bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Chicken or egg? Global economic crisis or ideological retrenchment from welfare in three European countries
Authors: Judd Dawn , Boeckh Jurgen , Madsen Aase Mygind
Published: September 2015

As welfare states confront massive changes, these are often explained as inevitable by-products of the global economic crisis. However, many of the shifts in welfare ideology pre-date the crisis. As increasing numbers of European welfare states move towards neoliberal paradigms then this convergence is, in turn, having a marked impact on social work education and practice. Today it would appear that, to varying degrees, European social workers are driven by ever-growing managerialist objectives. Juxtaposed is the shift towards consumerism and individualism, which is manifested through various recent initiatives, including personalisation, self-directed support, ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘reactivation’. This article aims to situate European social policy and social work within a wider comparative framework, thus providing insight for an international readership. Specifically, the article outlines the nature of contemporary social work and its underpinning social policy in three European countries, namely the United Kingdom, Denmark and Germany.
“For Mark was Peter’s Tannaʾ”: Tradition and Transmission in Papias and the Early Rabbis
Authors: Yadin-Israel Azzan
Published: September 2015

The fragments and testimonia of Papias’s Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord contain a number of terms whose precise meaning remains elusive, among them auditor , presbuteroi , hermēneutēs , and parakoloutheō . These terms, and the oral-traditional ideology in which they occur, are illuminated by comparison with the terminology associated with the Pharisees and preserved in early rabbinic writings. More broadly, the ideology of received tradition preserved in the latter sources offers a better analogue to Papias’s enterprise than does Hellenistic historiography, as Bauckham has influentially argued. In addition, Papias’s explanation that he set out to collect and order the sayings of the Lord from certified tradents, marks him as an important but heretofore largely unrecognized precursor to the rabbinic establishment of the Mishnah.
Pudor et Dedecus : Rhetoric of Honor and Shame in Perpetua’s Passion
Authors: Sowers Brian
Published: September 2015

The Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis preserves the final days of five North African catechumens, their prison experiences, their trials, and multiple visions through which they interpret their imminent death. In this essay I examine three literary tropes within the Passio , patriarchy, sight/gaze, and declamation, and I place them within the context of Roman competitive rhetoric. The narrator of the Passio , I contend, employs these motifs to open an agonistic dialogue between the martyrs and their opponents (fathers, governors, animals, mobs) and, at the same time, to open a comparative dialogue between early Christian martyrs and heroes from the Roman Republic/Empire. Perpetua and her fellow martyrs exert forceful control over their accusers in word, action, and appearance. They stare down, elicit shame and embarrassment, and control events up to the very moment of their deaths. Early Christian communities constructed narratives with such dominant characters as part of wider competitive programs throughout the empire, targeting both non-initiates and rival Christian communities.
Candida: An Ante-Nicene Martyr in Persia
Authors: Strong Justin David
Published: September 2015

The Syriac passion account of Candida, a third-century Christian wife of the Persian king, has received scant acknowledgement in modern scholarship. The account of her martyrdom is valuable as an unexplored parallel to the better-known female martyrs from the Roman world, for its probable early date relative to other Persian martyr narratives and for providing a valuable window into the obscure world of early Syriac Christianity. This article aims to bring this sequestered martyr into the broader scholarly conversation about martyrdom in early Christianity through an analysis of its historical context and its literary character.
Adversus Adversus Iudaeos?: Countering Christian Anti-Jewish Polemics in the Gospel of Nicodemus
Authors: Fackler Phillip
Published: September 2015

The critique of the “Parting of the Ways” model of Jewish-Christian relations has paved the way for many new questions. How were the ideas of Christian “separatists” received in different locales? Can we recover other strategies of distinction? This essay explores these questions through a focus on the Gospel of Nicodemus . It argues that this apocryphal gospel functions as a counter-history that challenges the depiction of Jews in the Adversus Iudaeos tradition. Through its narrative, the Gospel of Nicodemus constructs the true “Israel” as a collective identity achieved only through reconciliation between Jews with divergent attitudes toward Jesus. By exploring the efforts of one late antique text to counter memories of Jesus’ death and resurrection that vilified Jews and claimed the church as the true Israel, this essay adds to the emerging picture of the fourth and fifth centuries as a period when interest in delineating Jewish and Christian identities intensified.
The Double Bind of Christianity’s Judaism: Language, Law, and the Incoherence of Late Antique Discourse
Authors: Berzon Todd S.
Published: September 2015

Is there a way to connect the polyphony of attitudes and diversity of strategies that late antique Christian authors display in writing about Jews and Judaism into a discursive whole? This essay offers one possible answer by focusing on the rhetorical effects of contradiction within Christian rhetorical constructions of the Jews. Using Eve Sedgwick’s theory of the double bind—the idea that discourses gain power over their productions through the rhetoric of incoherence—I argue that Christian writers constructed a Judaism that was marked by contradiction, ambiguity, and incongruity. With specific attention to the writings of John Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Rufinus, and the Theodosian Code , this paper shows how the construction of Christianity’s Juda ism was built upon rhetorical, exegetical, theological, and legal tensions that were neither reconcilable nor intended to be. The very irresolution of Christian discourse about the Jews—the construction of their history, cult, or tradition as fundamentally incoherent—functioned, in effect, as a form of anti-Judaism.
How to Collect Art and Influence People
Authors: Douthwaite Julia
Published: September 2015

A review of Rochelle Ziskin, Sheltering Art: Collecting and Social Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris, a book that shows how private art collecting forged the rivaling ideologies and social identities of the most powerful people in Paris, circa 1710-1740.
Clarissa’s Conjectural History: The Novel and the Novice
Authors: Hershinow Stephanie Insley
Published: September 2015

This essay focuses on Clarissa Harlowe’s stasis, especially as her story is set against the plot of development (followed by her friend Anna Howe) and the plot of conversion (followed by her executor John Belford). Clarissa not only lacks experience at the beginning of Samuel Richardson’s novel but also continues to do so until her early death, refusing to derive meaning from events or milestones that are the conventional building blocks of a life story. Rather than understand herself through her approach to marriage or motherhood, for example, Clarissa remains focused on her death, not only after her traumatic rape but even from her very first letter of the novel. This is because Clarissa evaluates herself against what Anna calls the “should-be,” a way of thinking connected to the eighteenth-century philosophical project of conjectural history. Rather than explicate historical progress, conjectural histories (including Clarissa’s) consider how a careful consideration of the origins of a particular practice or idea helps us to understand its logical path rather than its historical course. Clarissa believes that her personal “should-be” requires her early demise, a conclusion that is disturbing for the reader but that is also consistent with her repudiation of socially-imposed ways of determining her value.
What Was Enlightenment?
Authors: Snider Alvin
Published: September 2015

A review of John Bender’s Ends of Enlightenment, a collection of interdisciplinary essays that situate the realist novel in the realms of European Enlightenment philosophy and science.
Clarissa ’s Political Theology and the Alternative Modernity of God, Death, and Writing
Authors: Jackson Spencer
Published: September 2015

The following essay begins with the contention that the prolonged conclusion of Richardson’s Clarissa (1747-8) has yet to be understood. From Brian Downs, to Vivasvan Soni, to Richardson himself, critics have long overlooked the significance of Clarissa’s monastic final weeks because they have interpreted them according to a false dichotomy between divine transcendence and mortal particularity. Refusing this opposition, I frame Clarissa’s final days in the worldly terms of political theology and hail the protracted end of Richardson’s novel as the period in which he simultaneously perfects and undoes the novel tradition. Drawing from Martin Luther’s A Treatise on Christian Liberty (1520) as well as Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), I read Clarissa as a lesson in the overlooked potential for mainstream Protestantism to make modern novelistic subjects that stand against, and not merely for, the rising spirit of capitalism. While indebted to the critiques of secularism articulated by theorists such as Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida, I argue that Clarissa takes the conversation a step further. By opposing “the light of [her] own judgment” against the authority of her male attackers, Clarissa not only articulates the theological foundation of her novelistic self, but also dramatizes the separatist politics that it makes possible. Building upon Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse’s model of the domestic novel as captivity tale, I celebrate Clarissa as the captive heroine who brings her morally exemplary and supremely discursive self to its extreme limit of perfection.
“Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise!”: Apostrophe as Suture in “Eloisa to Abelard”
Authors: Stoll Rebecca Roma
Published: September 2015

This article examines how Alexander Pope uses apostrophe in “Eloisa to Abelard” (1717) to overcome the problem of Eloisa’s frustrated desire and isolation. Because apostrophe allows Eloisa to dissociate herself into agentive body parts that act as independent subjects, her desire is fully actualized in the poem without being fully attributed to her. Apostrophe also allows Eloisa to achieve physical continuity with her surroundings, which are metonymically linked to Abelard, and to achieve temporal continuity with her past, which allows her to resolve, at least temporarily, the trauma of Abelard’s castration. However, these incessant apostrophic turns also draw attention to Eloisa’s disconnection from the subjectivized objects and absent others that are animated by her poetic voice. Using the concept of the “reverse shot” of modern cinema, I argue that the final apostrophe, which extends beyond the frame of the poem, is able to efface this disconnection by transferring the power of invocation to Pope himself
The Enlightenment Index
Authors: Pasanek Brad , Wellmon Chad
Published: September 2015

In this essay, we survey Enlightenment authors’ relationship to print, and explain how footnotes, foldout sheets, catalogues, and review magazines gave shape to a network of citation that we call “the Enlightenment Index.” The print technologies examined here, along with their human counterparts (i.e. the authors and publishers), will be characterized as agents co-constitutive of a Great Chain of Reference that was supposed to manage bibliographic excess by bibliographic means. As a heuristic, the Index functions in two ways: it refers to the proliferating empirical traces on particular pages as well as to the ideal of a completely assembled network of all such pages and cross-references. In the context of eighteenth-century philosophy, the two aspects of the Index align with empiricist and rationalist accounts of knowledge. Our argument may also be understood in terms of periodization: while a tension between real and ideal obtains, we operate in an Enlightenment media environment. Because the Enlightenment pursues a complete account of all that has been printed, its Index is both a material reality and a functional means, (albeit an incomplete one), for navigating that reality. It was Romanticism that repudiated the Index as an ideal and promoted competing practices of indexicality to control and transcend the excesses of print.
The Threat and Allure of Methodism
Authors: Behrens Michael
Published: September 2015

A review of Misty G. Anderson’s Imagining Methodism in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Enthusiasm, Belief and the Borders of the Self
Si Vulgus Vult Decipi, Decipiatur
Authors: Walsh Marcus
Published: September 2015

A review of Hugh Ormsby-Lennon’s Hey Presto! Swift and the Quacks
Gender, Neutrality, and the Nursing Father in Pratt’s Emma Corbett
Authors: McMichael Trevor
Published: September 2015

This article examines Samuel Jackson Pratt’s 1780 epistolary novel Emma Corbett; or the Miseries of Civil War, a text which represents familial relations in terms of the American Revolutionary War, as well as how this war divided families, such as the novel’s Corbett and the Hammond families, based on their national affiliation. This essay considers family in Emma Corbett by discussing representations of motherhood and masculinity. I argue that Pratt represents figurative and actual mothers in the novel as problematic in a number of ways, and he figures maternal subversiveness as in need of eradication. Instead, the neutral patriarch, who exemplifies the proper balance of sensibility and reason, is worthy of supplanting women in the text, and he is to be preferred even to sensible, poetic men and to dutiful, soldierly ones. Representations of masculinity in the novel demonstrate that to show emotion was a sensible, manly quality, but sensibility needed to be tempered lest a man become too emotional, too patriotic, or even effeminate. By critiquing masculinity as well as motherhood as they are embodied by characters like Emma Corbett, Charless Corbett, and Henry Hammond, Pratt offers Robert Raymond as the “solution” to these problems of motherhood and masculinity: he becomes a neutral, hybridized masculine and feminine patriarchal example who, as a kind of Lockean nursing father figure, repairs the Corbett and Hammond families’ damaged relationship, one instigated by their divisive national alliances.
Diversity of Lifestyle: A View from Belize
Authors: Jackiewicz Edward L. , Govdyak Olga
Published: September 2015

Research on lifestyle migration continues to evolve as these movements become more geographically diverse. This form of movement has emerged as an important aspect of social and economic development in many so-called “less-developed countries.” As an increasing number of individuals from more-developed countries seek less-expensive and more-exotic locales to relocate, challenges are sure to follow. This research explores this growing phenomenon in three locations in Belize, a country that has been touted as one of the most desirable for these lifestyle migrants. The paper argues that these three destinations—Ambergris Caye, Caye Caulker, and Corozal—are attractive for different reasons and are at different phases of their evolution, and that the reaction of locals also varies by destination.
A New Approach in Converting Desert into Pasture: Fengning County, Hebei Province, China
Authors: Kim Young-Il
Published: September 2015

The thematic focus of this paper is to introduce a way to prevent desertification in the steppe climatic region by reducing wind velocity on ground surface and introducing a know-how of a specially designed drip-irrigation system that is sustainable in arid climate. The current desertification processes are rapidly expanding over the steppe climatic region worldwide, closely overlapping with Steppe Climatic Region (BS) of Koppen Climatic Classification. The basic thought in my study is to prevent desertification in the steppe climatic region by reducing wind velocity so that evaporation does not exceed precipitation. By applying Bernoulli’s equation for a one-kilometer-square pilot project in Fengning County, Hebei Province, China, it is estimated that four layers of tree windbreak in a square shape are sufficient to reduce wind velocity for the reforestation (Kim 2011). To avoid frequent failure of reforestation in the arid area owing to buildup of calcium layers and salt flat, a specially designed drip-irrigation system is introduced. Utilizing the favorable physical settings in the high altitude in arid area, a rotating solar power plant is planned to provide for pumping underground water for the drip irrigation. It is estimated that six kilowatts are sufficient power to support irrigation for a one-kilometer-square area, with a few dwelling units in the innermost 400-square-meter area. Once the Fengning pilot project is proven to be successful, it is hoped that the same system may be extended to the adjacent arid region and beyond.
La Chinesca: The Chinese Landscape of the Mexico-U.S. Borderlands
Authors: Warren Scott , Wan Yu , Ruiz y Costello Donna
Published: September 2015

This article explores the history of Chinese migrants in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands and the contemporary Chinese cultural imprint in the landscape of Mexicali, Mexico. A narrative of the experiences of Chinese migrants in the initial founding of Mexicali in the early twentieth century is constructed through historical sources and photographs, while the contemporary extent of Chinese-themed businesses and other cultural spaces in Mexicali’s Chinatown district is presented in a map based on fieldwork conducted in 2011. Chinese migrants faced a number of challenges in Mexicali and the larger Mexico-U.S. borderland region largely resulting from the policies of exclusion and inclusion that circumscribed their movements. The historical experience of Chinese migrants in building the economy of Mexicali and the larger Mexico-U.S. borderland region is therefore especially pertinent in understanding the processes and policies that “harden” the Mexico-U.S. boundary today.
Malebranche’s Influence on Leibniz’s Writings on China
Authors: Reihman Gregory M.
Published: September 2015

Leibniz deserves the honor, frequently bestowed upon him, as the single most important early European interpreter of Chinese philosophy. Yet the story commonly told about this period of philosophical discussion of Chinese philosophy underestimates the importance of Malebranche’s brief encounter with Chinese philosophy and its influence on Leibniz’ interpretation of Chinese thought. In this article, evidence is provided of this influence by first discussing Leibniz’ writings on China prior to his encounter with Malebranche’s Dialogue between a Christian Philosopher and a Chinese Philosopher on the Existence and Nature of God , and then comparing that early work with the Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese , which Leibniz wrote almost immediately after reading Malebranche’s Dialogue .
The Function of Saññā in the Perceptual Process according to the Suttapiṭaka : An Appraisal
Authors: Toso Krishna Del
Published: September 2015

This article deals with the meaning and function of saññā in perception. “Recognition” seems to be the best translation for saññā , since this term conveys the sense of both cognizing and naming, which are the two main activities carried out by saññā. Saññā collects the not yet well-defined information provided by the senses and, also through its comparative function, organizes this information into a datum that is so made available to the consciousness (viññāṇa). Saññā processes both simple data like color, and complex phenomena like death or danger. Saññā can, however, fail in its task to recognize things. Key terms: Buddhist theory of mind, Buddhist theory of perception, Pāli Canon, phassa , recognition, saññā, vedanā, viññāṇa .
No Self?: Some Reflections on Buddhist Theories of Personal Identity
Authors: Rudd Anthony
Published: September 2015

Recent years have seen a considerable growth in interest among Western philosophers and psychologists in the Buddhist idea of anattā— “no self”—as it is usually translated. A number of philosophers have published works, addressed to Western philosophical audiences, expounding and defending versions of anattā , some claiming that the Buddhist doctrine has significant affinities with various Western forms of reductionism or eliminativism about the self. Here a number of these accounts are considered and criticized. The concerns are not primarily exegetical; the author writes, not as a scholar of Buddhism, but as a philosopher, trained in the Western tradition(s), and interested in assessing the various recent interpretations/defenses of anattā on their philosophical merits. It is argued that none of them gives us grounds for abandoning a commonsense, phenomenology-based view of the reality of the self. In conclusion, a way is tentatively suggested in which we might interpret anattā “practically” and not see it as a theory about personal identity in the standard post-Lockean Western philosophical sense at all.
Can Cosmological Models Explain and Forecast the Public Health and Patterns of Somatic Alignments?
Authors: Zhang Wei
Published: September 2015

Recent published studies on medical statistics and meteorological data point to a correlation between abnormal weather patterns and the (re)occurrence of certain disease symptoms. To better understand such a correlation and its theoretical underpinning, investigating an ancient discipline that is tentatively termed “medical cosmology” is suggested. First, the general characteristics of ancient Chinese conceptions of the cosmos—in contrast to that of the early Greeks—are discussed, and then a somatic cosmography introduced, as outlined in the classical medical canon known as the Inner Classic or Neijing .Specifically, it is proposed to examine two cosmic-medical models, showing the ways in which they were devised and deployed clinically in order to explain as well as forecast the trend of public health and physical alignments. In conclusion, some general reflection is offered on the two Neijing models—in relation to the modern scientific understanding of the nature and function of models in general.
Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras and the Alchemical Process of Individuation
Authors: Odorisio David M.
Published: September 2015

The Yoga Sūtras , a Sanskrit text authored by the Indian philosopher Patañjali (ca 100 b.c.e . to 200 c.e. ), are interpreted using Swiss psychologist Carl Jung’s (1865–1961) model of Western alchemy. The alchemical process gave Jung a language with which to understand the psyche’s transformation from unconscious to increasingly conscious states. This process, which Jung termed individuation or Self-becoming, serves as the interpretive lens to view the Yoga Sūtras . Alchemical stages are compared to Patañjali’s definition of yoga ( citta-vṛtti nirodhaḥ ), the obstacle to achieving yoga (saṁyoga) , and the goal or end of yoga (kaivalya) . Through utilizing an alchemical hermeneutic the aim of the Yoga Sūtras reads not as a final separation of matter and spirit as traditionally interpreted, but as depicting a process of reunification and differentiated wholeness.
Zhuangzi , Perspectives, and Greater Knowledge
Authors: Sturgeon Donald
Published: September 2015

Although the text of the Zhuangzi includes what appear to be skeptical arguments, there has been much debate as to the nature of its skeptical stance, and even whether or not it is substantively skeptical at all. An attempt is made here to engage with both the skeptical aspects of the text and its positive agenda, accepting that the Zhuangzi takes a substantive skeptical stance while also arguing that in doing so it provides a positive account of how to improve our epistemic position. The argument focuses on Zhuangist attitudes to different types of knowledge, specifically what the text refers to as “lesser knowledge” ( xiao zhi 小知) and “greater knowledge” ( da zhi 大知), and the relationship between the two. An attempt is made to show that the Zhuangist stance is that of a “positive skeptic” who offers wide-ranging practical advice on how to improve our own epistemic situation, while at the same time warning us of the ultimate limits of what we can come to know.
The Problem of the Unity of Consciousness: A Buddhist Solution
Authors: Chadha Monima
Published: September 2015

Presented here is the Yogācāra account of unity of consciousness, showing how it relates to contemporary philosophical accounts. Section 1 briefly charts the relevant Abhidharma background and the reasons that led the Yogācāra to the postulation of ālaya-vijñāna . Section 2 explains the contemporary formulation of the “unity of consciousness” problem and its significance in the search for neural correlates of consciousness. Section 3 shows that the Yogācāra notion of basic consciousness and neuroscientific research on Open Monitoring meditation offer useful insights for establishing a coherent philosophical account of unity of consciousness.
What Did Śaṅkara Have Against Arjuna?
Authors: Todd Warren Lee
Published: September 2015

An attempt is made here to reconstruct the position held by Śaṅkara (eighth century) on the question of rightful conduct. In particular, it is argued that Śaṅkara holds a definite view on the actions of a brahman- knower (brahma-vid) within the world. Assuming a hypothetical ideal type that Śaṅkara would have respected, and reading across his major works, this article attempts to unravel the apparent contradictions in his writing. It will be argued that while the likes of Arjuna (central protagonist of the Bhagavad Gītā ) have their place in society, they may not necessarily qualify for knowledge of brahman , or for ultimate renunciation. Furthermore, it is proposed that Śaṅkara, concerned with the continuation of the lineage of brahman- knowers, came to see the passing on of salvific knowledge as a form of sva-dharma .
Madhyamaka Buddhist Meta-ethics: The Justificatory Grounds of Moral Judgments
Authors: Finnigan Bronwyn
Published: September 2015

Whether the metaphysical commitments of Madhyamaka Buddhism afford a satisfactory justificatory ground for moral judgments is investigated here. Finnigan and Tanaka (2011) argue that they do not. Their argument has since been challenged by Tillemans (2010–2011), who alleges that both Svātantrika and Prāsaṅgika Mādhyamikas can readily justify moral judgments by respective appeal to the doctrine of the two truths. This claim is contested here with respect to Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka. Several arguments are provided to show that Prāsaṅgika cannot satisfactorily justify their moral judgments by appeal to the notion of conventional truth.
Embodied Implacement in Kūkai and Nishida
Authors: Krummel John W. M.
Published: September 2015

Examined here is the importance of embodied implacement in correlativity with the environment in the philosophies of two significant philosophers in the history of Japanese thought: Kūkai (774–835), the founder of Shingon Buddhism, and Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), the founder of Kyoto School philosophy. We look into Kūkai’s concepts of sokushinjōbutsu (“attainment of Buddhahood in this very body”) and hosshin seppō (“the dharma body’s expounding of the dharma”) and Nishida’s concepts of kōiteki chokkan (“acting-intuition”) and rekishiteki shintai (“historical body”) among others, to explore the significance for both of an embodied implacement in the world and in interaction with the environment. The body as the medium or place of interrelations, in both thinkers, proves to be a chiasma in manifold significances, as both microcosmic and macrocosmic. And as non-substantial, empty, it is an open body.
Thinking with Zhuangzi and Su Shi against Heidegger on Artwork
Authors: Lin Ma
Published: September 2015

This essay explores some aspects of Heidegger’s thematization on the essential being of artwork and brings them into encounter with alternative modes of thinking as implicated in the Zhuangzi and inherited and elaborated by Su Shi. Starting from equipment (Zeug) as the prototype of a thing, Heidegger conceives the being of a thing, including things in nature, in terms of readiness-to-hand, and tries to locate the fundamental difference between a mere thing and a work of art. In contrast, the Chinese word for thing ( wu 物) refers to a living being as well as to the myriad things, each having its peculiar heavenly rhythms ( tianli 天理). Since the Daoist tradition does not set up a stringent stratification among things, it does not consider artwork apart from concrete activities in which the artist attends and attunes to the heavenly rhythms of things. This finds reflection in Zhuangzi’s idea of the coalescence between the finger and the brush ( zhiyu wuhua 指与物化), which diverges significantly from the relation between the hand and the hammer, as Heidegger depicts. For Heidegger, an artwork, which is “no-thing,” has to stand aloof from the mundane life so as to serve as the site, or non-site, where the truth of things is unconcealed. This is epitomized by the Greek temple, which alone gives meaning to all its constituents and surroundings. Through an innovative description of one of the Ten Scenes of West Lake and a new interpretation of Zhuangzi’s expression of yitian hetian 以天合天, this essay seeks to illustrate that in the Daoist tradition the conception of artwork is open to multiple interpenetrating determinations; there is never just an artwork, but a stream of artwork(s) resonating with and enhancing one another.
‘grete luste to slepe’: Somatic Ethics and the Sleep of Romance from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to Shakespeare
Authors: Leitch Megan G.
Published: September 2015

Representations of sleep in Middle English secular literature have received little critical attention. Literary sleep in Middle English literature, such as the works of the Gawain -poet, Malory, and Chaucer, can be read productively alongside instructions about sleep in courtesy books and dietaries, and in the light of Galenic medical understandings of sleep. Literary sleep, both physical and metaphorical, often operates as an ethical discourse in late medieval secular literature, especially romance. This medieval mode of thought is one that had a certain insular specificity, and that continued to be influential in early modern literature. For Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Richard III , as for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , unconsciousness, whether achieved or attempted, bodies forth an ethical truth.
Life Writing (and Laugh Writing) for a Christian Prince: Sir John Harington’s Supplie or Addicion to the Catalogue of Bishops (1608)
Authors: Bowers Rick
Published: September 2015

Most studies of biography and life writing all but ignore Sir John Harington’s work titled A Supplie or Addicion to the Catalogue of Bishops to the Yeare 1608 . This little-known document was presented as part of a total package of advice to Henry, Prince of Wales for his fourteenth birthday. Within this biographical catalogue, Harington offers quirky anecdotes and personalised humour as opposed to the usual generalities of moral excellence and exemplary behaviour. In so doing, he makes an early contribution to English life writing at the same time as he provides entertaining personal and political advice for future Stuart government.
Matthew Paris’s ‘Self-Portrait with the Virgin Mary’ in the Historia Anglorum
Authors: Collard Judith
Published: September 2015

The ‘Self-portrait with the Virgin Mary’ that is found in the Historia Anglorum is regarded as one of the finest examples of Matthew Paris’s artistic work. This unusual image shows the author praying at the feet of the Virgin Mary. In this article I examine its status as an author or scribe portrait, comparing it to earlier examples of such images. I also argue that it is one of the earliest examples of a devotional image that appears in the later thirteenth century in English art, locating it within the context of the increasing devotion to the Virgin in England. In this article I also discuss the gesture of prayer and the form and origin of the brief prayer.
Bertrada de Montfort, Peter Abelard, and Adelard of Bath: The Critique of Authority in the Early Twelfth Century
Authors: Mews Constant J.
Published: September 2015

Bertrada de Montfort is well known for provoking the wrath of senior churchmen in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, for leaving her husband, Count Fulk IV of Anjou, and engaging in what they considered to be an illegitimate marriage to Philip I of France. This article explores hitherto unexamined connections between Bertrada’s role as Queen of France and two intellectuals, both celebrated for promoting the cause of reason against blind respect for authority, namely Peter Abelard and Adelard of Bath. Bertrada deserves to be considered not as a self-seeking virago , as claimed by her critics, but as someone who challenged ecclesiastical authority in a similar way to these two celebrated thinkers of the early twelfth century. Both thinkers sought to place authority on a firmer, more rational foundation, echoing Bertrada’s own critique of ecclesiastical authority in marrying Philip against the view of many reforming ecclesiastics.
Saintly Blood: Absence, Presence, and the alter Christus
Authors: Hiller Diana
Published: September 2015

In early modern Italian art, the blood shed by Christ was an important feature of paintings of the Passion. In contrast, in non-narrative portraits and even in narrative scenes, when artists depicted saints, they often omitted the blood that would have been spilt during their tortures and martyrdom. However, there are three saints whose iconography does not follow the general pattern: St Sebastian, St Francis, and St Peter of Verona. The conformity of each of these saints to the figure of an alter Christus may account for this very different iconography.
The Problematic Present: Locating and Losing Meaning in the Narrative Structure of the Fineshade Chronicle
Authors: Kilpatrick Hannah
Published: September 2015

Late medieval chroniclers frequently used narrative structure to give meaning to the events they recounted, but recent and problematic historical episodes could present a challenge. One small chronicle from an English priory, recounting the civil war of 1321–22, begins its story with confidence; but the structure of its narrative, and eventually even of its grammar, begins to disintegrate into uncertainty as the chronicler approaches his own present. A prosopographical study of the priory’s patron family reveals the unsettled state of the local community in the wake of the civil war, suggesting that chroniclers’ failures of meaning can be as revealing as their successes.
Violence and Transgression in Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain, le Chevalier au Lion
Authors: Ovens Michael
Published: September 2015

The critical scholarship surrounding Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain, le Chevalier au Lion carries an implicit separation of ‘violence’ from ‘non-violence’ where chivalry is pitted against love in a pattern which accords with the medievalist tendency to conceive of violence in minimalist terms. Instead, by defining violence in terms of violation and reading the text through the Augustinian–Bernardian frame of the ‘inner disposition’ (intention, emotion), new parallels and recursions emerge within Yvain which undermine the supposed phenomenological separation of violence and non-violence in the medieval period.
Heated Words: The Politics and Poetics of Work in ‘A Complaint against Blacksmiths’
Authors: Thorpe Deborah
Published: September 2015

‘A Complaint against Blacksmiths’, unique to BL, MS Arundel 292, may gesture towards fourteenth-century legislation against night-time work, yet is underpinned by delight in the sights and sounds of the forge. The smith’s smoke-smattered visage is simultaneously disgraceful and inspiring to its medieval audience. Many of us experience a different kind of unease in the digital age, as hours are converted into immaterial goods. For many, the clamour of physical labour has been replaced by the noise of automation. Looking back into the forge, the modern urban worker may yearn for its sonic landscape, with clattering hammers, grunting mouths, and hissing waters.
A Peranakan Family between Singapore and Shanghai: Business-making, Networks and Identity, 1870s–1910s
Authors: Sim Teddy y. H. , Liu Sandy J. C.
Published: September 2015

Networks and identity are common themes in studies of the Chinese diaspora, but they are not always linked together or examined closely. A re-reading of a travelogue published in Libao during the 1880s provides material for an investigation of these two topics. This article examines a journey taken by Li Qinghui and considers it in the context of studies on diaspora Chinese over the past decade, with particular attention to networks and identity. The last quarter of the nineteenth century, when Li made his trip, was a time of optimism about what technology and capitalism could offer to the world. Accounts of the travels of the Li family, reported in both the West and the East, epitomized these euphoric sentiments.
Selangor and Perak in 1942 (皇紀 2602): Japan’s Occupation of Malaya Begins
Authors: Kratoska Paul H.
Published: September 2015

After Japanese forces seized control of British Malaya early in 1942, they maintained the existing administrative arrangements while preparing to introduce a new style of governance. Accounts of the war and occupation generally anticipate Japan’s capitulation three and a half years later, but this outcome was far from inevitable, and in 1942 residents of Malaya had every reason to think that the New Order taking shape in that year represented their future. Records created by officials in the wartime administration explain some of the issues that arose in 1942, and give an idea of the relationship between local officials and the Japanese.
Kampung Air: Water Settlements on the Island of Borneo
Authors: Evers Hans-Dieter
Published: September 2015

This paper presents the results of a baseline study of settlements built on water ( kampung air ) along the coast and rivers of Borneo. Using remote sensing data we measured the extent of water villages and estimated their number of households and inhabitants. We estimate that water villages cover an area of approximately 25 sq. km, housing 215,000 inhabitants. Though water villages are closely routed in Malay customs and traditions, it appears that other communities have also moved in, making use of relatively cheap accommodation. Further research is advocated, especially in view of the fact that climate change and sea level rise will reduce land areas suitable for housing construction.
‘I am Ali Wallace’: The Malay Assistant of Alfred Russel Wallace
Authors: Wyhe John Van , Drawhorn Gerrell M.
Published: September 2015

The famous naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace collected natural history specimens throughout Southeast Asia from 1854–1862. One of the least known of the players in Wallace’s story is his Malay assistant Ali, from Sarawak. This article combines the surviving evidence to bring Ali and his role in the expedition out of the shadows. Several corrections to traditional accounts are emphasized; these include the fact that Ali was not always a collecting assistant, but at first a cook; Ali did not travel with Wallace for the rest of his voyage, but left him for an entire year; and Ali may have collected the majority of Wallace’s bird specimens. In addition, Ali’s wages and itinerary are reconstructed for the first time. It is concluded that Ali made a major contribution to Wallace’s scientific understanding of the Malay archipelago, not just with new ornithological discoveries like Wallace’s Standard Wing (Semioptera wallacii) , but by his contributions of knowledge.
“And it Had Everything in it”: Building Stories , Comics, and the Book of the Future
Authors: Kashtan Aaron
Published: September 2015

This essay analyzes Chris Ware’s graphic novel/artist’s book Building Stories as an example of what comics can tell us about the future of the book. I argue that Building Stories represents a prototype of the book of the future thanks to its innovative hybridization of print-based and digital modes of materiality and narrative organization.
Serialization and Empire in Neil Gaiman’s the Sandman
Authors: Mellette Justin
Published: September 2015

While comics at large continue to achieve legitimacy in academia, both in terms of the number of scholarly publications in contemporary literature journals as well as the breadth and variety of courses taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, comics studies and pedagogy remains decidedly skewed toward privileging single volume works rather than comics that originally appeared in a serialized format. In addition to biases against their mainstream status, more akin to “low culture” than, say, a critically and publically celebrated graphic memoir à la Bechdel’s Fun Home or Spiegelman’s Maus , monthly comics are commonly excluded in the classroom for thematic and structural reasons. Teachers commonly associate ongoing serialization with a loose, sprawling structure, akin more to a television drama than a single volume work of literature. This view ultimately marginalizes authors’ thematic concerns—Neil Gaiman’s Sandman , which clocks in at seventy-five issues, focuses on a cluster of related themes, explored in vastly more depth and intricacy than could have been achieved in a single volume work. While limitations on class time often precludes teaching comics series that run for dozens or hundreds of issues, comics scholars should make a more concerted effort to incorporate such works into the classroom, bringing to light important concerns regarding narrative structure and marketplace concerns that are less readily visible in single volume works. Using Sandman as a case study, I will argue for the pedagogical benefits of incorporating mainstream comics into the classroom, emphasizing that by studying such works, we can gain a richer and fuller understanding of the narrative and thematic possibilities of comics.
“after the / Unauthor”: Fragmented Author Functions in Tom Phillips’s A Humument
Authors: Pfahl Courtney A.
Published: September 2015

This essay is about Tom Phillips’s massive ongoing project A Humument , which was started in 1966, with the most recent edition published in 2012. For this project, Phillips began with an obscure Victorian novel—W. H. Mallock’s A Human Document (1892)—and by painting, drawing, and collaging over its pages, has created something completely new that lies somewhere between an artist’s book and graphic novel. I argue that Phillips’s radically creative reading strategy performs Roland Barthes’s critique of the Romantic author and enacts the transition from author to “scriptor” and “reader,” and from “work” to “text.” Phillips rejects Mallock’s authorial authority by selectively reading other possibilities into the available words, entering A Human Document into the “immense dictionary” of literary history and returning it to the illuminated manuscript tradition. By drawing on this tradition and fragmenting and inhabiting the conventional “author” role through his reading process, Phillips exposes the sociohistorical contingencies of the author function. However, when A Humument is published as a new work, the Romantic author figure is reborn in Phillips.
Neil Gaiman’s Sandman as a Gateway from Comic Books to Graphic Novels
Authors: Camus Cyril
Published: September 2015

“Graphic novel” refers to a publication format and a storytelling approach that depart from comic books’. Jean-Paul Gabilliet deals with publishing practices, Andrés Romero-Jodár with chronotopes: both think the periodical nature of comic books is what sets them apart from graphic novels’ closed narratives. In Romero-Jodár’s aesthetic terms, the latter re-emphasize the passing of time, the former de-emphasize it. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman is considered a seminal work that helped the shift from comic books as norm to the rise of the graphic novel. A typically monthly comic-book project that progressively came to be designed and marketed as a cycle of graphic novels, it relates the story of an immortal deity who is obsessively determined to remain immutable, but is led to change despite itself. The narrative thus mimics the very victory of time that is, for Romero-Jodár, the one defining feature of graphic novels as opposed to comic books.
Embracing Dionysius in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing
Authors: Smith Michael
Published: September 2015

In the second issue of Alan Moore’s mid-1980s run on DC comics’ Swamp Thing , Alec Holland learns that he is not simply a mild-mannered botanist who has been miraculously transformed into a super-powered “moss man.” The Swamp Thing is a plant, a plant who borrowed Holland’s identity, a plant who only thought it was a man, all along. This essay examines how Moore’s run on Swamp Thing embraces the challenges of depiction that come with making a plant—not just a “plant-man”—the hero of a comic book. How, the text asks, might the forms of plant-thought differ from a man’s? How does it think, and what might those thoughts “look like” on a comic page? Through the run, the writing and art overcomes the confining linearity of the comic’s paneled structure and conventional points-of-view, as well as the commercial demands of writing for a presumptively adolescent audience.
Putting the Graphic in Graphic Novel: P. Craig Russell’s Adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline
Authors: Harris-Fain Darren
Published: September 2015

Since entering the comics field, Neil Gaiman has worked with many artists. One of his most frequent collaborators is P. Craig Russell, who adapted Gaiman’s novel Coraline into a graphic novel. It is a faithful adaptation; what makes it particularly interesting is its art. Russell is best known for his detailed, realistic style based on photographed models, which he employs in Coraline . This realistic treatment stands in contrast to the novel’s original cover and its illustrations as well as the stop-motion puppets in the 2009 film. In the art accompanying the novel and in the movie, Coraline and the other characters are depicted in a cartoonish fashion. The decision to use a realistic or a cartoonish style is important. According to Will Eisner and Scott McCloud, cartoon art can contribute to reader identification with characters more than realistic art, suggest a removal from reality in the narrative, and can distance the reader from the narrative. Realistic art, by contrast, leads to readers seeing characters as more like real people who are different from them and can lead to a greater sense of the story’s plausibility. Russell has employed a cartoonish style for other literary adaptations, so he clearly chose a realistic style for Coraline because he thought a realistic approach was better suited for his vision of Gaiman’s book as a graphic novel. This essay explores how this choice changes the experience of Gaiman’s story in comparison to the novel and the film, using Eisner’s and McCloud’s analyses for support in addition to examples from all three versions of the story.