Showing papers on "Theme (narrative) published in 1984"

Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument

Abstract: This essay proposes a theory of human communication based on a conception of persons as homo narrans. It compares and contrasts this view with the traditional rational perspective on symbolic interaction. The viability of the narrative paradigm and its attendant notions of reason and rationality are demonstrated through an extended analysis of key aspects of the current nuclear war controversy and a brief application to The Epic of Gilgamesh. The narrative paradigm synthesizes two strands in rhetorical theory: the argumentative, persuasive theme and the literary, aesthetic theme.

Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives

Abstract: Professor Trible focuses on four variations upon the theme of terror in the Bible. By combining the discipline of literary criticism with the hermeneutics of feminism, she reinterprets the tragic stories of four women in ancient Israel: Hagar, Tamar, an unnamed concubine, and the daughter of Jephthah. In highlighting the silence, absence, and oppostition of God, as well as human cruelty, Trible shows how these neglected stories-interpreted in memoriam-challenge both the misogyny of Scripture and its use in church, synagogue, and academy.

Observers Observed: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork

Abstract: History of Anthropology is a new series of annual volumes, each of which will treat an important theme in the history of anthropological inquiry. For this initial volume, the editors have chosen to focus on the modern cultural anthropology: intensive fieldwork by "participant observation." "Observers Observed" includes essays by a distinguished group of historians and anthropologists covering major episodes in the history of ethnographic fieldwork in the American, British, and French traditions since 1880. As the first work to investigate the development of modern fieldwork in a serious historical way, this collection will be of great interest and value to anthropologist, historians of science and the social sciences, and the general readers interested in the way in which modern anthropologists have perceived and described the cultures of "others." Included in this volume are the contributions of Homer G. Barnett, University of Oregon; James Clifford, University of California, Santa Cruz; Douglas Cole, Simon Frazer University; Richard Handler, Lake Forest College; Curtis Hinsley, Colgate University; Joan Larcom, Mount Holyoke College; Paul Rabinow, University of California, Berkeley; and the editor.

Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister"

Abstract: Translators' Foreword Part One: Poetizing the Essence of the Rivers The Isther Hymn 1. The theme of the lecture course: remarks on Holderlin's hymnal poetry 2. Hymnal poetry as poetizing the essence of the rivers Review 3. The metaphysical interpretation of art 4. Holderlin's poetry as not concerned with images in a symbolic or metaphysical sense. The concealed essence of the river 5. The river as the locality of human abode Review 6. The rivers as "vanishing" and "full of intimation" in "voice of the People" Review 7. The river as the locality of journeying and the journeying of locality 8. The questionableness of the metaphysical representation of space and time 9. Becoming homely as the care of Holderlin's poetry-the encounter between the foreign and one's own as the fundamental truth of history-Holderlin's dialogue with Pindar and Sophocles Part Two: The Greek Interpretation of Human Beings in Sophocles' Antigone 10. The human being: the uncanniest of the uncanny. (The entry song of the chorus of elders and the first stationary song) Review 11. The poetic dialogue between Holderlin and Sophocles 12. The meaning of (Explication of the commencement of the choral ode) Review 13. The uncanny as the ground of human beings. (Continued explication of Review 14. Further essential determinations of the human being Review 15. Continued explication of the essence of the 16. The expulsion of the human being as the most uncanny being. (The relation of the closing words to the introductory words of the choral song) Review 17. The introductory dialogue between Antigone and Ismene 18. The hearth as being. (Renewed meditation on the commencement of the choral ode and on the closing words) Review 19. Continued discussion of the hearth as being 20. Becoming homely in being unhomely-the ambiguity of being unhomely. The truth of the choral ode as the innermost middle of the tragedy. Part Three: Holderlin's Poetizing of the Essence of The Poet as Demigod 21. Holderlin's river poetry and the choral ode from Sophocles-a historical becoming homely in each case 22. The historically grounding spirit. Explication of the lines: "namely at home is spirit not at the commencement, not at the source. The home consumes it. Colony, and bold forgetting spirit loves. Our flowers and the shades of our woods gladden the one who languishes. The besouler would almost be scorched" 23. Poetizing the essence of poetry-the poetic spirit as the spirit of the river. The holy as that which is to be poetized 24. The rivers as the poets who found the poetic, upon whose ground human beings dwell 25. The poet as the enigmatic "sign" who lets appear that which is to be shown. The holy as the fire that ignites the poet. The meaning of naming the gods. 26. Poetizing founding builds the stairs upon which the heavenly descend Concluding Remark-"Is There a Measure on Earth? Editor's Epilogue Translators' Notes Glossary English-German German-English

Inside Plea Bargaining

Abstract: The empirical materials presented in preceding chapters can be tied together by treating a theme sketched at the outset—plea bargaining as an “inside” activity. Such treatment also flags other issues to be explored.

The other : studies in the social ontology of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Buber

Abstract: The theme of intersubjectivity--the relationship of "I" and "Other"--has dominated philosophy in the 20th century. In "The Other," Michael Theunissen establishes himself as a first-rate interpreter and critic of modern continental philosophers who have explored this theme.Theunissen examines the I-Other relationship from a historical and philosophical perspective, focusing in particular on the distinctions between transcendentalism and dialogicalism in the approaches to "Otherness" taken by Edmund Husserl and Martin Buber. Theunissen then uses these broad contrasts to uncover the basic philosophical underpinnings of various modern approaches to intersubjectivity. His examination of the work of Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre, and Buber is followed by essays on the work of Alfred Schutz and Karl Jaspers. The book concludes with a postscript in which Theunissen reassesses his previous critique of transcendentalism and offers a moderated approach to dialogicalism.This book is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse

Abstract: Eighteen essays by leading scholars in English, speech communication, educa-tion, and philosophy explore the vitality of the classical rhetorical tradition and its influence on both contemporary dis-course studies and the teaching of writing. Some of the essays investigate the-oretical and historical issues. Others show the bearing of classical rhetoric on contemporary problems in composition, thus blending theory and practice. Com-mon to the varied approaches and view-points expressed in this volume is one central theme: the 20th-century revival of rhetoric entails a recovery of the clas-sical tradition, with its marriage of a rich and fully articulated theory with an equally efficacious practice. A preface demonstrates the contribution of Ed-ward P. J.Corbett to the 20th-century re-vival, and a last chapter includes a bibli-ography of his works.

Conjectural History and Scottish Philosophers

Abstract: "Conjectural history" is used here to "denote any rational or naturalistic account of the origins and development of institutions, beliefs or practices not based on documents or copies of documents or other artifacts contemporary (or thought to be contemporary) with the subjects studied." Many recent historians have focused on the apparent emergence within Scotland of a large number of sophisticated conjectural histories around i750, and analysed them within the framework of a Marxist-oriented social science. This paper argues that such a perspective is "inappropriate and misguided." If one looks at these works as an outcome of what went before, rather than a forerunner of what came after, they begin to lose their modernistic flavour. Conjectural histories of the Scottish Enlightenment were based essentially on four sources: the Bible and its commentaries, the classics, modern works of philosophy and travel accounts. Each had an influence on the works produced. The parallels between the Biblical and the secular conjectural histories are, for example, instructive and it is clear that no Scottish historian could consistently hold a doctrine of economic deter- minism or historical materialism and still reconcile this position with his Calvinist beliefs. Works such as Lucretius' On the Nature of Things had influenced the con- jectural histories of the Renaissance and continued to be used by the Scots just as they were by the English deists, whose speculations about historical development were also helpful to Scottish writers. Travel accounts provided information concerning mankind at various stages of civilization, but no explanation of the developmental process. While the study of history was a popular pursuit during the Scottish Enlightenment this inte rest followed trends on the continent and elsewhere. Furthermore, an examination of the great works of this period suggests that they were firmly based on the writings of scholars of a generation before. Certainly the leading writers of the "golden age" from roughly 1730 to 1790 gave a more sophisticated, detailed and elaborate treatment cf these ideas, but the sources, problems and concepts which they elucidated were not new. In their analyses, they did not employ historical materialism or economic determinism, though they were undoubtedly more political-economic, dynamic and secular in their attitude. They desired change for Scotland out of a patriotic regard for the comparative backwardness of their country, but the causes and cures for that condition were not fundamentally economic in nature. If these writings are examinedas a unit, and seen in context, the conjectural historians of the Scottish Enlightenment appear to be an understandable outcome of their intellectual milieu. The author supports this conclusion by a close examination of the work of Hume and Smith. This further explicates his theme that a nascent economic determinism was not the impetus for this writing that recent historians have read into these works.

Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame

Abstract: "The House of Fame" is one of Chaucer's most intellectually challenging poems, drawing on diverse traditions such as dream poetry and mythology, but unified by the central concept of 'Fame'. It is this concept, and the 'imaginary world' which surrounds it, which Professor Boitani explores in this volume in the "Chaucer Studies" series. He begins with a brief outline and discussion of the poem, showing what problems it poses, and then turns to explore the 'history' and meaning of the idea of 'Fame', such as Chaucer might have received from tradition, a quest which leads him into Biblical, classical and Anglo-Saxon literature, into philosophy and into romance. He then examines the view of 'Fame' in Chaucer's Italian, French and English contemporaries, and shows that it is a central theme not only in Dante's "Divine Comedy" but also in the work of Boccaccio and Petrarch. The second half of the book returns to Chaucer's poem and examines the imaginary world which he constructs around Fame. Professor Boitani demonstrates that "The House of Fame" is in a sense Chaucer's creative manifesto, centred on 'Fame' as the goddess of language, myth and poetry, with poets as her prophets. In this poem, he defines many of the themes - love and nature, order and disorder, fortune and chance, reality and appearance - which occupied him in his other works. Here he deals with them directly rather than obliquely, revealing the formative influences behind his own imaginary world and mythology.

Principles and Practice of Clinical Gynecology

Abstract: The literature has been replete with the staid standard textbooks of gynecology. Here, indeed, is a book not only written about and in part by women, but also beautifully dedicated to two women—the authors' wives. Besides the usual chapters on anatomy, reproduction, endocrinology, and malignancy, there is one on "Women in Modern Society," with four parts— "Legal Issues in Gynecology and Obstetrics," "Femaleness," "Sexuality," and "Rape." "Legal Issues in Gynecology and Obstetrics," is by Angela Holder, associate clinical professor of pediatrics (law) and counsel for medicolegal affairs at Yale. Dr Holder sets the theme by stating that the overriding standard of care is simple respect for the patient's dignity and personhood. That ethical principle is the source of all the patient's legal rights. Dr Holder discusses abortion, prenatal diagnosis, amniocentesis, genetic counseling, abandonment, and advice to minors. Another chapter by Mary Swigar, Department of Psychiatry at Yale, discusses basic aspects

Desert Isles & Pirate Islands: The Island Theme in Nineteenth-Century English Juvenile Fiction: A Survey and Bibliography

Abstract: Desert Isles & Pirate Islands examines the development of the island theme in nineteenth-century English juvenile fiction. The earliest island stories, Robinsonnades designed to teach both piety and natural history, gave way in mid-century to adventure stories with their primary emphasis on excitement and entertainment. By the end of the Victorian era, while elements of the Robinsonnade still featured in adventure fiction, the island story accommodated other traditions. It was particularly in the periodicals known as 'penny dreadfuls' that the island story became a lively and often lurid tale of pirates and their buried treasure. The book contains a detailed 505-item bibliography of stories on the island theme appearing in England from 1788 to 1910. Sixty-five illustrations reproduced from contemporary children's books and periodicals depict typical characters, situations and motifs in this fiction.

The Fiction Is That Reality Exists: A Constructivist Model of Reality, Fiction, and Literature

Abstract: No scientific analysis of the theme "The Structure of Reality in Fiction" can proceed without a basic clarification of the notions "reality" and "fiction." Any discussion of this or related subjects necessarily entails far-reaching ontological, metascientific, and object-theoretical concepts and models (cf. S.J. Schmidt 1976, 1980-1982, 1980a). In this paper I will outline a theoretical frame within which these notions will be explicated, thus avoiding idle metaphysical or metaphorical chat. This theoretical frame is based on the empirical work of constructivist scientists (e.g., Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco Varela, Ernst von Glasersfeld, Heinz von Foerster, Ruprecht Riedl, and others). Since literary scholars tend not to be familiar with constructivist epistemology and its empirical foundation, I have undertaken the following excursus into biology and physiology in the hope that it will help clarify the differences between constructivist positions and those which have been developed without empirical (scientific) foundations in the history of philosophy (e.g., solipsism). Moreover, a detailed account of constructivist epistemology may help prevent possible misunderstandings of my conception of literature, fiction, and reality. It must be emphasized beforehand, however, that the following discussion does not present completely novel thinking. For instance, certain scientists have at various times maintained that meaning is a matter of convention and subjectivity. But such assumptions, as a rule, lack a consistent theoretical and empirical base, nor has it been made clear what conclusions can (could, should) be drawn from them.

Focus and Dialogue Games

Abstract: The present paper, long as it is, is an excerpt of a monograph manuscript entitled Dialogue Games — A Game-Theoretical Approach to Text Linguistics. As the name indicates, the more comprehensive work develops the intonational ideas presented here in the wider perspective of a game-theoretical theory of textual concepts (such as theme, rheme, topic, old vs. new information, textual connectedness)*.

Evelyn Waugh : 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 voulme set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.

The Theme and Structure of Philippians

Abstract: Among exegetes, Philippians has been sort of a "Rubik's Cube" of the Pauline literature. Many times it has been twisted, turned, and rearranged as scholars have attempted to make the best sense they could of it. They have sensed that the book has no central theme systematically developed in a logical argument throughout the epistle. "Since the early days of historical critical research, exegetes have had difficulty finding any main theme or a line of argument in Philippians." While there have been exceptions, this difficulty has generated three responses among interpreters. With the exception of Lohmeyer, most interpretations of the epistle can be categorized as follows. First, many commentators hold that because of the emotional and hortatory nature of the letter, no central idea or inner logical coherence is really necessary. Being a personal and friendly letter, Paul skips from one subject to another as various topics come to mind. To anyone reading this epistle as a familiar letter of Paul to a greatly beloved church, intended to inform them concerning his own circumstances, to thank them for their generous care for him, and to give such counsel as his knowledge of their condition might suggest, its informal and unsystematic character and its abrupt transitions from one theme to another will appear entirely natural.

Some Observations on the Theme of Chastity in The Changeling

Abstract: THOMAS Middleton’s More Dissemblers Besides Women (1615) opens thus: “To be chaste, is Womans glory, / ’Tis her fame and honors story.” Sung offstage in the theater, this value-laden declaration may be read in the study as both a literary leitmotifand a major social truism of the seventeenth century. The jewel of woman’s chastity was of great price partly because it was so susceptible to being lost or stolen. In fact, this essential truth underlies C. B. Watson’s observation “that the theme of feminine infidelity was one of the most popular and yet most serious themes of Shakespeare’s age.”’ Watson’s statement, in turn, provides a good frame in which to view B. J. Baines’ more specific reference to “The almost obsessive concern with some aspect of honor which dominates the Middleton canon”-honor for a female being “defined almost exclusively by her sexual behavior”2 From his early poem on “The Ghost of Lucrece” (1600) through his Mad World (1606), in which a mother comments on the numerous times she has sold her daughter’s virginity, through Hengist (1618), where a test for virginity is depicted onstage, Middleton continued to write on the subject. In The Changeling, his 1622 collaboration with William Rowley, however, he gives us his most important treatment of it? Throughout The Changeling the virginity of Beatrice-Joanna is a matter of concern-when the dazzled Alsemero sees her at church, when she

The Future of Criticism

Abstract: There is a particularly desolate, perhaps even inappropriate quality to a topic like "the future of criticism" when proposed for the occasion commemorating Eugenio Donato's sad death. Criticism exists only because critics practice it. It is neither an institution nor, strictly speaking a discipline. In the case of its exceptional practitioners like Donato, there is an urgent and irreducible bond between what critics do and who they are, and this bond cannot otherwise be reproduced, codified, or transmitted as "criticism" tout court. But because one acutely feels the loss of a critical style or voice as distinctive as Donato's-particularly given that his major theme was the irrecoverability of history and the melancholy inevitability of representation as memory, literature, and prophecy-there is justification for representing criticism as having a future, as much because Donato's work will have an important place in it, as because, writing against the grain of what he discovered and the fact of his death, critics need to affirm the future as something more than the continuity of a profession. The activity of doing or practicing criticism can be said to have a future in two senses. First, there is the future of a particular kind of criticism, a future intrinsic to that kind of work as opposed to all other varieties, in which certain problems are posited and then tackled by the critic with the aim-in the future-of arriving at a certain set of goals. To take a pair of classic cases, we can say that John Livingstone Lowes set out to read Coleridge in such a way as finally to be able to know everything significant there was to be known about the sources and the meanings of the poet's richest

The Uncanny and the Fairy Tale in Kubrick's the Shining

Abstract: Most critics of Stanley Kubrick's latest film, The Shining, seem to feel that he has provided so much psychological motivation for the events in the movie that he has rendered unnecessary the presence of the supernatural and extrasensory perception, thereby draining the horror from what was heralded as "the ultimate horror film." Jack Kroll says that "The sight of Torrance's endlessly repeated sentence chills you with its revelation of a man so clogged and aching with frustrated creativity that his desire to kill doesn't need to be explained by his seizure by sinister and suppurating creatures from a time warp of pure evil."l Pauline Kael asks, "Do the tensions between father, mother, and son create the ghosts, or do the ghosts serve as catalysts to make those tensions erupt? It appears to. be an intertwined process. Kubrick seems to be saying that rage, uncontrollable violence, and ghosts spawn each other-that they are really the same thing." She concludes that while the film's theme is "the timelessness of murder," "the picture seems not to make any sense."2 Both these critics go wrong in focussing on Torrance's transformation from troubled father to axe-murderer. Both Torrance's son and wife who are not characterized by rage or uncontrollable violence also see ghosts- ghosts he never sees. Like Torrance's wife, Wendy, we are torn between two people possessed, a father and a son. Kubrick places us at the very fulcrum of their opposing but related perspectives. The source of this balance can be traced to the two books Kubrick and Diane Johnson reportedly read while writing the script- Freud's essay "The 'Uncanny' " (1919) and Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment (1976). 3 Pauline Kael recognizes that Kubrick may have structured his film in terms of Freud's essay (i.e., the use of doubles, deja vu, a maze),4 but she completely ignores not only Bettelheim's book as an influence but elements in Freud's essay directly related to Bettelheim's topic. If Kubrick's intention was to focus solely on the father, it is understandable why he might read an essay about the nature of an adult's feeling of horror. But why read a book concerning the importance fairy tales have for children if the son's view of the events is not equally important? Understanding the complementary nature of both works clarifies the theme and parallel structure of the film and helps to explain the seeming contradictions even positive reviewers have criticized. Freud's essay and Bettelheim's book are complementary not merely because both explore the mind in terms of psychoanalysis but because both discuss man's relation to an animistic universe- Freud from the perspective of the adult whose beliefs have supposedly "surmounted" it or the madman who has become trapped in it and Bettelheim from the perspective of the child who begins life very much within it. Freud characterizes the animistic universe by the belief that spirits, good and bad, inhabit all things and that thoughts and wishes are all-powerful over physical reality. Primitive man thus "transposed the structural conditions of his own mind into the external world." As Freud emphasizes, each of us has padded through a stage in our development corresponding to this animistic stage in primitive man, but "none of us has passed through it without preserving certain residues and traces of it which are still capable of manifesting themselves . . . [so] that everything which now strikes us as 'uncanny' fulfills the conditions of touching those residues of animistic mental activity within us and bringing them to expression (XVII, 24041)." But as Freud mentions and as Bettelheim more extensively examines, the child still inhabits an animistic universe, and the fairy tales which reflect that universe may be frightening but are not "uncanny." The themes of the uncanny which Freud lists are all concerned with the "phenomenon of the 'double' " and are all found in The Shining: characters thought to be identical because of their similar appearance, telepathy, identification of one character with another to the extent that he forgets his own nature or substitutes the other self for his own. …

Tallis—Vaughan Williams—Howells: Reflections on Mode Three

Abstract: Herbert Howells said that the one experience which stood out as a vitally determining factor in his life was his first encounter with Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis. ‘It was after then that I felt I really knew myself, both as a man and artist. It all seemed so incredibly new at the time, but I soon came to realize how very, very old it actually was, how I'd been living the music since long before I could ever begin to remember’. This paradoxical combination of the new and the old in Vaughan Williams is worth investigation, and its effect on Howells's own music awaits full exploration. The present article can do little more than introduce the topic, but it will have served its purpose if it points the way to further investigation.

The new narrative history: how new? how narrative?

Abstract: Once again, there are wars and rumors of wars in the realm of historians and not just along the outer marches. Members of the profession are openly debating the health of their discipline, and concluding that it has lost far too much of its vibrancy and direction. To be sure, the outward signs continue vigorous. Quarterlies roll off the press with merciless regularity, while monographs proliferate like coathangers in bedroom closets. Even the tardiest book reviews appear in enough time for the volumes they praise to be acquired cheaply in remainder. Yet the uneasiness persists. The "impressive advances of a decade ago seem somehow to have faded into a cloud of detail that verges on the antiquarian," concludes one New England colonialist. "Historians do not value popular history and fail to reward it," laments a nineteenth-century specialist. Researchers are tending to "apply more powerful tools to smaller and smaller subjects," warns a twentieth-century historian. Perhaps the most touching acknowledgment of the crisis has come from a social scientist who recently called for livelier historical writing by noting, without the slightest apparent satirical intent, that "one of the pressing tasks of social historians is to bring their dissemination capacity into closer alignment with their research success." 1 Surely this is a sentiment which we may all approbate in the extreme. In any case, the remedy most often proposed in the current crisis is a return to narrative history. In 1979 Lawrence Stone noted the resurgence of such history: "descriptive rather than analytical and [whose] central focus is on man, not circumstances. It therefore deals with the particular and specific rather than the collective and statistical.... It is narrative directed by some pregnant principle,' and which possesses a theme and an argument." In 1981 Bernard Bailyn made eloquent use of the American Historical Association's annual bully pulpit to call for histories written with broader vision and greater coherence. Monographic research, he concluded, "will ultimately prove to be only as important as the historians can make it who will one day use the results . . . to write, not research reports, but history - that is, narrative accounts of large segments of the general story that help explain how

Spatial Organization as a Theme in African Studies

Abstract: Circumstances in the colonial period helped initiate a distinct African variant of the debate about regional classification. The British colonial authorities in Africa were committed to a system of administration known as 'indirect rule'. This purported to make use of 'precolonial' political institutions as the basis for colonial local government. In practice, it was a complicated and protracted negotiation, rising to a climax during the 1930s, about what in Britain would now be called 'devolu­ tion'. Central (colonial) government saw itself as lacking the power and resources to impose administration on extensive, remote, sociologically complex, but often quite densely populated districts. Local political interests were, in effect, invited to bid for a share of local government responsibilities. These negotiations were carried on in a specific anthropologicalcum-historical 'language' of 'custom' and 'tradition'. The resulting documents — e.g. the Nigerian ethnographic intelligence reports commis­ sioned by Governor Donald Cameron as a basis for the reform of 'indirect rule' in the 1930s have since been much drawn upon by historians and historical geographers.

The Sacrifice of Iphigeneia: An Example of ‘Distribution’ of a Lucretian Theme in Virgil

Abstract: In his discussion of Virgilian imitations of Lucretian phraseology Cyril Bailey examines the phenomenon of what he terms the ‘doublet’, that is, the procedure whereby Virgil imitates separate elements of a Lucretian phrase at different points in his own work. Take, for example, De Rerum Natura 1. 210–12: esse videlicet in terris primordia rerum, quae nos fecundas vertentes vomere glebas terraique solum subigentes cimus ad ortus.

Feminism as theme in twentieth-century American women's drama

Abstract: A critic of contemporary women's drama maintains that "as long as there is theatre, as long as there are women, as long as there is an imperfect society, there will be women's theatre ." Indeed, even the comedies of Hrotsvitha, a tenth-century Saxon nun, have been said to express feminist concerns. According to playwright Honor Moore, Hrotsvitha is " a dramatist obsessed with rape as a metaphor for male sin and the oppression of women." And despite Moore's claim that the exclusion of women from the camaraderie of the theatre resulted in the absence of a female tradition in play writing similar to that which exists in both poetry and fiction, she looks to her female predecessors to place current plays by women in what she calls "proper historical context," to seek "shared concerns and subjects." No doubt this playwright also seeks the confidence that Ellen Moers identifies as a vital resource for women writers who draw from the knowledge of their predecessors the self-assuredness to write. Prior to the twentieth century, unless a woman had friends or family in the theatre, or connections to secure financial backing, she had little hope of having her play produced. The theatre, after all, is part of the public domain. Until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries women had been virtually excluded. Prior to the eighteenth century women playwrights rarely had been recorded. Because women playwrights have chosen to work in a form which is intrinsically public and therefore restrictive to women, it is not surprising that the experience of woman as outsider, devalued, objectified and often

Difference : on representation and sexuality

Abstract: This exhibition catalogue documents the work of 20 international artists and comprises five essays on the theme of the relationship between representation and sexuality. The authors consider Freud's remarks on Da Vinci, examine the psychological problem of representing sexuality, resketche the rise of a new counter-cinema and its commitment to decoding social convention of sexuality, explore this theme in regard to video art, and refer to the scopic drive. Biographical notes. Circa 100 bibl. ref.