Showing papers on "Theme (narrative) published in 1999"

Entrepreneurial Risk and Strategic Decision Making It’s a Matter of Perspective

Abstract: Risk taking has long been a central theme of the entrepreneurship literature. However, research on the risk propensity of entrepreneurs has met with virtually no empirical support even though entre...

Food is fundamental, fun, frightening, and far-reaching

Abstract: JL HE theme of this paper is that food is fundamental, fun, frightening, and far-reaching. By far-reaching, I mean that food is foundational, that is, the system evolved to deal with problems of food selection is the source of many general behavioral and mental adaptations: with respect to the origin of adaptations, food is often first. After a brief introduction, I will expand on each of the concepts represented by the F words.

A Case for an Art Education of Everyday Aesthetic Experiences

Abstract: According to Featherstone (1991), the aestheticization of everyday life "refers to the rapid flow of signs and images which saturate the fabric of everyday life in contemporary society" (p. 67). A concern for everyday aesthetics arises from the societal turn towards the cultural and the simultaneous turn of the cultural towards the visual. These simultaneous shifts lie at the heart of cultural postmodernism (Harvey, 1989; Jencks, 1995). Postmodern theory draws attention to the idea that we live in a "culture society" where the once separate discourses of money making and aesthetic experience constantly implode as part of our normal daily life (Lash & Urry, 1994). Characteristic sites of everyday aesthetics include environments such as theme parks, shopping malls, city streetscapes, and tourist attractions, as well as mass media images especially on television and now on computer screens. The focus of the aesthetics of the everyday are objects, events, places, and experiences that for most of us, children and adults alike, form part of ordinary, daily life. They are neither especially refined, nor are they exotic in the sense that they belong to someone else's culture. In high-tech societies, despite unequal access, at least some sites of everyday aesthetics are part of most people's daily experience. They are mainstream. Everyday aesthetic experience has been variously described. This partly reflects the very different sites of everyday culture and partly the diverse attitudes towards their experience. Condemned by some for being superficial and self-referential (Baudrillard, 1987; Jameson, 1991), it is applauded by others for offering both immense pleasure and rich resources for the construction of identity (Johnson, 1997; Lemke, 1998). Drawing especially on theme parks, shopping malls and television, Featherstone (1991) writes of the sense of intoxication, sensory overload, disorientation, and the intensities of experience to be had where there is a playful mixing up of codes and numerous unchained signifiers. He describes everyday aesthetic experience as "calculated hedonism" (p. 59). McRobbie (1994) compares the "single, richly coded image" to one's experience of a busy everyday life where "a slow, even languid" examination is "out of tempo with the times" (p. 13). The aesthetics of the everyday "deflect attention away from the singular scrutinizing gaze ... and asks that this be replaced by a multiplicity of fragmented, and frequently interrupted "looks" (p. 13). Everyday aesthetics involves immediacy, participation, and desire (Lash & Urry, 1994). Where fine art aesthetics stresses the cultivation of distance, everyday aesthetics emphasizes involvement. Where the former delays gratification and cultivates refinement, immersion in dreamlike states and a reveling in immediate pleasure characterize the latter. The purpose of this paper is to make a case for incorporating everyday cultural sites into art education. The case is twofold. First, I argue that ordinary, everyday aesthetic experiences are more significant than experiences of high art in forming and informing one's identity and view of the world beyond personal experience. Secondly, I argue that there exists a powerful synergy of technological, economic, and social dynamics driving the proliferation of everyday aesthetic experiences and, moreover, the significance of this synergy to cultural life is set to increase. I make the assumption that art education cannot ignore these driving dynamics because they are delivering a revolution in cultural experience that sidelines, even further than today, the role of the fine arts in the lives of our students. They are inaugurating, even now, conditions that make marginal an art education that takes its reason for being the visual arts as defined by the artworld. The Ascendancy of the Everyday over the Special Fine art is said to focus feelings, beliefs and values, in a particularly intense, concise and multilayered way (Dobbs, 1998). …

Theme and thematic patterns in Spanish and English history texts

Abstract: The aim of this research project is to compare published history textbooks written for upper-secondary/tertiary study in the U.S. and Spain using Halliday's (1994) Theme/Rheme construct. The motivation for using the Theme/Rheme construct to analyze professional texts in the two languages is two-fold. First of all, while there exists a multitude of studies at the grammatical and phonological levels between the two languages, very little analysis has been carried out in comparison at the level of text, beyond that of comparing L1/L2 student writing. Secondly, thematic considerations allow the analyst to highlight areas of textual organization in a systematic way for purposes of comparison. The basic hypothesis tested here rests on the premise that similarity in the social function of the texts results in similar Theme choice and thematic patterning across languages, barring certain linguistic constraints. The corpus for this study consists of 20 texts: 10 from various history textbooks published in the U.S. and 10 from various history textbooks published in Spain. The texts chosen represent a variety of authors, in order to control for author style or preference. Three overall areas of analysis were carried out, representing Halliday's (1994) three metafunctions: the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual. The ideational analysis shows similarities across the two corpora in terms of participant roles and circumstances as Theme, with a slight difference in participants involved in material processes, which is shown to reflect a minor difference in the construal of the field of history in the two cultures. The textual analysis shows overall similarities with respect to text organization, and the interpersonal analysis shows overall similarities as regards the downplay of discrepant interpretations of historical events as well as a low frequency of interactive textual features, manifesting the informational focus of the texts. At the same time, differences in results amongst texts within each of the corpora demonstrate possible effect of subject matter, in many cases, and individual author style in others. Overall, the results confirm that similarity in content, but above all in purpose and audience, result in texts which show similarities in textual features, setting aside certain grammatical constraints.

The Poetics of Transition: Emerson, Pragmatism, and American Literary Modernism

Abstract: The Poetics of Transition examines the connection between American pragmatism and literary modernism by focusing on the concept of transition as a theme common to both movements. Jonathan Levin begins with the Emersonian notion that transition—the movement from one state or condition to another or, alternately, the figural enactment of that movement—is infused with power. He then offers a revisionary reading of the pragmatists’ view of the permeability of subjective and objective realms and of how American literary modernists stage this permeability in the language and form of their writing. Levin draws on the pragmatist and neopragmatist writings of William James, John Dewey, George Santayana, Richard Rorty, and Cornel West to illuminate the work of modernist literature. In turn, he illuminates the poetic imperatives of pragmatism by tracing the ways in which Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and Wallace Stevens capture the moment of transition—a paradoxical moment that, once it is represented in language or art, requires its own perpetual overcoming. Throughout, he explores how modernist writers, who are masters at recording such “illegible” moments of transition in their poetry and prose, significantly contribute to an expanded understanding of pragmatism and its underlying aesthetics. By linking Emerson with the progressive philosophy of turn-of-the-century pragmatism and the experimentation of American literary modernism, Levin offers new insight into Emerson’s lasting influence on later American philosophers, novelists, and poets. The Poetics of Transition will interest scholars and students in the fields of literary criticism, neopragmatism, literary modernism, and American literature.

A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms

Abstract: In clear, non-technical language, this dictionary of more than 1,000 literary terms and themes takes an expanded view of the term "literary." This book gives readers not only a traditional literary vocabulary, but also the knowledge of related theoretical, historical, and cultural terms they need in the interdisciplinary world of contemporary literary studies. New entries include: traditional literary terms and themes, such as individualism, skepticism, and the Odysseus/Ulysses theme; literary topics that have become increasingly popular in recent years, such as terrorism and prison literature; and subjects perennially popular among writers, such as alcoholism, baseball, and vampirism. Features include: fresh definitions and examples of standard literary and related terms such as meter, antagonist, and New Criticism; essays on major themes in literature such as evil, power, love, death, time, and more; terms related to multicultural and feminist literature; major contemporary theoretical terms, with clear definitions and examples; culture terms from film, television, psychology, history, and other fields related to literature; references for further reading; and extensive cross-references.

Two Traditions in the Logic of Belief: Bringing them Together

Abstract: The terms ‘epistemic logic’ and ‘doxastic logic’ were introduced by Georg Henrik von Wright in his 1951 An essay in modal logic [8], but it was not until Jaakko Hintikka published his seminal book Knowledge and Belief [4] that the discipline named by them took off. During the following ten to fifteen years epistemic/doxastic logic received a good deal of attention in the philosophical community, but towards the end of the 1970s the philosophers seem to have considered that the theme had been played out.1 As often happens, however, interest in the subject was rekindled in a different quarter: computer scientists discovered or re-invented epistemic logic, as they prefer to call the subject; at the present time it is flourishing.2

Moral theme comprehension in children.

Abstract: Although some claim that reading moral stories to children will improve their moral literacy (see, e.g., Bennett, 1993), little research has been done that bears on this question. The purposes of this study were to (a) test the idea that children can extract the theme from a moral story and (b) test for developmental differences in moral theme comprehension. Participants from 3rd and 5th grades and a university were tested on whether they understood the lessons (i.e., the moral themes) from several moral stories. They were asked to identify both the theme from a list of message choices and which of 4 alternative vignettes had the same theme. Participants also rated the set of message and vignette choices for closeness of match to the original story. Reading comprehension was used as a covariate. Developmental differences in moral theme understanding were significant even after accounting for reading comprehension.

Strategic theming in theme park marketing

Abstract: Theme parks aim to create the atmosphere of another world and it is essentially the theme which becomes the main part of a theme park experience. Thematic tourism had become increasingly popular where travel is motivated by an interest in a particular subject or area rather than by the more traditional motivations such as idyllic scenery and climate. The drawing power of theming is evident in the fact that it has, in recent years, become a catalyst for the growth of new destinations based mainly on thematic leisure.This study attempts to identify and describe a distinct and representative set of theme types and attributes in a theme park and examines the relationship between visitors’ motivation for visiting theme parks and theme preferences. Weak to moderately strong relationships were found between motivation for theme park visits by visitors and their demographics and lifestyle patterns. Given the fact the theme park industry is still relatively young in Asia, the findings of this study reinforce the n...

Memory-Theater and Postmodern Drama

Abstract: This book examines the theme of memory in a range of plays by contemporary American and European playwrights, including Samuel Beckett, Heiner Muller, Sam Shepard, Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan-Lori Parks, Thomas Bernhard, and Elfriede Jelinek. Jeanette R. Malkin proposes that postmodern drama--that is, drama since the 1970s--can be defined and examined according to the ways it recasts history and engages memories of the past. Details from our cultural and historical past are of course always fundamental elements of literature and theater: the past haunts the stage. But is the past as it is represented on stage actually the true past? In many of the plays examined in Malkin's book, the past is no longer grounded. Instead, it is a past which floats within the collective unconscious, in a place of fragmented collective identity. These plays "remember" in ways parallel to the theories of knowledge that inform them and thus become paradigms for a vision of the world.Malkin's study seeks answers to questions such as: what are the connections between contemporary drama and processes of memory? How do contemporary aesthetics shape these plays and the memories that they enact? What is remembered and how is the audience targeted? Why is memory so central to so many postmodern theater texts? In answering these questions, Malkin compellingly demonstrates how the past is made present within the double walls of memory and of the theater."A very important book that bids to be a 'must have' on the timely topic of history versus memory as it is represented in theater." --John Rouse, University of California, San DiegoJeanette R. Malkin is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theatre Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem."

Historicizing power and responses to power: indirect rule and its reform.

Abstract: X he XVIIth World Congress of the International Political Science Association in Seoul organized a number of panels on "the State of the Discipline." The panels were intended as "a series of debates on eight major concepts of the discipline." The invitation I got succinctly set out the point of view of the organizers: "We are organizing our program around a main theme of conflict and order, and doing so under two "spirits," the spirit of universality, which will allow us to examine whether political science is a universal discipline or a Western creation, foreign to the venue of our meeting, and the spirit of practicality, which will lead us to focus our discipline on useful concepts and new questions that can explain conflict, looking toward the new millenium." The setup was clear: "A Western and a non-Western scholar will address each concept analyzing it (according to his or her preference) as a Western/non-Western or as a universal concept." With an invitation so straight-forwardly provocative, I could not but accept. The program that followed listed me as "non-Western," and asked me to address the concept of "power."1 I wondered in which sense I was listed as "non-Western": as one

Commensality and poisoning

Abstract: In all societies, sharing food is a way of establishing closeness, while, conversely, the refusal to share is one of the clearest marks of distance and enmity. These points have been repeatedly made by both anthropologists and psychologists. Commensality, the action of eating together, is thus one of the most powerful operators of the social process. Commensality evokes a similar dialectical process of temporal unification and diversification. The concepts of kinship and commensality act together and are often believed to imply one another. The source of discomfort in commensality is the fear of poisoning. The Zafimaniry are as obsessed by the theme of poisoning as they are by the theme of domestic oneness. The fear of poisoning is always present when strangers are treated as close kin, and it is particularly present at feasts when large groups of people suddenly become ‘one house’ eating from one hearth.

Riding the Black Ship: Japan and Tokyo Disneyland

Abstract: In 1996 over 16 million people visited Tokyo Disneyland, making it the most popular of the many theme parks in Japan. Since it opened in 1983, Tokyo Disneyland has been analyzed mainly as an example of the globalization of the American leisure industry and its organizational culture, particularly the "company manual". By looking at how Tokyo Disneyland is experienced by employees, management and visitors, Aviad Raz shows that it is much more an example of successful importation, adaption, and domestication, and that it has succeeded precisely because it has become Japanese even while marketing itself as foreign. Rather than being an agent of Americanization, Tokyo Disneyland is a simulated "America" showcased by and for the Japanese. It is an "America" with a Japanese meaning.

Revisitando os estudos e eventos sobre a formação do nutricionista no Brasil

Abstract: This article discourses upon the formation of nutritionists in Brazil, through a historical retrospective of Brazilian and Latin-American events and studies in which debates/discussions about the formation of this professional occurred. The first part of the article is dedicated to the historical formation of nutritionists, which is inserted in the formation of professionals for the health work market, in general, also a part of the formation of a capitalist market. Afterwards, a review of the events and studies about the theme was made, through which was possible to perceive the presence of characteristic moments as well as thematic issues among them. The article ends with a discussion of the insertion of nutritionists in a wider context of health professionals in the present moment of capitalist society.

Augustine's City of God: A Reader's Guide

Abstract: 1. Cities Real and Desired 2. The Making of the Book 3. The Apologetic Tradition 4. The Theme of the Two Cities 5. The Structure of the Work 6. 'Where Were the Gods?': Books 1-5 7. Varro, Platonists, and Demons: Books 6-10 8. Creation, the Fall, and the Regime of the Passions: Books 11-14 9. The History of the Two Cities: Books 15-18 10. Final Destinations: Books 19-22 11. Influences and Sources 12. The Place of the City of God in Augustine's Writings

Race, science and medicine 1700-1960

Abstract: This is an eclectic collection of essays on the intersections between race, science, and medicine over two-and-one-half centuries. The case studies focus on British imperialism (with one exception, "A Virulent Strain: German Bacteriology as Scientific Racism, 1890-1920," by Paul Weindling). Waltraud Ernst in an introductory essay presents the papers as a look at the "heterogeneity of racial discourses," "the diversity of thinkers," "the variety of perspectives," "differences in the tenor of scientific debates," and "the different social and political forces" (p. 7). This is all very true. There are good essays in the collection, and readers will find their own favorites. It is harder, however, to find an organizing principle, or an ideal group of readers. The papers address the general theme of the relation of culture to biology and, as Ernst rightly points out, "racial discourses work well not despite their logical inconsistencies, ambiguities and mixing up of premises but because of them [italics in original]" (p. 7). However, the introductory effort to frame general questions, in order to underscore a shared theme for the essays, unfortunately remains only general. (Asking the "important question as to whether binary distinctions . . . can legitimately be sustained" [p. 6] seems to me to elicit only one possible answer, an answer that became the consensus long ago.) In publishing the book in a library edition (at $90) Routledge ensures it a selected readership. The first essay by Norris Saakwa-Mante, "Western Medicine and Racial Constitutions: [End Page 150] Surgeon John Atkins' Theory of Polygenism and Sleepy Distemper in the 1730s," underscores the racialization of disease in the eighteenth century. This was in part a result of technological changes (the development of global travel) and the initial understanding of early epidemiology. Race theory is shown to have been closely related to the understanding of sleeping sickness, as well as to the development of polygenism and later to studies of craniometry. From there on the collection follows a rough chronological order, tracing the invention of the term Caucasian and relating it to an improbable biblical exegesis as a source of scientific data (H. F. Augstein), followed by essays on colonial psychiatry in India (Waltraud Ernst) and Africa (Harriet Deacon). These are all informative essays, which add to our understanding of the particular cases. One interesting question that appears more or less explicit in various essays is the issue of hybridity, a concept that has become very popular in postcolonial studies. Here it is explored as the blurring of not only racial but also class categories: wealth has diminished racial distance, while poverty has increased it. This is analyzed interestingly by David Arnold in an essay on Bengal, "'An Ancient Race Outworn': Malaria and Race in Colonial India, 1860-1930." Arnold concludes that race was shaped by social class; thus inferiority ranking could either be reinforced or challenged depending on the correlation of race and class. Deacon, analogously, shows that the African asylum could be a place where racial stereotypes were as likely to be (somewhat) challenged as enforced. Mark Jackson writing on Down syndrome, Michael Worboys on tuberculosis, and Paul Weindling on German bacteriology inject race into relatively known stories to examine how these histories change as a result. Worboys shows that TB research in part did not support the rejection of scientific racism between the two world wars, though it did open research avenues--in particular with regard to the immune system--that challenged racial distinctions and emphasized environmental changes. Weindling begins with the racial imperialist bacteriology of the turn of the century (1900) and the support by Koch and his followers for racial science. Yet from the 1890s up to the First World War the racist construction of bacteriology was relatively benign, compared with the later developments of "virulent hostility." Mathew Thomson traces the decline of interest in racial psychology in Britain between the wars, but claims that the influence of race in alternative modernist social discourses remained important. Those larger discourses are described by Bernard Harris in "Pro-Alienism, Anti-Alienism and the Medical Profession in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain." Harris's aim is to illuminate the pro-alien sentiments, given that anti-immigrationism has been the subject of extensive literature. Especially interesting in this case is the evidence adduced by pro-immigrationists regarding the relative health of the aliens, which often was superior to the English poor, and also the significance of the environment and education in improving health.

Using Discourse Processing Methods To Study Moral Thinking

Abstract: A 16-year-old gunslinger named "Doug," who performed nine drive-by shootings in his hometown of Omaha in 1 year, considers the films South Central and Boyz'n the Hood to be affirmations of his aspirations and lifestyle (Hull, 1993). In contrast, most viewers of these films absorbed explicit lessons about which behaviors and life choices to avoid. What are the factors that lead to these radically different understandings of the same video text? Why are the "take-home" moral lessons so distinct? Combining methods and theory from two research areas—discourse comprehension and moral judgment—a research program is summarized that examines moral thinking using methods such as narrative recall, multiple-choice moral theme extraction, thinking aloud while reading, and probing for inferences while reading on computer. These studies offer a new approach to uncovering how people process moral events in discourse such as written and visual texts, persuasive messages, and real-life events.

Therapeutic functions of the real relationship in psychoanalysis.

Abstract: This paper attempts to give a comprehensive picture of the concept and therapeutic functions of the real relationship in clinical psychoanalysis. After introducing this theme, the author presents a...

The Scar That Binds: American Culture and the Vietnam War

Abstract: In The Scar That Binds, Keith Beattie examines the central metaphors of the Vietnam War and their manifestations in American culture and life. Blending history and cultural criticism in a lucid style, this provocative book discusses an ideology of unity that has emerged through widespread rhetorical and cultural references to the war. A critique of this ideology reveals three dominant themes structured in a range of texts: the "wound," "the voice" of the Vietnam veteran, and "home." The analysis of each theme draws on a range of sources, including film, memoir, poetry, written and oral history, journalism, and political speeches.

Managing Schools towards High Performance : Linking school management theory to the school effectiveness knowledge base

Abstract: This text aims to connect school organization theory with the school effectiveness knowledge base. Each chapter presents a comprehensive overview of the knowledge base on the central theme and addresses the question of what is known about the subject as a school effectiveness-enhancing condition.

The Portrait of the Lover

Abstract: There are a surprising number of stories from antiquity about people who fall in love with statues or paintings, and about lovers who use such visual representations as substitutes for an absent beloved. In a charmingly conversational, witty meditation on this literary theme, Maurizio Bettini moves into a wide-ranging consideration of the relationship between self and image, the nature of love in the ancient world, the role of representation in culture, and more. Drawing on historical events and cultural practices as well as literary works, "The Portrait of the Lover" is a lucid excursion into the anthropology of the image. The majority of the stories and poems Bettini examines come from Greek and Roman classical antiquity, but he reaches as far as Petrarch, Da Ponte, and Poe. The stories themselvesranging from the impassioned to the bizarre, and from the sublime to the hilariousserve as touchstones for Bettini's evocative explorations of the role of representation in literature and in culture. Although he begins with a consideration of lovers' portraits, Bettini soon broadens his concerns to include the role of shadows, dreams, commemorative statues, statues brought to life, and vengeful statuesin short, an entire range of images that take on a life of their own. The chapters shift skillfully from one theme to another, touching on the nature of desire, loss, memory, and death. Bettini brings to the discussion of these tales not only a broad learning about cultures but also a delighted sense of wonder and admiration for the evocative power and endless variety of the stories themselves."

"You are a number, not a human being": Israeli breast cancer patients' experiences with the medical establishment.

Abstract: In the course of interviews with Israeli women who had recently been treated for breast cancer, we found that our informants tended to offer us "treatment narratives" rather than, or sometimes in addition to, the "illness narratives" made famous by Arthur Kleinman. For the women we interviewed, treatment narratives constitute verbal platforms on which to explore what it means to be human during a period in which one's body, spirit, and social identity are undergoing intense transformations. A central theme in these narratives is the Hebrew word yachas, loosely translated as "attitude," "attention," or "relationship." The women consistently contrasted the good yachas of medical staff who treated them "like humans" or like "real friends" with the bad yachas of staff who treated them like numbers, machines, or strangers. We argue that the women used language (in various contexts) as a means of resisting the medical culture's pattern of treating patients as "nonhumans."

The stories of the family troubles of Judah and David : A study of their literary links

Abstract: This article adds some newly discovered literary links between Gen. xxxviii and the Succession Narrative (SN) to those already observed by scholars in the past thirty or so years. Gen. xxxviii is found to be dependent on and owes to the SN most of its literary components like names, plot, theme, motifs and special locutions. The literary conclusion arrived, contrary to the widely accepted traditio-historical view, is that Gen. xxxviii has no oral tradition stage before being written down. Further analysis of the story does not confirm its belonging to the J source but re-affirms its genealogical concern. The article concludes with a conjectured raison d'etre for Gen. xxxviii, namely to provide a "narrative evidence" for David's genealogical link to Judah, i.e. to prove David's Jewishness. It is further conjectured that Gen. xxxviii was probably written about the time of the emergence of the book of Ruth, which shows similar concern.

Bodies of vital matter : notions of life force and transcendence in traditional southern Italy

Abstract: Bodies of Vital Matter presents an innovative study that explores folk beliefs relating to the vital force of the human body and to the transcendence of the corporal. The time frame is the period from the unification of Italy to the Second World War. There are three principal themes of investigation. A first theme is loss of vital force believed to result from the influence of other persons and beings. Topics discussed in this context are folk medicine and ideas concerning the humours of the human body, as well as beliefs relating to "thefts" of mother’s milk, the evil eye, blood-sucking witches and the harmful influences of menstruating women. A second theme is imageries of how life energy can be replenished from external sources. Here the focus is on popular cults of grace-giving martyrs and saints, on rural sanctuaries that connect with creative natural forces, and on the celebration of Easter and the Eucharistic Sacrifice in the Roman Catholic Mass. The third principal theme is the denial of death as expressed in practices of entombment and by ideas about regeneration of new life from death; among the topics discussed are death and burial practices, the celebration of All Souls Day, and natural symbols of renewal and rebirth. Bodies of Vital Matter is based on data extracted from a comprehensive body of texts written by South Italian ethnographers and folklorists in the decades around the turn of the century, complemented by the author’s field observations in contemporary Italy. Interpretative social anthropology constitutes the theoretical framework. The comparision of customs and beliefs from hundreds of South Italian villages and towns reveals patterns of cultural meaning that could hardly be discerned in a study focusing on a single local community. The systemic cultural approach used in the study has a remarkable power of explanation. A wide variety of seemingly unrelated beliefs, practices and myths are shown to be generated by a core set of cultural presuppositions. Features of social organization are crucial to the interpretation of the ethnography. In particular, various forms of reciprocity in social interaction are seen as fundamental in shaping ideas about transference of vital force, both between individuals and from divine beings to human beings. The notion of "la famiglia" as a social unit of paramount importance is a key to the understanding of representations of corporal transcendence and family continuity.

Form Matters: Toni Morrison's "Sula" and the Ethics of Narrative

Abstract: "T~ he last decade has seen a renewal of interest in the "ethics of fiction," in the ways in which narrative poses and attempts to answer questions about how best to live in the world. This interest has been shared by philosophers as well as literary critics. In her collection of essays Love's Knowledge, the neo-Aristotelian philosopher and classicist Martha C. Nussbaum stresses the significance of literary texts in arguing for "a conception of ethical understanding that involves emotional as well as intellectual activity" (ix). Nussbaum is currently one of the most prominent promulgators of "philosophy through literature," in which "a theme that is also the object of philosophical deliberation is given literary interpretation in terms of an imaginary world artistically constructed" (Lamarque and Olsen 391). In his 1995 study Narrative Ethics, Adam Zachary Newton is equally concerned with the philosophical status of fiction, though his context is mainly Levinas, not Aristotle. Among literary critics, on the other hand, we find the old-timer and formalist Wayne C. Booth, who suggests in The Company We Keep that "there are many legitimate paths open to anyone who decides to abandon, at least for a time, the notion that an interest in form precludes an interest in the ethical powers of form" (6-7). The emphasis on the significance of form has been a recurring aspect of the renewed interest in the ethical aspects of fiction. Booth emphasizes that a writer's "choice of devices and compositional strategies is from the beginning a choice of ethos, an invitation to one kind of ethical criticism" (108). In Nussbaum's words: "Style itself makes its claims, expresses its own sense of what matters. Literary form is not

Localization and Solitary Waves in Solid Mechanics

Abstract: Localization and solitary waves in solid mechanics: an introduction to a theme published by the Royal Society of London.00