hopeless nominalism or grandiose Geistesgeschichte. A period is, as Rene Wellek observes, not an ideal type or an abstract pattern or a series of class concepts, but a time sequence, dominated by a whole series of which no work of art will ever realize in its entirety.l Period terms, thus, may be conceived of not as arbitrary linguistic labels nor as metaphysical entities, but as names for systems of norms which dominate literature at a specific time of the historical process.2 So formulated, the concept of period becomes a way of deepening rather than blurring the critic's sense of the uniqueness of the individual author and text. The literary products of a given time-span will be dominated by a system of norms, a selection of which will distinguish the work of any specific writer of that age. An appropriate awareness of the author's relation to the dominant norms of the period, coupled with a due recognition of the fact that norms of a preceding period to some degree survive

Inspection of Non‐Metallic Materials

THE main working documents for an inspector are specifications and drawings. Among criticisms made at the Natural Rubber Producers' Research Association symposium last year, was that there are too many specifications and I think most of us would agree. However, I think we could improve this situation considerably as far as materials are concerned, if we accepted and really worked in accordance with the fundamental principle laid down in Av.P.970 Chap. 400. This can be summarised as: ‘Specifications for critical materials need approval by D.Mat/Aviation — non‐critical materials do not need such approval’. A rider is added to the effect that non‐critical materials do not need to be inspected to such tightly drawn specifications as critical materials and in some instances commercial quality materials may be used. If one can decide therefore, which materials are critical and which are not, and this is by no means easy, we can simplify inspection procedures and possibly reduce the number of specifications. Obviously critical applications will always call for special quality specifications but it is wasteful to use such materials where they are not necessary. One docs, however, notice a tendency among specification writers to over specify and to classify specifications too highly, i.e. to seek special approval when it is not necessary. It is our view that A.I.D. supervision should be concentrated on critical materials and components and that comparatively little effort should be devoted to non‐critical items, this being left to the purchaser who would probably order standard engineering materials or even commercial quality.

Using Specifications

Some simple rules are given for obtaining the precise definition of a component or manufacturing process from a set of documents. Examples are quoted to show how specifications should be used while at the same time providing a warning against giving too much blind faith to this form of printed word. The difficulties facing specification writers are mentioned and examples of unusable or misleading documents cited. All references are from unclassified government sources.

Limits on Airborne Noise in Naval Shipboard Spaces

Criteria are presented to guide the specification writer in setting limits on airborne noise in shipboard spaces of U. S. Navy vessels. Limits are given for three objectionable effects of airborne noise: (1) permanent hearing loss, (2) interference with speech communication, (3) discomfort. The limit for any specific ship space depends on which, if any, of these effects can be tolerated without interfering with the function of the space. Limits for hearing loss and discomfort are expressed in terms of octave-band spectra. The hearing-loss-avoidance limit is that suggested by Hardy. The comfort limit is based on criteria of Lippert and Miller. The limits for interference with speech are expressed in terms of the “speech-interference level,” i.e., the arithmetic average of the levels in the 4 octave bands covering 300 to 4800 cps, following the scheme of Bolt, Beranek, and Newman. Maximum permissible speech-interference levels are tabulated as a function of the distance to the speaker, the voice level, and the acoustic absorption in the space. For typical ship spaces, tentative noise-level limits are suggested, based on present usage of the spaces.

Dryden and the Rules: The Preface to Troilus and Cressida

THE Preface to Dryden's adaptation of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida is one of the best, if not one of the liveliest, of Dryden's essays.1 Although it contains one of his fine appreciations of Shakespeare, it lacks the pleasing self-revelation and the exciting personal controversy which distinguish the Preface to All for Love and the Preface to the Fables. On the other hand, it is somewhat more logical and systematic than many of the essays; it is the discussion of a single important problem and sticks close to the business at hand. The principles are expounded in a more complete and orderly fashion than in most of Dryden's essays, and the abstract exposition is constantly interspersed with applications to specific writers, especially Shakespeare. The principles are, as we shall see, French neoclassical principles of the most orthodox kind; and yet, when Dryden comes to apply them to Shakespeare, the judgment which he makes of the earlier poet is a very favorable one. It is all too easy for a reader of Dryden to imagine him as a man torn between a theoretical respect for the French rules and a natural love for such irregular writers as Chaucer and Shakespeare ;2 and this view certainly finds support in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, where Dryden, quite unable to reconcile Shakespeare and the rules, is forced to set up a double standard-regularity for the French and variety for the English. The Essay, however, is a relatively early work, and one should not assume that the critical dualism which it exhibits is

The Influence of Standardization on Construction Specifications

As a part of a general study of standard specifications being sponsored by the American Water Works Association, an attempt is made in this paper to discuss the influence of standardization on specifications for construction work. Inquiry reveals the existence of an impression that standardization, as it is generally recognized, is not particularly applicable to such specifications. The extent to which this feeling is justified depends somewhat upon what is meant by a standard specification. It is possible to go to a filing case and take out a ready-made specification for a shipment of reinforcing steel, cement, cast iron pipe, and many similar or more complicated products, but the same procedure cannot be followed for the construction of a dam, tunnel, or similar work. The individual needs of each such job must be studied and allowed for. However, construction work does not differ as much from other work in this respect as is sometimes supposed. Although a whole job cannot be reduced to definite standard procedure, many of the parts of it can be, and usually are. Essentially, a specification is a description of an object, or piece of work, designed to convey to the prospective producer as concrete an idea as possible of the buyer's wants. The owner needs to know in advance that the finished work will fulfill his requirements, and the builder, who at the time the specification is prepared is not known to the specification writer, before submitting a price must know what is expected of him, so that he may fairly estimate his costs. The task of preparing the description is facilitated if the buyer's wants are limited to commonly known or established things or processes. It is comparatively easy to describe a thing already fully understood by all parties to the description. As the degree of advanced understanding diminishes, it becomes more and more diffi-