Showing papers on "Theme (narrative) published in 1975"

Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century

Abstract: A tale of four generations of an oil-rich family trying to live out the century without drawing blood under the unblinking Texas sky. Hiram, the family's patriarch, is a rich sonofabitch who was loved by every woman he ever met - and some who only heard of him. Hiram is a teller of tales, a cowboy.

Socialism, Capitalism and Economic Growth

Abstract: These essays were written in 1969 to mark the retirement of Maurice Dobb from the Readership in Economics an Cambridge University. The contributors are economists and historians from many parts of the world. The unifying theme, economic growth and planning under socialism and capitalism, was central to the major part of Maurice Dobb's work.

African Music: A People's Art

Abstract: Engaging and enlightening, this guide explores African music's forms, musicians, instruments, and place in the life of the people. A discography classified by country, theme, group, and instrument is also included.

Marketing Applications of MDS: Assessment and Outlook

Abstract: M ULTIDIMENSIONAL scaling (MDS) has played an important role in modern marketing analysis. Since 1938, when Richardson published an abstract of the first application of MDS,1 numerous applications of the technique have been described in various social science publications. During the 1960s and 1970s, in particular, several important descriptions of marketing applications of MDS procedures have appeared in the literature. To invoke the theme of the recent cigarette commercial, it would seem that we "have come a long way, baby." Or, have we? Just what of significance has MDS contributed to marketing analysis over the past several years? Just as importantly, what is the future outlook for these techniques and what problems are most in need of research?

Afterthoughts on analogical representations

Abstract: In 19711 wrote a paper attempting to relate some old philosophical issues about representation and reasoning to problems in Artificial Intelligence A major theme of the paper was the importance of distinguishing "analogical" from "Fregean" representations I still think the distinction is important, though perhaps not as important for current problems in AI as I used to think In this paper I'll try to explain why

The economics of internal organization: an introduction

Abstract: 1. Preface * The economics of internal organization is, in some respects a new name for an old subject, the theory of the firm. The new name is, in part, an attempt to avoid some of the connotations of the earlier literature. Much of the latter focused on the question, "What do firms really maximize?" The list of answers encompassed most imaginable candidates, including "nothing." The question was not an unreasonable one and the answers were interesting, but like the question, "What does the government or the Congress maximize?" it turned out not to have a compelling answer. 1 The failure to find an objective function is symptomatic of the diversity and complexity of the environment within which firms operate and of the decisions that they make. Those who read the papers in the present issue, and the papers that follow in the next,2 will discover an enormous range of subject matter, and perhaps the absence of a single underlying theme. While I think there is a theme, in retrospect, the apparent diversity is not surprising. A modern corporation is, after all, an economy in miniature. It has a set of capital markets and a collection of labor markets (perhaps it would be best to replace "markets" with "allocation mechanisms" in order not to prejudge the issue). It has unemployment problems, is subject to cyclic fluctuations, and is concerned about the supply of money. It has its planners, forecasters, and stabilizers. It has to provide public goods and it has its problems with externalities. Becoming a specialist in the economics of the firm is clearly a formidable task. My assignment, as I understand it, is to introduce five papers and to present a view of the subject itself, albeit a personal one. I shall approach this in the reverse order by trying to characterize some of the issues and methodology of the economics of internal organization. I shall then give a brief account of each

George Orwell : the critical heritage

Abstract: This set comprises 40 volumes covering nineteenth and twentieth century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set compliments the first 68 volume set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.

A look back at Ramanujan's Notebooks

Abstract: Ramanujan's notebooks were the theme of a lecture (20) given by G. N. Watson to the London Mathematical Society in 1931. At that time, he and B. M. Wilson were collaborating on a critical edition; Watson was anticipating that the task might take a further 5 years. Unhappily, Wilson died, and the task of editing the notebooks has never been completed.

Virginia Woolf : the critical heritage

Abstract: This set comprises of 40 volumes covering nineteenth and twentieth century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set compliments the first 68 volume set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.

Persistent Myths about the Afro-American Family

Abstract: Persistent Myths about the Afro-American Family We start with Alexander Hamilton. He was neither a historian nor a sociologist. Surely he would not be classified as an expert on the history of the Afro-American family. But a single sentence of his remains relevant to the theme of this paper. "The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks," Hamilton observed nearly two centuries ago, "makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor in experience."'

Genre Film: A Classical Experience

Abstract: In their book An Illustrated Glossary of Film Terms. Harry M. Geduld and Ronald Gottesman define "genre" as a "category, kind, or form of film distinguished by subject matter, theme, or techniques." They list more than seventy-five genres of film, both fiction and non-fiction. There are categories within categories and categories which overlap and are not mutually exclusive. In light of the difficulty of accurately defining the individual genres, I would rather side-step the problem by considering the Fictional Genre Film as a single category which includes all that is commonly held to be genre film, i.e. the Western, the Horror film, the Musical, the Science Fiction film, the Swashbuckler, etc., in order to show that all of these films have a common origin and basic form. Bound by a strict set of conventions, tacitly agreed upon by filmmaker and audience, the genre film provides the experience of an ordered world and is an essentially classical structure predicated upon the principles of the Classical world view in general, and indebted to the Poetics of Aristotle in particular; in the genre film the plot is fixed, the characters defined, the ending satisfyingly predictable. Because the genre film is not realistic, because it is so blatantly dramatic, it has been condescendingly treated by many critics for its failure to be relevant to contemporary issues, philosophies, and aesthetics. Yet the truth of the matter is that the genre film lives up to the guiding principle of its Classical origins: "there is nothing new under the sun," and truth with a capital "T" is to be found in imitating the past. The contemporary and the particular are inimical to the prevailing idea in Classical thought that knowledge is found in the general conclusions which have stood the test of time. Thus originality, unique subject matter, and a resemblance to actual life are denigrated as values, while conformity, adherence to previous models, and a preoccupation with stylistic and formal matters are held to be the criteria for artistic excellence. The subject matter of a genre film is a story. It is not about something that matters outside the film, even if it inadvertently tells us something about the time and place of its creation. Its sole justification for existence is to make concrete and perceivable the configurations inherent in its ideal form. That the various genres have changed, gone through cycles of popularity, does not alter the fact that the basic underlying coordinates of a genre are maintained time after time. From Porter's The Great Train Robbery to The Cowboys or True Grit, the Western has maintained a consistency of basic content; tne motifs, plots, settings, and characters remain the same. What is true of the Western is also true of the Adventure film, the Fantasy film, the Crime film, and the Musical, or any fictional genre one can identify. Any particular film of any definable group is only recognizable as part of that group if it is, in fact, an imitation of that which came before. It is only because we have seen other films that strongly resemble the particular film at hand that we can say, "Yes, this is a Horror fMm or a Thriller or a Swashbuckler." Consciously or unconsciously, both the genre filmmaker and the genre audience are aware of the prior films and the way in which each of these concrete examples is an attempt to embody once again the essence of a well-known story. This use of well-known stories is clearly a classical practice. Homer, the Greek dramatists, Racine, Pope, Samuel Johnson, and all the other great figures of the classical and neo-classical periods used prior sources for their stories. The formative principle behind the creation of classical art has always been the known and the familiar. The Greeks knew the stories of the gods and the Trojan War in the same way we know about hoodlums and gangsters and G-men and the taming of the frontier and the never-ceasing struggle of the light of reason and the cross with the powers of darkness, not through firsthand experience but through the media. …

Theme and Style in Roman Historiography

Abstract: ‘His combination of feeling for style with historical knowledge is still a challenge to any editor of an historical text’ (Momigliano on Justus Lipsius). It is a far cry from the scholarly humanism of the sixteenth century to the complex specialism of modern scholarship, but the overlapping results of detailed research begin to call for integration or, at least, some attempt to define them in a wider context. This paper, therefore, proposes a combined exercise in the study of Roman historiography, ranging from the historian's choice of theme through its literary composition to the quality of its ultimate effect—to relate (so to speak) res, ars, ingenium. The subject is large, but the argument involves mainly precise treatment of evidence at the critical points.

Population growth: anthropological implications

Abstract: The essays collected in this book explore a new and important field of study--the interrelationship between population growth and decline and changes in technology, culture, and social organization. They were generated by a discussion of Ester Boserup's anti-Malthusian theory that the increased pressures of population on resources triggered evolutionary changes in the technology, culture, and social organization of historical agricultural societies. Each author has reacted to the "Boserup Model" both in terms of his own sets of data and his personal theoretical inclinations; yet a common theme emerges--that changes in population pressure are a "sometimes gentle, sometimes compelling [but] ever-present force" in history and society.Chapters are arranged according to the types of data they present. The first half of the book deals with agriculture as a subsistence base, while the second half treats broader problems of cultural change or intensification in the context of technological diversity. The book itself is based on a conference, "Population, Resources, and Technology," which was organized by anthropology professor Brian Spooner and held at the University of Pennsylvania in 1970.Contents: "The Evolution of Early Agriculture and Culture in Greater Mesopotamia: A Trial Model, " Philip E. L. Smith and T. Cuyler Young, Jr.; "Demography and the "Urban Revolution" in Lowland Mesopotamia, " Robert McC. Adams; "From Autonomous Villages to the State, a Numerical Estimation, " Robert L. Carneiro; "A Regional Population in Egypt to circa 600 B.C., " David O'Connor; "Population, Agricultural History, and Societal Evolution in Mesoamerica, " William T. Sanders; "Plow and Population in Temperate Europe, " Bernard Wailes; "Some Aspects of Agriculture in Taita, " Alfred Harris; "Farm Labor and the Evolution of Food Production, " Bennet Bronson; "Sacred Power and Centralization: Aspects of Political Adaptation in Africa, " Robert McC. Netting; "The Iranian Deserts, " Brian Spooner; "Demographic Aspects of Tibetan Nomadic Pastoralism, " Robert B. Ekvall; "Population Growth and Political Centralization, " Don E. Dumond; "Prehistoric Population Growth and Subsistence Change in Eskimo Alaska, " Don E. Dumond; "Population Growth and the Beginnings of Sedentary Life among the !Kung Bushmen, " Richard B. Lee; "The Intensification of Social Life among the !Kung Bushmen, " Richard B. Lee; "Biological Factors in Population Control, " Solomon H. Katz; "The Viewpoint of Historical Demography, " John D. Durand.

John Dewey and the Immigrants

Abstract: JOHN DEWEY has been the subject of comment and criticism for over three-quarters of a century. (1) Often, especially in recent writing on the history of education, the criticism has been divided between those who, to use Richard LaBreque's colorful language, see Dewey as the "good guy" and those who see him as the "bad guy." (2) Among the latter, sometimes collectively called "revisionists," are Clarence Karier, Walter Feinberg, and Colin Greer. Charles Tesconi and Van Cleve Morris have recently co-authored a book emphasizing similar themes. (3) Their attacks on Dewey and other liberals have centered around the rather vaguely defined issue of social control. (4) As Michael Katz says in his discussion of twentieth century school reform in Class, Bureaucracy and Schools, "Nonetheless, there is a darker side to the social thought of even the best progressives, notably Dewey and Jane Addams,... Briefly, the emphasis on community in Jane Addams and the definitions of democracy and experience in Dewey provide particularly subtle and sophisticated instances the widespread attempt in their time to foster modes of social control appropriate to a complex urban environment." (5) Part of the evidence for the revisionists' stand on the social control issue comes from their perception of Dewey's position on the treatment of immigrants. For example, while discussing Dewey's views about one immigrant group, the Philadelphia Polish community, Karier says, "Dewey viewed ethnic and religious differences as a threat to the survival of society, to be overcome through assimilation. Dewey, as well as other liberal reformers, was committed to flexible, experimentally managed, orderly social change that included a high degree of manipulation." (6) Greer generalizes this position to include all immigrants. (7) Morris and Tesconi continue the theme, although using different language, saying that Dewey's suggestion for the

The Limits of Reason: Poe's Deluded Detectives

Abstract: N A CANON OF FICTION preponderantly devoted to terror, madness, disease, death, and revivification, Poe's tales of ratiocination provide a revealing counterpoint in their idealization of reason and sanity. During the productive years I84I-44, Poe explored the theme of rational analysis in various ways: the three adventures of C. Auguste Dupin-"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (I841), "The Mystery of Marie Roget" (I842-43), and "The Purloined Letter" (I844)-established the prototype of the modern detective story by focusing on the investigative methods of a master sleuth. Ratiocination led William Legrand to buried treasure in "The Gold Bug" (I843) and enabled the narrator of "'Thou Art the Man'" (I844) to solve a backwoods murder; analytical operations figured less prominently in "A Descent into the Maelstr6m" (I841) and "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" (I844). But publication of "The Purloined Letter" marked the last of Poe's investigative fiction; none of the tales after I844 returned to the subject of ratiocination. Two basic questions to be considered here, then, are why Poe initially became interested in the detective story, and why, after the technical achievement of "The Purloined Letter," he abandoned the genre, reverting to the familiar materials of horror and the grotesque. The significance of Poe's ratiocinative phase can perhaps be best understood in the context of his broader thematic concerns. The search for the figure in Poe's fictional carpet has produced myriad interpretations: Patrick F. Quinn has termed the Doppelganger motif the "most characteristic and persistent" of Poe's fantasies, while Edward H. Davidson states that the "central bifurcation" in Poe lies between "two sides of the self, between emotion and intellect, feeling and the mind." Harry Levin sees the essential Poe hero as an "underground man" embodying "reason in madness," while more recently, Daniel Hoffman has identified "duplicity" or "the doubleness of experience" as Poe's chief theme.! Behind the evident

Studies in the Greek Historians: Learning through suffering? Croesus' conversations in the history of Herodotus

Abstract: The national and the human theme H erodotus has organized the vast material of his work in a way which allows him to accentuate two major themes: I. The long fight between Greeks and non-Greeks, including the question of war guilt. This subject is so important to the historian that it overrides even a major structural principle of his, i.e. the chronological succession of Persian kings. By starting his work with the Lydian king Croesus, the first man he ‘knows’ to have harmed the Greeks (τὸν δὲ οἶδα αὐτὸς πρῶτον ὑπάρξαντα ἀδίκων ἔργων ἐς τοὺς ῞Eλληνας, 1. 5. 3), Herodotus is forced to break up the continuum of Persian history at a later point of his work: having related Croesus' defeat at the hands of the Persian King Cyrus II, in 547/6 b.c. , he must make a digression to inform his reader about the earlier Median–Persian history in general and Cyrus' personal career specifically, before resuming his narrative which from now on will generally follow the chronology of Persian kings (although digressions are not banned). II. The general instability of human conditions. This theme is not referred to in the work's opening sentence which invites readers to expect conventional aspects of writing as they are expressed in the poetic tradition deriving from Homer: a writer saves human achievements from oblivion. But the theme is mentioned as soon as Herodotus, after dismissing some untrustworthy mythical constructions about war guilt (1. 1–5. 2), returns to the description of his own interests (ἐγὼ δὲ…5. 3).

The Story-Shaped World: Fiction and Metaphysics: Some Variations on a Theme

Abstract: Introduction: Metaphor and Metaphysics in Fiction Part One: Theoretical 1 Metaphor and 'Analogy' 2 Metaphor and 'Fiction' 3 Metaphor and 'Nature' 4 Metaphor and 'God' Notes to Part One Part Two: Critical Introductory 5 Lawrence and the Unseen Presences 6 Joyce and the Sense of an Ending 7 Waugh and the Narrator as Dandy 8 Beckett and the Death of the God-Narrator 9 Robbe-Grillet and the One-Dimensional Novel 10 Mailer and the Big Plot being hatched by Nature Notes to Part Two Conclusion Bibliography Index

Meaning-Levels in the Theme of Historical Decline

Abstract: Much more has been written on the idea of progress than on notions of historical decline. This may be one more indication that progress is the distinctive conviction of modern minds it is supposed to be; certainly it reflects the academic distribution of history by fief and field. Studies of the idea of progress constitute a proper academic field, complete with its classic (Bury's Idea of Progress), revisions of the classic, and syntheses of both (progress on "progress"?). Such work as there is on "historical pessimism," "the idea of decay," and the "idea" or "sense" of decadence remains quite fragmentary, without conventional boundaries or a common title. Often it has a defensive edge, as if needing to prove that losers might matter. Apologies are hardly necessary when another reason for the relative neglect may be, after all, that the language of historical decline is simply too familiar to attract attention. Neither beliefs in progress nor historical relativism seem to make much headway against commonplace talk of political, economic, or cultural "decline" and of "decadent" morals, literature, or art. Doubt has ways of springing quite as eternal as hope; and the belief in progress may actually encourage it, since criteria for measuring progress can easily be turned around to detect decline. Whatever the reason, there is room to wonder about a theme probably as old as civilization and as close as the doubting mood of the present, but not for that to be dismissed as atavism or fad. From Hesiod and Thucydides to St. Augustine and Orosius, Rousseau and Gibbon, Nietzsche and Burckhardt, Spengler and Huizinga, some of the most significant historical speculation and narrative have been phrased in terms of decline. Or so it might be argued. But since it is not yet clear what the argument would be about, it might be useful at least it keeps first things first to ask what it means to speak of historical decline.1

The Poem as Act: A Way to Reconcile Presentational and Mimetic Theories

Abstract: elements The mind is enclosed in a physical space and bodily af fections, yet the physical space seems to become at the same time enclosed in an act of mind The central function of the series of appositions is to re gather the physical qualities of light while extending the idea of lighting a light into a realm of metaphor where it will ultimately by paralleled to God's creative "Fiat lux" The appositions progress from "warmth," a physi cal quaUty of Ught which nonetheless only comes to consciousness through the "shawl" metaphor, to "power," a term with both physical and spiritual qualities, to the spiritual realm where one acclaims "a miraculous influ ence" (Notice also that the series moves from bare nouns to one modified by an adjective as the spiritual expansion involves the emotions, and that indefinite articles give way to a definite one, suggesting how on the level of imagination various specifics share the determining influence ) The fourth stanza introduces the second half of the poem by placing the miraculous influence back into the immediate scene "Here, now" echoes EUot's phrase for the sexual incarnational presence of the word Indeed this full acceptance and celebration of the immediate present is probably the single most important triumphant theme in modern poetry And Stevens follows the exclamation with an exphcit reference to feeling in order to express the effect of the abstractions on the speaker's concrete self But the celebration also moves in another direction As Hegel tells us, the expres sions "here" and "now," so dear to empirical philosophy, are really quite abstract terms; they simply express a mental state unless defined by physical coordinates And this is precisely Stevens' point: "here, now" re fers to a sense of presence, but one which is located at once in a possible concrete room and in the act of forgetting empirical reaUties as one is car ried into an awareness that a transcendent order is also present Stevens is playing here with the metaphor of incarnation?an initial sense of sexual presence becomes also a secular awareness that a transcendent order enters the flesh and transforms it The fifth stanza makes explicit the synthesis which the poem has been preparing and, through the ellipses, dramatizes the changes in mental ac tivity as the mind comes to recognize where it stands The first two lines present the mind returning in a casual way to the limits of abstraction ("we

The Female Initiation Theme in American Fiction

Abstract: One of the classic motifs in all literatures is that of initiation. The archetypal pattern of the initiation story, in the broadest sense, presents an innocent young person, inexperienced in the ways of the world and uncertain of his own role in that world, who, through some experience or series of experiences, awakens from his innocence and approaches or perhaps even crosses the threshold of adulthood, maturity, and selfawareness.1

"Citizen Kane", "The Great Gatsby", and Some Conventions of American Narrative

Abstract: It is widely thought that what finally characterizes American literary narratives is a preoccupation with Americanness If the "great theme" of European fiction has been "man's life in society," Walter Allen writes in The Modern Novel, "the great theme of American fiction has been the exploration of what it means to be an American" The best American film narratives also seem to bear out this proposition, especially those of the great American naturals like Griffith and Ford and Hawks, and most especially Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941), regarded by many as the greatest American film Welles' film belongs to that category of narratives which take a prominent figure from contemporary American life (here William Randolph Hearst) and use him to stand for what are conceived to be representative traits of the collective American character Understandably, then, there are many general resemblances in the film to other well-known stories of American entrepreneurs, magnates, and tycoons Long before the flourishing of tycoon biographies in the American sound film, well before F Scott Fitzgerald or Sinclair Lewis or Theodore Dreiser, before even Henry James, certain conventions and associations had become well established in stories of this type The up-and-coming young American was shrewd and practical, an image of compulsive energy, a man with his eye always on the future His Americanness also consisted of such traits as enterprise, indomitable idealism, a certain naturalness and openness to experience, and a relentless will to succeed His geographical origin could be made to carry moral force, and he or another character who equated American commerical noblesse oblige with universal morality could be a useful thematic touchstone

Winter's Tales

Abstract: If one theme unifies the 11 tales collected here, it is that of longing. Written after her return from Kenya and during the dark days of the Nazi occupation, they derive their themes and locales from Isak Dinesen's childhood in Denmark. Isak Dinesen was the pen-name of Karen Blixen, who was born in Rungsted, Denmark in 1885. After studying art at Copenhagen, Paris and Rome, she married her cousin, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, in 1914. Together they went to Kenya to manage a coffee plantation. After their divorce in 1921, she continued to run the plantation until a collapse in the coffee market forced her back to Denmark in 1931.

Individual and community : variations on a theme in American fiction

Abstract: The contributors to Individual and Community attempt to illuminate aspects of the individual-community relationship. Though different in focus and approach, the essays themselves express a "community" of concern, a concern which includes not just the situations of characters in fictional worlds, but one which touches the relationship of both novelists and reader to a world of words. The essays are intended to point to the continuity of an important theme in American fiction and to offer insight into the variety of philosophical and literary strategies utilized in significant works of significant authors in dealing with the question of the individual and the community.

Biracialism, the "central theme" thesis, and the emergence of southern sectionalism

Abstract: In a recent comprehensive survey of Southern sectionalism, the late Charles S. Sydnor expressed the conviction that by the year of the Missouri Compromise, and indeed throughout the decade of the 1820s, clear and distinctive differences between the North and South are discernible. But as Sydnor wisely recognized, it is seldom given to contemporaries to perceive and understand the history they are living. Differences there were, but &dquo;contemporary Southerners seemed to be comparatively unaware of that fact.&dquo; In short, &dquo;the sense of oppression and sectional patriotism that were soon to appear had not yet become visible&dquo; (1948: 32, 156). The burden of the present essay is to argue the thesis that Southern nationalism emerged full-blown in the two score years between 1836 and 1856, to describe how this change manifested itself and why it developed.