Well-known Text Research Articles

Gisel Dara's Todo (1951): An Ideological Recontextualization of Carmen Laforet's Nada (1945)

Todo (1951), a novel first mentioned by Calvo de Aguilar (1954) who describes it as ‘una novela replica a Laforet’, was written under the pseudonym Gisel Dara. The Madrid author also published numerous short stories including the collection iMisterio! (Narraciones alucinantes) (1949). This article introduces the author and then explores her novel's extensive intertextual engagement with Nada (1945) and to a lesser degree with other well-known texts. A number of possible reasons for the author's ideologically motivated reworking of Laforet's successful novel are proposed. Todo is informed by ideological principles absent from Laforet's novel and from other novels inspired by Nada: Dara's stated aim is to depose what she considers the nihilistic Nada. Finally, the extent to which the author's political affiliations have influenced the fate of her publication is discussed and also whether she actually merits a place in Spain's literary annals.

Dibujos didácticos y memoria de la Antigüedad romana: Las glosas de los Proverbios del Marqués de Santillana ilustradas en la Suma de virtuoso deseo

The Marquis of Santillana’s Proverbios is one of his most important poetic works and his most well-known text from the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries. The central part of the poem presents a group of biblical and Roman examples, some of them glossed by Santillana himself. The Suma de virtuoso deseo (BNE, ms. 1518), a miscellaneous historical text, provides variants in some of these glosses in prose, together with illustrations. The interpretation of these images, which seek a didactic and mnemonic effect, and the interpretation of the symbolic set represented by both texts and images, help us understand some issues related to the metamorphosis of the vision of Antiquity and the written transmission of history in this particular period of the Spanish Middle Ages.

Chinese Perspectivism: Perspectivist Cosmologies in Zhuangzi and Journey to the West

Perspectivism as a cosmology, according to which all beings perceive themselves as humans, has been discussed mainly in connection with the Amazo- nian region, for the term perspectivism stems from Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, who applied it to the indigenous worldview of that particular region. To a lesser extent, it has also been studied in North Asia and some other hunter-gatherer societies. In this article I wish to demonstrate that perspectivism may be more widespread than previously thought, and its occurrence is not necessarily limited to hunter-gatherer cultures. Perspectivism can also be found in pre-modern China, which can be seen from such well-known texts as Zhuangzi (4th-3rd century BCE) and Journey to the West (16th century). The connecting link that makes the occurrence of perspectivism possible both in South America and East Asia is probably shamanism, which is present in both of these regions. It is characteristic of Chinese perspectivism that the multiple perspectives are not equal, but there is one proper perspective that is at the same time also the moral perspective. Chinese cosmology can contribute to the understanding of American perspectivism with its concept of cosmological rela- tions, which fits the model of perspectivism.

Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve by Eleanor Johnson (review)

Reviewed by: Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve by Eleanor Johnson Barbara Zimbalist Eleanor Johnson, Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2013) 254 pp. As a term of critical inquiry, “aesthetics” often evokes associations of the analysis, appreciation, codification, and even formulation of beauty. Yet as Eleanor Johnson shows in Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages, the aesthetics of Middle English literature functioned in multiple and surprising ways: as the result and natural outgrowth of ideation in poetry and prose, rather than its antecedent; as a deliberately deployed mixture of literary modes and styles intended to effect ethical transformation in readers; and as a meta-category of literary-philosophical endeavor within which late-medieval authors engaged and reconfigured their classical and medieval predecessors. Johnson argues that Middle English writers reconfigured the Boethian prosimetric tradition in service of vernacular protrepsis. In making this argument, she defines and deploys analytical terms that will inspire new attention to what she calls “the Boethian paradigm of ethically transformative writing and reading”(94). These terms, specifically prosimetrum (the mixed form), protrepsis (ethical transformation through narrative), ethics, aesthetics, and (briefly) criticality, may be familiar; but Johnson’s meticulous analysis of mixed-form Middle English texts demonstrates their analytic power in service of new readings of some of the most well-known texts of the English Middle Ages. She shows how the twin traditions of mixed-form texts and ethically transformative narrative guided and shaped the literary endeavors of Late Medieval English authors, even as they revised, reconfigured, and remade that tradition into one of the most influential and widely used vernacular poetics of medieval English literature. Much of the book’s argumentative power derives from its self-proclaimed New Formalist approach. Indeed, the introduction, “Formalism and Ethics: the Practice of Literary Theory,” includes a short subsection titled “A Brief and Recent History of Formalism”—an extremely clear (if brief) overview of New Formalism as a critical movement and its intersection with medieval studies that will be useful for a variety of readers. Johnson divides her study into six [End Page 268] chapters framed by the theoretically-driven introduction and conclusion. Following the theoretical introduction, Chapter 1 explicates the prosimetric architecture upon which the edifice of ethical reading—protrepsis—is built. Johnson demonstrates the Boethian foundations of prosimetrum and protrepsis within the Consolation of Philosophy (and to a lesser degree the De institutione musica), as well as the tradition of ethical transformation achieved by sensible aesthetics: causality in prose and likeness in meter, both of which elicit rational and aesthetic responses from their readers. The chapter then turns to Boethius’s medieval reception in Alain de Lille’s De planctu naturae, Dante’s Vita Nuova, and Guillaume Machaut’s Remède de Fortune. Johnson shows how each of these vastly influential texts, sharing didactic and dialogic narrative structures, rework Boethian prosimetrum for their own purposes, and in doing so, establish a tradition of adapting and reconfiguring the mixed form as a conceptual, formal, generic, and syntactical strategy of philosophical translatio. Chapters 2 through 4 turn to the Chaucerian re-figuration of the Boethian tradition. The second chapter, “Sensible Prose and a Sense of Meter: Chaucer’s Aesthetic Sentence in the Boece and Troilus and Criseyde,” argues that Chaucer’s deliberate decision to render Boethius’ mixed form Consolatio as Middle English prose was “rooted in a desire to experiment with the aesthetic possibilities of prose form, and with how prose aesthetics might produce ethically transformative assent on its own, independent of metrical action”(57). This argument for the prosimetric quality and protreptic potential of vernacular prose demonstrates how Middle English reception of Boethius reconfigured the mixed form through through style, register, genre, tone, and meter—even prose meter. The implications of this argument for vernacular poetics are rich, and should inspire more explicitly formalist work on Middle English prose. Chapters 3 and 4 turn to Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. Chapter 3 argues that the Troilus formulates an aesthetically-driven ethics of tragic poetry, dependent on...

History of allergy in the middle ages and renaissance.

In the Middle Ages little innovative medical literature came from Western Europe. The Greek-Roman tradition with the scriptures of Hippocrates and Galenos was preserved in Byzantium and then in the Middle East by Arabic medicine; it then returned to Europe in Latin translations mostly made in Italy and Spain. There were innovative developments in Arabic medicine also with regard to the history of allergy, especially with the first description of 'rose fever', which is described as very similar in symptomatology to hay fever. Under Arabic influence, the first medical university in Salerno was famous for its well-known text Tacuinum sanitatis in which a description of asthma can be found. With the beginning of renaissance new developments were also registered in Europe, with new observations and a new way of thinking.

International Human Rights, 4th ed.

Jack Donnelly’s most recent edition of his well-known text, International Human Rights, provides an updated discussion of the evolution of international human rights since the end of World War II. Like previous editions, this book provides an accessible, relatively comprehensive, and self-consciously analytical treatment of the broad subject of international human rights. While the book is clearly intended for classroom use, and is indeed accessible enough to be understood by most upper-division undergraduates, it is not a “textbook” in the traditional sense, in that Donnelly is not shy about offering his own arguments and interpretations about a variety of controversial issues. Thus, while Donnelly makes significant efforts to be both accurate and fair, his treatment of the many concerns and controversies about human rights is hardly “objective.” Yet this feature is actually an important strength of the book, in that it transcends the pedestrian discussion of the “competing views” in certain debates and actually provides clear arguments that are intended to challenge the readers’ views on certain issues and provoke more critical and analytical thinking, as opposed to simply rote memorization and recitation of empirics. This goal is further advanced by Donnelly through the use of several thought-provoking discussion questions at the end of each chapter, which provide excellent points of departure for further discussion and debate in the classroom.

Letter to the Editor on Harnessing Complex Emergent Metaphors for Effective Communication in Palliative Care

Arnold and Lloyd’s article on ‘‘transcendence experiences’’ of terminally ill persons in hospice care was an intriguing read. The piece provided a helpful description of methodological issues and procedural processes undertaken. It seemed a qualitative study was employed involving unstructured interviews for data collection and a ‘‘prototypical multimodal perceptual analysis strategy integrating both audio and text processing and coding of stimuli data.’’ Again, the methodology section was informative. Concerning the results or findings from the study, 4 ‘‘submetaphors’’ (or emergent categories) were delineated, ineffability, mundane, perceptual shifts, and peace and contentment. (The ‘‘parent’’ or overarching metaphor was asserted as end-of-life transcendence experiences.) For each metaphorical category, direct quotes from study participants were provided as textual evidence. Now, it is at this juncture in the article that particular thoughts arose, which compelled me to pen this Letter to the Editor. To be clear, what follows is not a polemic or contention but rather a proposal to broaden the discussion regarding the issue portrayed and presented by Arnold and Lloyd. So, toward a more multidisciplinary perspective, it is important to note that extant examples of similar types of ineffability (of subjective experiences or internal mentation related to loss issues) can be easily seen in thanatological (grief and bereavement) literature. Case in point, Bennett and Bennett’s qualitative study of older adult widows’ grief experiences evinced numerous examples of metaphorical language related to loss and inner/subjective experiences: in a complete fog; on automatic pilot; like a zombie; there’s always this great hole inside that hurts. Furthermore, a well-known text in hospice circles (Final Gifts) demonstrates multiple accounts of end-of-life circumstances, where imagery and figurative expressions are presented by both dying and aggrieved persons. Clearly, by virtue of metaphorical allusions, ineffability is established. Indeed, personal grief can be most difficult to immediately describe (without analogies or metaphors), and so the idea of ineffability and leaning toward metaphorical descriptions in the loss and grief literature is resolutely commonplace. And, given the intimate and cognate bonds between grief, anticipatory grief, and end of life, it is deemed helpful if a broader literature review was provided toward better contextualizing the findings culled by Arnold and Lloyd. Next, concerning the category of Mundane, traumatology and existential counseling literature can broaden the discussion. For instance, according to the postulated concept of posttraumatic growth, it is already recognized that some persons who experience this type of loss response ‘‘mention newfound appreciation for rather ordinary, everyday living.’’ Moreover, regarding the categories of perceptual shifts and peace and contentment, these are also previously demonstrated in the varying literature bases including adult learning, psychology, and clinical counseling, to name a few. Examples and commentary of perceptual shifts from the literature include

Introduction to the special issue Weber, the press and sociology, then and now

[MWS 13.2 (2013) 137-150] ISSN 1470-8078 Introduction to the special issue Weber, the press and sociology, then and now Isabelle Darmon and Carlos Frade Keywords: Weber, cultural domains, press, media, sociology, rationalization, big data, temporality, corporate field. Courses on the 'classics' of the social sciences at the University reg ularly seek to allure students by pledging to explore these authors from the angle of their 'contemporary relevance'. Apart from having become somewhat trite and thus probably already failing to spur any intellectual curiosity, such expression seems to endorse an atti tude to intellectual inquiry along the lines of the rather widespread 'what's in it for us?'—which seems to suffocate any germ of open mindedness—or scholasticism and the confinement of interest in the classics to historical research. However, if the notion of classics has any meaning beyond that of a reference to a petrified and petrifying canon, does not such meaning lie precisely in their ongoing ques tioning of our present and, more particularly, on how our own time will look to their eyes? Drawing the implications of such a stance toward the classics is of course not straightforward. It is not for us to say that we may have achieved this in this special issue of Max Weber Studies. Neverthe less it is also true to say that this ambition to reverse modes of read ing Weber is what spurred the Max Weber Study Group of the British Sociological Association to set up a seminar series re-examining well-known and less well-known texts by Max Weber on issues that demand new thinking and taking a stance today—including the University; the print media; and financial markets. In entitling the seminar series 'Thinking the Present with Max Weber' we sought to convey an initial idea of that ambition to put Weber's thought to work in our time—an ambition whose full scope is better expressed through the perhaps more daunting idea of 'bringing to bear' (Frade© Max Weber Studies 2013, Clifton House, 17 Malvern Road, London, E8 3LP. 138 Max Weber Studies 2013a) Weber's thought on our present. This involves not a simple application but an active mobilization of Weber's thought, unfold ing its unrealised theoretical possibilities and eventually develop ing new conceptual constructions, in a confrontation with our own time. The seminar series was conceived of as a first step towards this much broader task. The second such seminar-workshop addressed the 'press, jour nalism and public opinion' and aimed to bring together Weberian and non-Weberian media and communication scholars and sociol ogists to reflect on the present situation of the press and the media through a renewed engagement with Weber's thought. Some of the speakers focused more on the understanding of Weber's texts on the press; others, on the current predicament of the press, journal ists and our own predicament as public opinion. But the overall and shared aim was to come out of this one day seminar with new ques tions. As Weber said to the members of the newly formed Deutsche Gesellscliaft für Soziologie (the German Sociological Society, hereafter DGS) in its first congress in 1910: 'for the formulation of the actual central questions to work on is indeed the decisive scientific task' (Weber 1988a: 436). The first terrain he suggested for it to carry out such task was, pre cisely, a sociological survey of the press (Press-Enquête). It is mainly with the texts written by Weber in connection with that survey as well as with his analysis of journalism in 'Politics as a Vocation and Profession' that contributors to the seminar-workshop, and to this special issue, refer. These include: - the Vorbericht über eine vorgeschlagene Erhebung über die Sozi ologie des Zeitungswesens, henceforth Vorbericht ('Preliminary report on a proposed sociological survey of the press') pre sented to the Board of the newly constituted DGS in April 1909 (Hennis, 1998:109); and - the Geschäftsbericht auf dem ersten deutschen Soziologi etage, henceforth Geschäftsbericht, Weber's report to the DGS in October 1910.1 1. The Geschäftsbericht was included by Marianne Weber in the Cesammelte A uf stitze zur...

Death at St Bernard's: Anti-vivisection, Medicine and the Gothic

Displaying a Gothic fascination with the misapplication of science, Edward Berdoe's St Bernard's: The Romance of a Medical Student (1887) was one of a number of novels in the 1880s that repackaged the horrors of vivisection for public consumption. Although the novel can be dismissed as derivative, it departed from standard themes found in other anti-vivisection texts. Through the device of a hero struggling with the moral implications of science and the reckless treatment of patients, St Bernard's challenged the legitimacy of the teaching hospital. The present article moves debate about the Gothic, literature and science beyond well-known texts by Stevenson and Wells to examine how St Bernard's combined ‘the methods of science with the methods of romance’ and shifted the anti-vivisection narrative into the hospital. In locating the novel within anti-vivisectionist uses of fiction and late-Victorian anxieties about experimental medicine and the teaching hospital, the article explores the novel's relationship with other anti-vivisection texts and Gothic fiction, and examines what it says about scientific practices and mentalities. St Bernard's fashioned a very different hospital from existing representations to warn readers of how brutish students and cruel doctors tortured patients. In doing so, the novel recast the teaching hospital as an uncanny and dangerous place.

The Art of the Incredibly Serious: Native Son as Künstlerroman, Native Son as Fiction

The Art of the Incredibly Serious:Native Son as Künstlerroman, Native Son as Fiction Michael Jay Lewis “You see, granny, everybody knows that the story isn’t true, but…” “Then why write it?” she asked. “Because people might want to read it.” “That’s the Devil’s work,” she said and left. My mother also was worried. “Son, you ought to be more serious,” she said. “You’re growing up now and you won’t be able to get jobs if you let people think that you’re weak-minded. Suppose the superintendent of schools would ask you to teach here in Jackson, and he found out that you had been writing stories?” —Richard Wright, Black Boy (198) An Artist’s Story of a Fictional Artist In “Genre in/and Wright’s Native Son,” Heather Duerre Humann suggests that “Native Son resists easy generic classification,” possessing attributes of several forms but satisfying the conventions of none (143). “Native Son,” Humann writes, “is a bildungsroman without any of the traditional outcomes,” “a protest novel with a not wholly sympathetic protagonist,” and “a crime novel/courtroom drama where justice does not prevail” (144). Proceeding from Humann’s premise, at least initially accepting that the power of Native Son’s “commentary and…critique” reflects the “unfinishable” identity of its protagonist (154), I want to frame Native Son as a specific kind of Künstlerroman, one that tells the story of a creator of fictions and implies the artistic maturation involved in all Bildungsromane. Taken as such a Künstlerroman, Wright’s novel concerns not only the burgeoning of art and the [End Page 234] conditions that permit such development but also the conditions that encourage fictional thinking. While the incomplete Bildungsroman is a common topic in the study of circum-Atlantic African-American arts, and while much has been written regarding the African-American Künstlerroman, studies rarely consider Native Son as the narrative of a would-be artist, much less the story of a developing artist of fictions. This is, in part, what the following paper considers. Yet this paper means to do more than attach a preexisting lens on a well-known text in order to mine for new, perhaps idiosyncratic, interpretations; instead, it means to analyze Native Son as a specific kind of Künstlerroman, one concerned with how the art of producing specifically fictional narratives informs the relationship between personal creativity and social participation. In this setting, Bigger Thomas represents the would-be artist whose arrested development demonstrates the collaborating social impact of personal privacy, self-obliteration, and the creation of fictional narratives or fields, a trio of experiences the reader-as-author simulates via his or her configuration of Bigger as a fictional character. While much criticism implies that the society of Native Son fears Bigger as criminal more than Bigger as creator, far less attends to ways in which the social order recognizes the importance of—and thus orchestrates the repression of—his right not to be. In depriving him of private space and personal time, or even in its promise of execution, the society of the novel aims not to obliterate, erase, or use him, but rather to control the narrative of his not being, what we might call his fictional symbolism. It is thus not death alone but his specific role in a narrative of death that Bigger maligns when he remarks that “they kill you before you die” and that “[he] got to die” (351). Bigger’s social conditions therefore stall his development not by delimiting his ability to enact his specific, socially constructed identity, even unto death, but by denying him the opportunity to ignore, obliterate, and thereby transcend that identity—by denying him the right to determine the significance of such an intellectual, if not actual, suicide. Initially, the analysis above may seem to recapitulate familiar arguments regarding the unique development of the African-American Künstlerroman, if not the African-American novel as its own genre. Indeed, these arguments have points in common, especially insofar as prior treatments could be read as metaphorically treating Bigger as a kind of suicidal artist, a figure whose capacity for self-expression is indomitable...

Classical Arabic literature: a library of Arabic literature anthology

A major achievement in the field of translation, this anthology presents a rich assortment of classical Arabic poems and literary prose, from pre-Islamic times until the 18th century, with short introductions to guide non-specialist students and informative endnotes and bibliography for advanced scholars. Like many pre-modern Arabic anthologies it aims at being both entertaining and informative. It ranges from the early Bedouin poems with their evocation of desert life to refined urban lyrical verse, from tender love poetry to sonorous eulogy or vicious lampoons, and from the heights of mystical rapture to the frivolity of comic verse. The prose contains anecdotes, entertaining or edifying tales and parables, a fairy-tale, a bawdy story, samples of literary criticism, and much more. With this anthology, distinguished Arabist Geert Jan van Gelder brings together well-known texts as well as less familiar pieces that will be new even to scholars in the field. Many recent studies and anthologies of Middle Eastern literatures are primarily interested in Islam and religious matters - an emphasis that leads to the common misconception that almost everything in the region was and is dominated by religion. Classical Arabic Literature instead brings to life the rich variety of pre-modern Arabic social and cultural life, where secular texts happily coexisted with religious ones. This masterful anthology, in English only, will introduce this vibrant literary heritage to a wide spectrum of new readers.

Le roman illustré, une nouvelle forme de texte adultère

This article deals with the possibilities of re-reading a well-known text, Henry de Montherlant’s novel Les Celibataires (1934), in light of the transformations produced by the photographic illustrations of Georgette Chadourne, which distinguish the original version from a lesser known re-edition published by Plon in 1948. This essay identifies the materials and thematic singularities of this latter volume and proposes an alternate methodology of reading photographic illustrations in the context of the novel. In subsequent sections, the intertextual relationships between these illustrations and other photographic paraphernalia are analyzed in order to sketch a new interpretation of the hybrid, verbo-visual book and to suggest the conflict between seeing and understanding.

Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century (review)

Reviewed by: Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century Carol Anne Costabile-Heming Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Lyn Marven and Stuart Taberner. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011. Pp. vii + 273. Cloth $75.00. 978-1571134219. As scholars and readers of contemporary German literature are acutely aware, a large new crop of writers and engaging texts appears yearly, yet relatively little scholarly literature has been dedicated to this emerging generation. This volume fills that gap, presenting an in-depth analysis of recently emerging authors, whose notoriety ranges from German Book Prize winner Julia Franck and bestselling author Daniel Kehlmann to writers who are less widely known outside of Germany. In her introduction to the volume, Lyn Marven explains that these “emerging writers” are those who have experienced “a rise to prominence” (2) in the last decade. Contributors to the volume examine both well-known texts such as Kehlmann’s Die Vermessung der Welt (2005) and newer works by authors such as Yadé Kara and Sven Regener, whose first novels received wide acclaim. The editors’ goal is to introduce these lesser-known authors and works to an international audience. And though many of the texts discussed have been translated into English, the volume also includes two translations: a chapter from Clemens Meyer’s Als wir träumten (Katy Derbyshire) and Vladimir Vertlib’s Das besondere Gedächtnis der Rosa Masur (Jamie Lee Searle). Each of the individual chapters focuses solely on one text by one author, with the overall goal of introducing new readers to that author. The texts are discussed within the context of the author’s writing as a whole, and are also presented within wider literary and theoretical trends. Presented in chronological order, the chapters provide a neat snapshot of a decade’s worth of literary productivity in Germany. Several common themes emerge, including immigration, integration, multiculturalism, and transnational societies. These themes are embodied in both the characters in the texts and the lives of their authors, many of whom hail from countries and cultures other than Germany. The individual chapters are thoroughly researched and well argued. Stuart [End Page 721] Taberner’s chapter on Vladimir Vertlib’s Das besondere Gedächtnis der Rosa Masur presents a nuanced reading of the perceptions of Jewishness today within the context of broader discussions of integration and transnationalism. Writers such as Terézia Mora number among a growing cadre of authors from Eastern and Central Europe writing in German, who, as Anke S. Biendarra argues, add to the complexity of transnational contexts in contemporary German literature. Biendarra writes of “postnational literature” (48) as a response to the fluidity of borders and cultures. Emily Jeremiah examines Germanness and globalization in Sibylle Berg’s Die Fahrt, concluding that the novel demonstrates that “the global and the national are intertwined” (135), thus arguing for the “glocal.” She posits that literature can serve to blur national and cultural differences, and also simultaneously portray the global as something closer to home. In her chapter on Kehlmann’s Die Vermessung der Welt, Rebecca Braun reads the novel within the context of celebrity. She attributes the novel’s success to the fact that it appeals to both intellectuals and “nonprofessional” readers (86), precisely because it engages with celebrity as both social and literary phenomenon. In the introduction, Marven acknowledges that the volume “hopes . . . to win new readers for some of the most exciting and innovative voices in German-language literature in the twenty-first century” (15). This volume succeeds in achieving this goal. I recommend it for graduate students and scholars interested in twenty-first-century literature, and it should be at the top of the acquisitions list for research libraries. [End Page 722] Carol Anne Costabile-Heming University of North Texas Copyright © 2012 The German Studies Association

Best Practice Occupational Therapy for Children and Families in Community Settings

This book is the second edition of Dr. Winnie Dunn's well-known text, Best Practice in Occupational Therapy. In this text the author expands upon a model for occupational therapy services delivery,...

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism

Text Segmentation with Topic Models

This article presents a general method to use information retrieved from the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model for Text Segmentation: Using topic assignments instead of words in two well-known Text Segmentation algorithms, namely TextTiling and C99, leads to significant improvements. Further, we introduce our own algorithm called TopicTiling, which is a simplified version of TextTiling (Hearst, 1997). In our study, we evaluate and optimize parameters of LDA and TopicTiling. A further contribution to improve the segmentation accuracy is obtained through stabilizing topic assignments by using information from all LDA inference iterations. Finally, we show that TopicTiling outperforms previous Text Segmentation algorithms on two widely used datasets, while being computationally less expensive than other algorithms.

Traduzione, volgarizzamento e presenza femminile in testi devozionali bassomedievali

This article addresses the problem of translation in medieval religious literature, and investigates the relationship between the issue of vernacular devotional texts and a female authorship or audience. After a few general remarks, the author presents two case studies. The first is the Mirror of Simple Souls , written in the vernacular by Marguerite Porete, a woman condemned as a heretic, and the vernacular (re)trans- lations of this well-known text. The other is the pseudo-Bonaventurian Meditations on the Life of Christ , in which a female audience is clearly present; the problems of its date and original language (Latin or Italian) are discussed: recently it has been hypothesized that the original form of the work could have been written by a woman, in the Italian vernacular. The author stresses the point that medieval translation is a complex phenomenon, and often moves from the vernacular as a source language; however, the essay argues that the presence of a female author or audience does not necessarily imply the existence of a preceding vernacular version.

Decentering Rushdie: Cosmopolitanism and the Indian Novel in English, Pranav Jani, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2010

Abstract Decentering Rushdie argues that postcolonial studies has consistently underestimated the investment of the English-language Indian novel in the nation by focusing on a handful of texts that conform to Western assumptions about the bankruptcy of the postcolonial nation-state. Taking Salman Rushdie’s work as the sign of a presumed homology between postcolonialism and a postmodern distrust of totality, Jani demonstrates that his novels are hardly representative of the range of Indian writing in English. Instead, in a series of expert readings of less well-known texts, he demonstrates the commitment to the decolonising project that exists even within the inevitably cosmopolitan worldview of Indians writing in a colonial language. Situating his work within foundational debates in postcolonial studies, this review demonstrates the fresh light he sheds on the vexed relations among historical location, political ideology and literary form.

Kucers' The Use of Antibiotics, Sixth Edition

The sixth edition of this well-known text, which now comprises two volumes, contains a wealth of information on anti-infective drugs. Despite the use of the word ‘Antibiotics’ in the title, there are sections on antibacterial drugs (i.e. antibiotics), antifungals, antiparasitic drugs and antivirals. Each section is divided into a number of parts, each focusing on a class of anti-infective; these in turn comprise a series of chapters on individual drugs. Thus, for example, the antibiotics section has a part on aminoglycosides, which comprises chapters on kanamycin, gentamicin, tobramycin, amikacin, sisomicin and netilmicin, isepamicin and neomycin. The individual chapters broadly follow a uniform format with information on chemical structure, spectrum of antimicrobial activity (including emergence of resistance), mode of action, administration and dosage, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, toxicity and clinical use. Thus, it is a useful source of information for both the laboratory worker (in either a research or routine laboratory) and the practising clinician. As one would expect from an ASM publication, the book is well designed, with plenty of headings and sub-headings that break up the text and enable the reader to easily navigate each chapter. Many of the chapters contain tables in which information is laid out in a user-friendly form and all the chapters are extensively referenced. The diagrams, most commonly showing the chemical structures of individual drugs, are uniformly of high quality. The only minor criticism this reviewer has is to suggest that some introductory chapters providing background information on general topics such as pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics might be valuable to those less familiar with the subject. Given the vast amount of information available in the 258 chapters that go to make up this new edition, the two print volumes unfortunately suffer from the fact that they each weigh just under 4.5 kg, which is a disincentive to carrying them around (not to mention the requirement for a sturdy bookshelf). However, this is compensated for by the availability of an ebook, a format also more likely to appeal to the new generation of scientists and clinicians interested in antimicrobial chemotherapy. Having had the opportunity to review this book, I feel I should mention the point made by Professor Robert C. Moellering Jr in his foreword, where he congratulates the co-editors and authors on a monumental achievement. This is a sentiment that I fully endorse.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: ‘Gothic’s Death Drive’

This guide accompanies the following article: Farnell, Gary. Gothic’s Death Drive. Literature Compass 8/9 (2011): 592–608, DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2011.00823.x Further Reading A more detailed account of the Freudian death drive than the one I provided, but also formulated within the field of Gothic studies, is available in the form of the fourth chapter of Fred Botting’s book Limits of Horror (Manchester University Press, 2008). Botting brings out well how the death drive appears transversal to what is Sigmund Freud’s most famous discussion of it formulated in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). Botting is concerned to argue as well that psychoanalysis, with its mental apparatuses and the like, is of a piece with much of the technological modernity of its day, ‘though not cinema’, he says. I am a little sceptical about this last point, given my own reading of the death drive from Jacques Lacan’s suggestion that, in Freud, this death drive is ‘structured like a montage’. But aside from this, Botting is good at explaining the nature of the death drive as being irreducible to either nature or culture – something I tried to convey through reference to the death drive’s sublimity. As regards the current state of Gothic studies as a contemporary field of enquiry, a new book which is starting to establish itself as a guide to, specifically, 21st-century Gothic is (the aptly titled!) Twenty-First-Century Gothic, a collection of essays edited by Brigid Cherry, Peter Howell and Caroline Ruddell (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010). In particular, there is an essay here, ‘The Fall of the Hou$e of Finance’, by Brian Jarvis, which draws attention to just how conspicuous is a type of Gothic discourse – references to ‘shadow banking’ and the like – in media coverage of the current financial crisis. The way that Gothic is used in this regard as a means of conceptualization, now with zombies rather than vampires as pivotally important, seems to me to be an important subject to address (the zombie is typically the eschaton-made-flesh). And so, taking a cue from Jarvis’s essay, I have written a new essay on ‘Gothic and the Present Crisis’, which I hope will appear in the public domain soon. Useful Links Perhaps it is not too much to say that the home of Gothic studies in cyberspace is the International Gothic Association website that offers a great deal of up-to-date information to both Association members and non-members alike, at http://www.iga.stir.ac.uk. Because approaches to the Gothic from the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis are not uncommon (my own work comes into this category), see also the following: http://www.lacan.com. Syllabi In a way, ‘Gothic’s Death Drive’ amounts to a call for more study of Gothic texts in conjunction with their imitation-texts. This is the case in respect of Walpole’s Castle of Otranto and the Aikins’‘Sir Bertrand’, as well as Reeve’s The Old English Baron. Among other things, this helps to bring less well-known texts (such as the last two mentioned here) more into the foreground. But this general proposal might be to encourage as well, of course, the study of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho as it is famously imitated in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, as well as in the opening chapter to Walter Scott’s Waverley. Either way, the crucial point, as argued in ‘Gothic’s Death Drive’, is that literary imitation gives expression to precisely that ‘compulsion to repeat’ that is constitutive of the death drive itself, which is then framed in this way as our key object of study. Lastly, ‘Gothic’s Death Drive’ also carries the suggestion that Gothic-Romantic literature sees a remarkable proliferation of figures who are ‘between two deaths’ (e.g. Alfonso and Theodore [in Otranto]; the lady languishing in the castle [in ‘Sir Bertrand’]; Edmund Lovel [in The Old English Baron]; the Ancient Mariner [in Coleridge]; Frankenstein’s Monster [in Mary Shelley]; and Melmoth the Wanderer [in Maturin]). There is the material here for an extended course of study that might investigate what is revealed to us about Gothic-Romantic literature from the historic growth of this extraordinary ‘between two deaths’ condition.