Showing papers on "Theme (narrative) published in 1977"

Constructivist Approaches in Educational Research

Abstract: This review briefly examines what will be called a "constructivist" theme in the history and philosophy of the social and behavioral sciences, outlines a rationale for such studies in education today, and evaluates some applications. It is probable that such views will rapidly gain credibility in the decade ahead for educational researchers, much as cognitive views gained acceptance in the parent disciplines of psychology and sociology within the last two decades. The development of the fields of cognitive psychology and sociology is not clearly understood by most educational researchers, but represents the adoption of somewhat nontraditional values regarding what the important phenomena are in the social and behavioral sciences. These values need to be briefly described and examined at the outset, but will also be reconsidered in more detail from time to time in the discussion. The constructivist perspective holds as a chief assumption about much complex behavior that the "subjects" being studied

Variations on a theme of liminality

Abstract: The preparation and use of bis( mu -diphenylphosphido)tris(triethylphosphine)dinickel and tris(triethylphosphine)(triphenylphosphine)nickel is disclosed.

The origin of Christology

Abstract: Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1 Four well-known descriptions of Jesus 2 The corporate Christ 3 Conceptions of Christ in writers other than Paul 4 The scope of the death of Christ 5 The fulfilment theme in the New Testament 6 Retrospect 7 Prospect: the 'ultimacy' of Christ Excursus Index of references Index of names

The Theme of Gloria in Machiavelli

Abstract: In chapter xxv of Il Principe, Machiavelli refers very briefly to men's goals, saying that ‘in the things that lead to the end that everyone has in view, namely glory and riches (cioe glorie e ricchezze), men proceed in different ways.’ L. Arthur Burd observes that ‘Machiavelli dispatches in this one short sentence a question which was usually discussed at length in the earlier political manuals: what is it, namely, that furnishes the motives of action?’ Glory was one of the most important ideas in Renaissance thought, and Machiavelli's thought can be understood only imperfectly if the part that gloria played in it is not grasped; yet inexplicably this theme has been almost entirely neglected.

Morality and architecture

Abstract: Development of a theme in architectural history and theory from the gothic revival (pugin and viollet-le-duc) to the modern movement.

Marital Discord in English Comedy from Dryden to Fielding

Abstract: Marital discord in English comedy goes back at least as far as Noah's wife and remains a common theme in twentieth-century drama, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf being an obvious example. Nonetheless the subject has been little studied. We still tend to think of comedy in terms of a boy-gets-girl romance pattern or, more broadly, a structure encompassing a movement from adversity to prosperity.1 But many "comedies" do not present such a structure (Volpone, Le Misanthrope), and marital discord is a significant theme in, and even a focus for, a surprising number of plays. This is particularly true in the years around 1700, when a rising debate about the legal status of women and reform of the divorce laws made the subject topical. The myth is still current that "Restoration comedy" is hostile to marriage. In the common "gay couple" pattern, both male and female rail against marriage, vowing to remain free-the male insisting on his libertinism, the female on her independence. But even there love usually conquers wanderlust, and witty antagonism is abandoned for the deeper satisfactions of living happily ever after. Thus romantic convention is almost always served, even when the love-duel is seriously used to suggest the difficulty of making a good and viable marriage. In many plays a "proviso scene" is used to suggest the working out of a satisfactory marital arrangement-the most famous, of course, being the one in Congreve's The Way of the World (1700), in which Millamant wonders if she must "dwindle to a wife." Occasionally, however, a playwright will take a hard look at what happens after marriage, as in Otway's bitter The Atheist (1683), Southerne's brilliantly nasty The Wilres Excuse (1691), or Vanbrugh's The Provok'd Wife (1697). And after 1700 "reform" comedies focusing on marital reconciliations become increasingly common. There are two reasons for studying marital discord comedy in the period delimited here. First, several of the most interesting and important plays from the 1660-1737 period have seemed peculiar and even repulsive because scholars have not fully recognized that they represent serious social commentary on contemporary problems. Second, I want to suggest that writers' views on marriageespecially as they are expressed in marital discord comedy-are an important key to the shifting ideological stances which underlie the complicated transition from seventeenthto eighteenth-century comedy. Many attempts have been made to trace the transition from "Restoration" to "sentimental" comedy, employing a variety of terms and touchstones. One of the best such studies is John Harrington Smith's The Gay Couple in Restoration Comedy.2 Smith uses the gay couple and its witty love-game as an indicator of

Remigian Commentaries on the ‘Consolation of Philosophy’ and Their Sources

Abstract: The Consolation of Philosophy may have owed its popularity to its theme of the search for the summum bonum, the eternal verity beyond the vicissitudes of everyday life, a theme particularly appealing in a period of upheaval and danger such as the tenth and eleventh centuries. But it was much more than a work of conventional piety or Christian philosophy. It was essentially a classical work and its collection of verses in different metres, its mythological allusions and Neoplatonic cosmology, as well as its more Christian discussions of fate and free will, made it a key work in the intellectual ferment of the time. But it was a difficult work, requiring a critical apparatus of elucidation and explanation before its riches could be fully appreciated. This apparatus, in the form of glosses and scholia, necessarily had to draw upon a variety of sources.

Women and the American Economy, a Look to the 1980's

Abstract: The author, recently appointed as Secretary of Commerce, has skillfully compiled a book addressing the major economic issues resulting from the changing role of women in our society. The theme for the book is derived from a 1975 American Assembly forum at Columbia University, which found that "although their activity has grown dramatically, the value assigned to women's market work remains well below

The Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics

Abstract: Since my title might appear to announce a somewhat narrow theme, I want to begin by locating the inquiry to be undertaken here within a broader setting. The supreme problem for the interpreters of Spinoza, in my judgment, is set by the first word in the title of his most noted work: Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata.1 Why did Spinoza give his work this title? Hampshire's remark,2 that the title "Ethics" is "just and essential" must have struck most readers as itself just; but whence does the title derive its justice? Surely, so all must feel, it is not simply an instance of synecdoche, masking an irreducible heterogeneity of content. If, then, the work has some sort of unity, both in its content and its unfolding development, what is responsible for this unity? What draws together into a manifest whole the seeming diversity of themes to which the book is addressed?3 To employ a Kantian distinction, the question of fact seems sufficiently and finally answered by Spinoza's own decision to give his work this name, but the quaestio juris still remains: what are the conditions of possibility that make this decision adequately conceivable? Spinoza himself provides a valuable initial clue in a clause in his letter to Blyenbergh of June 3, 1665: "Ethics, which, as everyone knows,

Participation or Alienation

Abstract: I wish to add my considerations to those of all other speakers at this Fribourg Colloquium on the theme, “Soi et autrui.” Having been honored by an invitation to participate in this Colloquium, I can contribute unfortunately only this written piece of work, for I cannot be present in person. For this I would like to extend my apologies to the organizers and the participants of this Colloquium. In a special way I wish to thank Prof. A. T. Tymieniecka for the invitation and also to Dr. H. Kochler, who undertook to write a companion paper related to mine.1

The Land and the City

Abstract: Thomas Hardy’s account of Egdon Heath is famous. His portrayal of the Heath’s indifference to human beliefs and aspirations, though orchestrated in verbal rhythms that to some extent belie its theme, was to prove a formative influence on later novelists of rural life. It is not hard to see why: Hardy made of it an unforgettable image of that alienation from past traditions, and, more significantly, from past relationships with the world of nature, that afflicted so many late nineteenth-century writers.

Willa Cather's "A Lost Lady": The Paradoxes of Change

Abstract: Critics have long recognized the pioneer theme that runs through major works by Willa Cather.' The standard interpretation of this theme is that the early novels -0 Pioneers! and My Antonia-present the nobility of the pioneer spirit; the later novels trace the decline that results from the loss of that spirit. Novels not immediately part of the pioneer series are interpreted by this theme; for example, The Song of the Lark has been said to "closely resemble" O Pioneers! and is like My Antonia in that "both depend upon a mystical conception of the frontier, and both look back longingly to the heroism of better days." 2 Such an approach carries an inherent risk of bias-of fitting the individual work into the preconceived framework. A Lost Lady has suffered especially from this critical predisposition. Shortly after A Lost Lady was published, Regis Michaud called its female protagonist, Marian Forrester, "an American Emma Bovary."3 In doing so, he announced the interpretation that has persisted to the present. According to the standard reading, the subject of A Lost Lady is Marian Forrester, and the theme concerns her betrayal of the noble pioneer values of the West. Mrs. Forrester's decline parallels the West's decline; the novel becomes an elegy for the pioneer past, narrowly linked to a specific time and place. Yet both external and internal evidence contradicts this reading. Cather is never simply a period or a regional writer. Her novels are rooted in place as surely as Joyce's are rooted in Dublin; however, just as surely, she uses a specific situation as a vantage point from which to consider universal themes. In her novels, Cather gives to the individual the task of transforming commonplace existence so that he or she may live according to "the great truths." The major pioneer novels preceding A Lost Lady present two aspects of this theme of transformation. In 0 Pioneers! Cather focuses upon the transformation itself through the relationship between Alexandra and the land. Early in the novel Alexandra progresses toward the formation of her dream in the scene on the Divide; the rest of the novel depicts her actualization of this dream. The transformation is a literal one; the land is actually shaped to reflect Alexandra's vision of it, with "order and fine arrangement manifest all over the great farm." 4 In My Antonia Cather

The American Revolution in American Romance

Abstract: W RITING ON "Late American Books" in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for September, I825, John Neal, an American novelist and critic living in England, observes that a large amount of historical fiction had begun to be written in the United States, "every month of late, nay, almost every week" yielding "a volume or two, such as they were, of tales founded, with some regard for historical truth" on the American past. "The favourite period," he goes on to say, "would seem to be that of the Revolution," though quite enough, he believes, had already been said on that subject.1 Novels of the American Revolution were, of course, not nearly so numerous as Neal's observation implies,2 but the time was right for the appearance of this kind of fiction, and American writers were quick to seize the occasion. This was, after all, the period of intense nationalistic feeling that followed the War of I8I2, a feeling that could hardly be expected to subside as the fiftieth anniversary of the Revolution approached and memories were reawakened by the grand tour of the United States made by the Marquis de Lafayette between July, I824, and September, I825. For writers of historical fiction, the time was golden. What form that fiction should take, however, remained something of a problem, for two quite different models had already appeared. In The Spy (I82I); James Fenimore Cooper had used the historical romance, derived from the work of Sir Walter Scott, as a vehicle for presenting his theme, and Cooper had used the form in two other

Language as Theme in the Wakefield Plays

Abstract: THE Wakefield Plays have long been generally praised as one of the masterworks of the English Middle Ages. Of special literary interest within this cycle are those plays and portions of plays attributed to the so-called Wakefield Master (a writer I prefer to call the Wakefield Author, if only to avoid critical judgment that begs the question). This poet-dramatist has been praised variously for his unusual "dramatic power,"1 for his "unique literary gifts,"2 for his "boisterous humor and exuberance of spirit,"3 and for his Bosch-like power of the grotesque as well as a certain "uncomfortable twist in his vision. "s4 Some call him a "medieval Aristophanes"5; others regard him "the first comedy-writer" in the English tongue.6 Those who have done full-scale critical studies of his work praise him especially for his realism of technique and language.7 What is clearly a matter of consensus is that the Wakefield Author is one of the more remarkable artists of his time, who, as dramatist and poet, towers over his contemporaries. In this paper, I wish to re-examine the work of the Wakefield Author with a view toward determining his major thematic contribution to the Towneley cycle as a whole. I shall propose that the Wakefield Author was essentially a reviser who brought a particular point of view to the body of plays on which he worked. The nature of that work can be determined initially by a close analysis of the TowneleyJudicium which survives in the York cycle in what was almost certainly his source play and to which he added well over half the extant text, some 378 lines out of a total of 664.8 His work as reviser is

Georgian poetry, 1911-1922 : the critical heritage

Abstract: This set comprises 40 volumes covering 19th and 20th 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 complements the first 68 volume set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.

The Continuity of Milton's Sonnets

Abstract: M ILTON WROTE his sonnets over thirty years, from about 1628 to 1658, and he could not have conceived them originally as a sequence. He published them in 1673, however, in an order that shows many marks of sequence. E. A. J. Honigmann, their latest editor, has argued that the sonnets constitute, though not a Petrarchan cycle, a loose unity for which precedents occur in the odes of Horace and the sonnets of Shakespeare as well as in other seventeenth-century collections like Crashaw's Steps to the Temple and Donne's Songs and Sonets. Their unity derives sometimes, Honigmann says, from continuity of subject, as in Sonnets 11 and 12, both occasioned by the reception of Milton's book, and sometimes from theme, as in 18 and 19, which both "celebrate God's terrible way with His chosen." More pervasive are "various verbal, tonal and allusive 'rivets,'" such as the word taught, which, carried over from Sonnet 12 to a similar context in 13, "mortises these two sonnets together."1 Some of these connections have always been seen; others, the "rivets," had to wait for Honigmann's microscopic eye. My own view of the sonnets is macroscopic. They are a sequence by virtue of large patterns, patterns large enough to subsume these details. The patterns are not narrative, nor need they have been: A sonnet sequence does not have to tell a story. A structure of imagery having thematic implications, a group of themes developed by one "implied author"these may make pattern enough and may tell their own "story."2 One pattern in the sonnets is visible to even the casual eye. Whether we read them in Poems, 1673, or in the modern editions based on the Cambridge Manuscript,3 we can see that the sonnets dispose themselves into three groups. First is the Italian group (2 through 6 and the Canzone), concerned with love as an inspiration to poetry and introduced by "O Nightingale," in which the poet dedicates himself to love and poetry; these are poems of youth, the poet presenting himself

Detachment and Engagement in Shakespeare's Sonnets: 94, 116, and 129

Abstract: IN AN influential essay, C. L. Barber has said that in Shakespeare's sonnets "poetry is, in a special way, an action, something done for and to the beloved."' This is an important truth about the theme and movement of the overwhelming majority of the sonnets in Shakespeare's sequence. But three powerful and pivotal sonnets, 94 ("They that have powre to hurt, and will doe none"), 116 ("Let me not to the marriage of true mindes"), and 129 ("Th' expence of Spirit in a waste of shame"), do not fit Barber's description. These poems are not actions "done for or to the beloved." Indeed, the beloved is absent from them, and the poet-lover himself is submerged; the poems are deliberately impersonal, general, immobile. Not actions themselves, they are about inaction. Nothing like them appears elsewhere in Shakespeare's sequence,2 in Petrarch, or in any of the other major Elizabethan sonnet sequences. Being so well known, the poems are usually taken as norms rather than exceptions both by the general reader, who meets with them in anthologies if not in Shakespeare courses, and by critics, who invariably acknowledge their power, their critical interest, and their central place in the canon. Their generality and impersonality encourage either discussion of them in complete isolation from the sequence or attempts to assimilate them to its story or to the larger context of Shakespeare's work. Neither approach has fully illuminated their unique qualities as poems and their unique function as parts of a sequence. The meaning and movement of Sonnet 94, the most problematic of the three, have been obscured.3 I will explore what these three sonnets are doing in their position in the sequence, examining the ways in which they react to the sonnets that precede them and are reacted against by the sonnets that follow them. The three sonnets are deliberately detached from the particulars of the relationship and from

Jacques Callot's Miseries of War

Abstract: In the last years of his life, Jacques Callot etched two series of prints illustrating the miseries of war. The first, in a smaller format and therefore called the Small Miseries of War, consists of six prints, which Callot etched ca. 1632.1 The later Large Miseries consists of eighteen prints that were published in 1633.2 Neither series is known to have been commissioned, and scholars without exception assume that Callot chose the theme himself.3 Scholars differ, however, about why Callot selected the subject and how the prints should be interpreted. Interpretations are often conflicting and none has gained wide acceptance. This study is an attempt to reexamine the problem.

Sylvia Plath and Confessional Poetry: A Reconsideration

Abstract: XX in The North Ship, and there is "that lifted, rough-tongued bell / (Art if you like)" from "Reasons for Attendance" in The Less Deceived 14 Poem VI from The North Ship; a similar loneliness is described in IV, XVI, XVIII 15 Geoffrey Thurley describes "failure" as the "great theme of all Larkin's work," in The Ironic Harvest: English Poetry in the Twentieth Century (London: Arnold, 1974), p 147 Calvin Bedient, in gentler tones, refers to Larkin's "ancient familiarity with de feat" in his critical study, Eight Contemporary Poets (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), p 70 16 "No Right of Entry," Phoenix (Autumn and Winter, 1973-74), p 107 17 David Timms in this connection remarks: "Larkin has a fine dramatic sense, within poems and within collections" " 'Church Going' Revisited: 'The Building' and The Notion of Development in Larkin's Poetry," Phoenix (Autumn and Winter, 1973-74), p 15

Three-dimensional model of social work practice

Abstract: Nancy K. Carroll, Ph.D., is Associate Professor, School of Social Work and Community Planning, University of Maryland at Baltimore. The author acknowledges with thanks the assis tance of Prof. William E. Gordon in reviewing earlier drafts of this article. The search for organizing concepts parallel tracks. The divergent views and ideas to describe and classify of Mary Richmond and Jane Addams professional social work practice has about what needed to be done and been a recurring theme in the social how it should be accomplished have work literature. Bartlett has stated epitomized the two major perspectives the rationale for this continuing effort on social work practice. On the one as follows: hand, there is social work's concern _ . , , for the well-being of the individual, The effective operation of a profes. ° . , » c who is seen as the ultimate beneficiary sion rests on a body of com on sym1 bols, ideas, and concepts through a" social work efforts. On the which the practice can be described other hand, there is the profession's and the practitioners can communiconsistent and continuing concern for cate with each other. One of the probthe well-being of larger collectivities, lems in social work has been the lack such as families, communities, and of adequate words, terms, and coneven nation.stateS) as well as for cepts to represent the important facets broad ^ issues and conditions that and components of the profession s . practice as a whole.' imPlnge on '"dividual well-being. As theories of social causation Within the general search for orgained or lost currency and the social ganizing concepts and ideas about problem was viewed as either individ professional social work practice, ual error or malfunctioning of the three specific themes have been promsystem, social work practice oscillated inent: (1) the need to identify the between primary emphasis on in common substantive elements of practerpersonal relationships—sometimes tice that provide internal coherence called "clinical practice"—and undif for the profession and a sense of proferentiated activity with reference to fessional identity for its practitioners, larger social systems and social issues (2) the need to account for the exten—traditionally called "social reform," sive diversification of professional and more recently termed "social practice in terms that are both compolicy." prehensive and succinct, and (3) the The persistence of this classic di need to locate and organize conceptchotomy, which has also character ually the substantive knowledge reized the curriculum of the graduate quired for professional practice. schools of social work, is especially This article represents a continuaremarkable in that it not only fails to tion of this stream of thought about classify practice usefully, but also professional practice. The major ways leads to invidious comparisons of the in which social work practice has preferred or even the "right" way to been thought about, described, and practice social work. Greenblatt and classified over time are examined Katkin have observed that this dichot briefly but critically, and a threeomy between clinical practitioners dimensional model of professional and those who consider themselves practice is proposed that draws on, but social change agents leads not only to is different from, these earlier formusimplified ideas about the interrela lations. The article concludes with a tionships of individuals and social discussion of the utility of this model situations, but also to simplified ideas for identifying the common elements about social work practitioners. One of professional practice, for accountsuch idea is that clinical practitioners ing rationally and economically for are not seeking change, but are the social work's extensive diversification, preservers of the social status quo, and for locating and organizing the whereas social change agents are at various bodies of theoretically based tempting to institute radical changes.2 and research-supported knowledge on Some recent efforts have been which professional social work pracmade to differentiate social work tice depends. practice with "micro" systems from Almost from its beginning, social social work practice with "macro" work has appeared to run on two systems.2 This terminology is useful

The legitimacy of educational knowledge: a neglected theme in comparative research

Abstract: I want t o ask how we come t o accept certain arrangements of educational knowledge in schooling systems as legitimate and how these legitimated curricula are sustained through time in selected nations; in what circumstances and for which groups in such nations fresh arrangements of the stock of knowledge are most likely t o occur, and how such educational changes are related t o the broader social context. The general issue of the legitimacy of educational systems, or parts thereof, has been raised by such writers as Illich, Freire, Reimer, Friedenberg and Goodman, Holt, Herndon, and Kozol for contemporary audiences. And the broad theme of the socialization functions of formal schooling systems has been of concern t o sociologists at least since the writings of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. However, this particular theme the role of educational knowledge in the socially based construction of consciousness and the relation of this educational knowledge t o different social systems has been (despite the earlier work of Karl Mannheim) rather recently raised as problematic. University-based academics, drawing mainly from European traditions of thought, especially in the sociology of knowledge, phenomenology and varieties of Marxism, have regenerated the topic as central t o the problem of cultural transmission. Philosophers and social critics, such as Jurgens Habermas and Raymond Williams; sociologists such as B. Bernstein, P. Bourdieu, Ioan Davies, P. W. Musgrave, and Michael F. D. Young; anthropologists such as R. Horton and Mary Douglas; and some comparativists such as J. A. Lauwerys, Martin Carnoy, and especially M. Scotford-Archer, Michalina Vaughan, and Richard D. Heyman have all participated in this shift in perspective. Inside this perspective, the particular question asked here focuses upon educational knowledge the kinds of knowledge selected from the general knowledge stock t o be institutionalized in schooling systems. How does i t , in particular forms, become valued and sustained; in what circumstances does it become changed; and what does a cross-national comparison of such processes and contents suggest about the reciprocal relationships between educational knowledge, social change, social consensus, mobilization and the division of labor? In many instances, the data requisite for such an analysis are not available. Even when data are available, the problems of a multidisciplinary analysis for one country are considerable; as a comparative exercise in a short paper the task is of severe difficulty. And until a more thorough theoretical and documentary analysis has been done on a n initial basis, the value of detailed empirical surveys seems doubtful. As a consequence, the analysis that follows is speculative, from