bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Post-mating non-infectious hydrometra in BALB/c:Bom mice
Authors: Kunstýrř I. , Matthiesen Th. , Gärtner K. , Maess J. , Heimann W.
Published: June 2007

Post-mating non-Infectious hydrometra and hydrovagina of unknown aetiology, leading to a scrotum-like swelling of the perineum, was observed during an experiment on BALB/c:Bom mice. There was a closure of the vulva with accumulation of secretions of uterine glands under high pressure in both uterus and vagina. The mice were otherwise clinically healthy, gained body weight normally, but were Incapable of breeding. The morbidity was approximately 1% and the disease could not be transmitted to other females.
An effect of communal caging on the streptococcal flora of the dental plaque of monkeys (Macaca fascicularis)
Authors: Beighton D. , Hayday Hazel
Published: June 2007

22 monkeys were randomly allocated to one or other of 2 communes and fed a caries-promoting high sucrose diet. After 28 weeks commune 1 (13 monkeys) was found to harbour Streptococcus mutans serotype e as the predominant streptococcal species, but no monkey in commune 2 harboured this serotype. Instead the 9 monkeys of commune 2 harboured Streptococcus mutans serotypes c and h and had a greater proportion of Streptococcus mitior and Streptococcus milleri in their dental plaque. The significance of these observations on the use of monkeys as a model of human dental caries is discussed.
Clinical supervision and education via videoconference: a feasibility project
Authors: Xavier Kristina , Shepherd Louise , Goldstein David
Published: June 2007

Clinical supervision and education was provided to a total of 20 psycho-oncology staff by videoconference. Monthly group sessions, with 3–5 participants, were held via multipoint videoconference at a bandwidth of 256 kbit/s. Sessions consisted of a one-hour educational presentation followed by one-hour of case discussion. In addition, participants were offered individual telephone supervision each month. Participants completed evaluations before and after the project, and following each group session. They were asked to rate their confidence in dealing with a range of problems. There were significant increases in self-reported confidence in the areas covered by the educational component, e.g. assessing and treating pain in people with cancer ( P<0.01). In addition, self-assessment of overall effectiveness in current management of psychological distress from pre- to post-evaluation increased by 25%. Participants indicated that attending the educational sessions increased their knowledge (mean = 7.3 out of 10). With regard to telephone supervision, most (80%) were very or extremely satisfied. The feedback indicated that remote supervision was well received and that participants were keen to continue their involvement.
Implementing telemonitoring in the daily routine of a GP practice in a rural setting in northern Germany
Authors: Terschüren Claudia , Fendrich Konstanze , van den Berg Neeltje , Hoffmann Wolfgang
Published: June 2007

We conducted a two-month feasibility study of telemonitoring based on home visits by a specially trained nurse to 20 elderly patients who would otherwise have been receiving monitoring home visits from their general practitioner (GP). A specially-trained community medicine nurse was instructed to report important changes in the health status of a patient during her home visits immediately via telephone. In the case of 8 patients, various telecare devices were installed by the community medicine nurse according to the patients' needs. Patients were trained to use the devices independently in their homes. Three patients received a one lead ECG meter and made 100 successful transmissions in 101 patient-days. Three patients were supplied with an electric scale and successfully transferred 72 measurements in 73 patient-days. Two patients were equipped with a teletonometry system and used the blood pressure monitor and blood glucose meter successfully. The tonometer itself was used by only one of the patients as suggested by the GP (once per week; 5 successful transmissions in 39 days). The GP reported a positive effect on her work, with time saved because of less travelling for home visits. With the back-up of the measurements obtained by the telecare devices it was possible to delegate monitoring tasks to the community medicine nurse.
Telepaediatrics
Authors: Smith Anthony C
Published: June 2007

Telepaediatrics is becoming increasingly popular for several reasons, including improved access to specialist care in tertiary hospitals and savings in travel costs, especially to the families concerned. There are well known examples of clinical telepaediatric services in areas such as cardiology, fetal medicine, school health and psychiatry. In addition, there is an extensive telepaediatric service in Queensland, which currently provides about 1300 telepaediatric consultations per year. It is encouraging to see a growing literature on telepaediatrics, with positive experience being reported internationally in a wide range of areas. Telepaediatrics started relatively late compared to most other telemedicine applications, but this may yet turn out to be a case of the hare and the tortoise.
Fetal tele-ultrasound and tele-therapy
Authors: Chan Fung Yee
Published: June 2007

Advanced fetal diagnosis with real-time, high resolution ultrasound and fetal therapy with fetoscopic surgery represent the state-of-the-art in the subspecialty of fetal medicine. They allow accurate diagnosis of the fetal condition, multidisciplinary support for management, and in utero treatment, thereby significantly reducing perinatal mortality and morbidity. Such expertise is only available in a small number of advanced fetal medicine centres. We have used telemedicine for tertiary real-time fetal ultrasound consultation and shown not only that it is technically feasible, but that it is welcomed by the clinicians and patients involved. We have also used telemedicine for educational purposes, linking with an advanced fetoscopic centre on another continent to shorten our learning curve for this new form of fetal treatment. With the increasing availability of broadband communication, telemedicine should become an important tool in both clinical practice and education, and enable communities living anywhere in the world to benefit from fetal medicine.
Teleconsultation for emergency orthopaedic patients using the multimedia messaging service via mobile phones
Authors: Chandhanayingyong Chandhanarat , Tangtrakulwanich Boonsin , Kiriratnikom Theerasan
Published: June 2007

We investigated the accuracy and usefulness of teleconsultation using the mobile phone multimedia messaging service (MMS) in emergency orthopaedic patients. Pictures of radiographs were taken using a built-in 1.3 megapixel mobile phone camera from a digital display screen in the emergency room and then transmitted to the camera phones of four assessors. The cases comprised 59 emergency orthopaedic patients diagnosed with non- or minimally displaced fractures and 34 age-matched normal patients visiting the emergency department. Both clinical and radiographic follow up data were used as the gold standard. Inter- and intra-observer agreement were good (kappa>0.60). The overall sensitivity, specificity and accuracy were 78%, 54% and 65%, respectively. The overall misdiagnosis rate was 40%, with over-diagnosis of 12% and under-diagnosis of 27%. The consequence of misdiagnosis would have resulted in mismanagement in up to 48% of the cases. No association was found between the experience of the assessors, the region of the fracture or the age group of the patients and the misdiagnosis rate. Teleconsultation via MMS demonstrated good reliability, but poor diagnostic accuracy which could have major consequences in emergency orthopaedic patients.
A systematic review of the benefits of home telecare for frail elderly people and those with long-term conditions
Authors: Barlow James , Singh Debbie , Bayer Steffen , Curry Richard
Published: June 2007

We have conducted a systematic review of home telecare for frail elderly people and for patients with chronic conditions. We searched 17 electronic databases, the reference lists of identified studies, conference proceedings and Websites for studies available in January 2006. We identified summaries of 8666 studies, which were assessed independently for relevance by two reviewers. Randomized controlled trials of any size and observational studies with 80 or more participants were eligible for inclusion if they examined the effects of using telecommunications technology to (a) monitor vital signs or safety and security in the home, or (b) provide information and support. The review included 68 randomized controlled trials (69%) and 30 observational studies with 80 or more participants (31%). Most studies focused on people with diabetes (31%) or heart failure (29%). Almost two-thirds (64%) of the studies originated in the US; more than half (55%) had been published within the previous three years. Based on the evidence reviewed, the most effective telecare interventions appear to be automated vital signs monitoring (for reducing health service use) and telephone follow-up by nurses (for improving clinical indicators and reducing health service use). The cost-effectiveness of these interventions was less certain. There is insufficient evidence about the effects of home safety and security alert systems. It is important to note that just because there is insufficient evidence about some interventions, this does not mean that those interventions have no effect.
Prioritisation of telemedicine services for large scale implementation in Norway
Authors: Norum Jan , Pedersen Steinar , Størmer Jan , Rumpsfeld Markus , Stormo Anders , Jamissen Nina , Sunde Harald , Ingebrigtsen Tor , Larsen Mai-Liss
Published: June 2007

In late 2005, the Northern Norway Regional Health Authority requested an evaluation of all tested telemedicine services in northern Norway to clarify which were suitable for large scale implementation. A total of 282 reports from the Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine, the University Hospital of North Norway and the University of Tromsø were included in the study. Projects not focusing on secondary health care were excluded and 46 studies representing 21 topics entered the final analysis. They were analysed with a self-developed scoring tool focusing on five items. Eleven topics were concluded as being candidates for large scale implementation and grouped according to priority. The first priority topics were teleradiology, digital communication/integration of patient records and education. The second priority topics were teledialysis, pre-hospital thrombolysis, telepsychiatry and teledermatology. The third priority topics were paediatrics, district medical centres, tele-ophthalmology and tele-otorhinolaryngology. No priority was suggested for the projects in cardiology, endocrinology, geriatrics, gynaecology/obstetrics, pathology and nursing/care. User support, training, research ability, financial incentives and interaction between clinicians and ICT-personnel were considered as important factors in motivating health-care personnel to use telemedicine.
A tele-obstetric broadband service including ultrasound, videoconferencing and cardiotocogram. A high cost and a low volume of patients
Authors: Norum Jan , Bergmo Trine S , Holdø Bjørn , Johansen May V , Vold Ingar N , Sjaaeng Elisabeth E , Jacobsen Heidi
Published: June 2007

We established a tele-obstetric service connecting the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Nordland Hospital in Bodø to the delivery unit at the Nordland Hospital in Lofoten. The telemedicine service included a videoconferencing link (3 Mbit/s) for transmission of ultrasound scans and a low-speed data link (telephone modem) for transmission of cardiotocograms (CTGs). One hundred and thirty pregnant women entered the antenatal clinic in Lofoten during the eight-month study period. A total of 140 CTGs were recorded. The tele-ultrasound service was used in five cases (4%). The cases were serious malformation, Down's syndrome, breech presentation, vaginal bleeding during pregnancy and triplets. Analysis showed that the cost of patient travel was NOK 2460 per transfer. The variable cost of videoconferencing was NOK 250 per consultation. However, the total investment costs for the telemedicine service, including the broadband infrastructure, was NOK 1.7 million (Euro 212 000). The telemedicine service was not cost saving at annual workloads below 208. We conclude that the installation has to be used by other medical specialities to make it cost-effective.
Midwives' experience of using videoconferencing to support parents who were discharged early after childbirth
Authors: Lindberg Inger , Öhrling Kerstin , Christensson Kyllike
Published: June 2007

Videoconferencing was used to support parents who were discharged early after childbirth. In a one-year pilot study, 23 videoconferences took place between midwives and parents at home. To ensure good picture quality, a high-speed, 10 Mbit/s broadband connection was used. We used a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to describe the participants' experience. Seven midwives with experience of supporting nine couples/new parents completed a questionnaire. The 20 responses (87%) showed that the main reason for contact was routine and the most frequent advice concerned breastfeeding. The quality of sound and picture were judged to be good and very good, respectively. The experience of communicating with the parents via videoconferencing was also investigated through semi-structured interviews. Analysis of the interviews revealed that videoconferencing was: easy to handle and useful for making assessments; a valuable and functional complement to usual practice; almost like a real-life encounter. The results suggest that videoconferencing may be a useful tool in postpartum care.
Interactive Simulation in Virtual Environments - A Design Tool for Planners and Architects
Authors: Kieferle Joachim , Wössner Uwe , Becker Martin
Published: June 2007

Simulations can assist planners in optimizing their design and in minimizing its environmental impact. By adjusting the architecture according to simulation results, and running further simulations based on the adjusted design, an iterative process can help to increase the design quality. Up to now computing simulations have taken a long time, thus only a very limited number of iterations could be calculated. This project shows an approach that is close to a real time simulation. By dividing the simulation into smaller parts and running the software on clusters or vector supercomputers, first results are available within several seconds, and reasonable results in less than one minute. Besides the technical features, another focus is the easy accessibility of the simulation. Intuitive methods like a tangible user interface provide easy interaction methods for specialists as well as non specialists. The results of the simulation can be visualized and interacted with from the desktop or any kind of virtual environments. Further aspects like limitations of automatic grid generation, shape recognition and computation power are discussed.
The Bishopsgate Tower Case Study
Authors: Hesselgren Lars , Charitou Renos , Dritsas Stylianos
Published: June 2007

This paper summarizes the ongoing research on the Bishopsgate Tower in the City of London designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. We present a prerational geometry computational solution targeting a constraint-aware exploration of the architectural design-space, while interactively optimizing building performance in terms of constructability and cost-efficiency. We document a novel approach in building metrics optimization supported by parametric technologies and embedded analytical algorithms. The process is indicative of how computational methods will develop in the future and help designers find solutions for increasingly complex spaces.
Experiencing Architectural Interiors and Exteriors in Computer Games
Authors: Paterson Inga
Published: June 2007

This paper looks at the design of “place” in a game-environment. It sets out to present a way of analyzing and evaluating game environments using Brian Sutton-Smith's seven rhetorics of play as a framework. The question this paper investigates, is what can be learnt from our intrinsic ability to navigate our environment in relation to play? Physical architecture offers the game designer metaphors for virtual worlds that have meaning based on experiences people associate with them. True innovation in game-world design requires an understanding of our built environment that extends beyond the surface aesthetic appeal of architecture, through concentration on the way we experience architecture and interact with our built environment.
From No-Dimensions to N-Dimensions with Parametric Point-Clouds
Authors: Nir Eyal
Published: June 2007

This paper presents an innovative approach towards parametric design using point-clouds as design media. Exposing the internal numeric representation of digital models led to the development of parametric point-clouds as design drivers. A parametric point-cloud concept is presented in this paper, exploring its potential application for behavior modeling, generative design and performance-driven design of building envelopes.
Spatial Simulations with Cognitive and Design Agents
Authors: Puusepp Renee , Coates Paul
Published: June 2007

Agent based design systems could provide useful decision help for architects working on spatial planning tasks that involve large number of actors or deal with complex urban situations. These systems are especially helpful in bridging the gap between concrete design proposals and high-level design abstractions such as frequency and flow diagrams. Every attempt to use computational design agents in the planning process will automatically raise many fundamental issues about spatial perception and representation of the environment. The paper discusses these issues in the light of some recent agent based simulations. Two case studies are presented in order to demonstrate different uses of computational agents in urban design. The first study shows how a simple agent-based design system placed in an urban context becomes a creative production tool. The second one reveals analytical capabilities of an agent system in urban environments.
Co-operation and Complicity Voices, Robots, and Tricksters in the Digital Marketplace
Authors: Coyne Richard , Lucas Raymond , Li Jia , Parker Martin , Lee John
Published: June 2007

We advocate the theme of complicity, ahead of cooperation, as a means of understanding complex, interactive digital systems. Our case study of a market precinct known as the Barras, about one mile from the centre of the city of Glasgow, foregrounds the notion of complicity. Marketplaces are characterized not only by co-operation in rule-governed environments, but complicity between actors as a means of breaking rules, working at the boundaries of formal frameworks, avoiding other actors, such as law enforcers, and even working with them in tacitly agreed evasion strategies. We present the human voice (as exercised in the case of market stall holders drawing attention to their wares) as a major medium of complicity. In our application of these ideas we deploy Lego MindstormsTM RCX robot processing to explore interactions between a mobile sensing robot and simple environmental controls: movements of sliding screens in response to an autonomous mobile sensor. As well as their benign characteristics as co-operating agents, we argue for a consideration of robots as quintessential tricksters, plotting and scheming strategies of survival, evasion and opportunism. Traits that can be employed in the development of useful augmented environments.
Material-based Design Computation An Inquiry into Digital Simulation of Physical Material Properties as Design Generators
Authors: Oxman Neri , Rosenberg Jesse Louis
Published: June 2007

The paper demonstrates the association between geometry and material behavior, specifically the elastic properties of resin impregnated latex membranes, by means of homogenizing protocols which translate physical properties into geometrical functions. Resin-impregnation patterns are applied to 2-D pre-stretched form-active tension systems to induce 3-D curvature upon release. This method enables form-finding based on material properties, organization and behavior. Some theoretical foundations for material-computation are outlined. A digital tool developed in the Processing (JAVA coded) environment demonstrates the simulation of material behavior and its prediction under specific environmental conditions. Finally, conclusions are drawn from the physical and digital explorations which redefine generative material-based design computation, supporting a synergetic approach to design integrating form, structure, material and environment.
Rethinking Parameters in Urban Design
Authors: Schnabel Marc Aurel , Karakiewicz Justyna
Published: June 2007

This paper describes the unique coupling of an architectural urban design studio with an in-depth digital media course for the purpose of exploring new avenues of architectural expression, urban form-finding, and communication through the exploration of urban parameters. By merging descriptive parameters of urban situations with digital parametric tools, the understanding of urban design processes was enhanced by the possibility to perceive and comprehend larger problems of spatial urban experiences. The paper discusses how variables, goals, and outcomes of this urban design studio, as well as its integration with digital parametric design, allowed the participants to create an innovative urban design language. It reviews the implications for design education, as well as for the understanding and communication of complex urban designs that are responsive to a variety of parameters. This work lies in the tradition of artists who push media to explore new interpretations of both the media themselves and of their artwork as much as it does of the use of parametric systems as technological tools.
Automated Representation of Style by Feature Space Archetypes: Distinguishing Spatial Styles from Generative Rules
Authors: Hanna Sean
Published: June 2007

Style is a broad term that could potentially refer to any features of a work, as well as a fluid concept that is subject to change and disagreement, yet approaches to representing it too often seek either a pre-defined set of generative rules or list of measurable features. Instead, a general and flexible method of retrospectively and automatically representing style is proposed based on the idea of an archetype, to which real designs can be compared, and tested with examples of architectural plans. Unlike a fixed, symbolic representation, both the measurements of features that define a style and the selection of those features themselves can be performed by the machine, making it able to generalise a definition automatically from a set of examples. This process is implemented in analysis, and coupled with a generative algorithm to produce plans in a learned style.
Deep Space
Authors: Jachna Timothy J. , Santo Y. , Schadewitz N.
Published: June 2007

The work described here explores the problem of how digital technologies can enrich the experience of spatiality and social interaction in space(s). An existing café space at the School of Design of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University is linked to a “twin” in the form of an online-accessible environment. Sensors and displays establish channels of communication between the virtual and the physical space, enabling on-site visitors to the café and online visitors to the website to share a spatial experience. The article explains the design of modes of communication between the spaces, outlining the theory and genesis of the project and discussing issues and principles in the design and realization of such spaces, including the interplay between the three-dimensionality of the physical space and the two-dimensional picture-plane-based monitor interface through which the website is experienced, as well as strategies for the transmission of spatial experience within the constraints of commonly-available hardware and software.
Unius Amissi Leonis : Taming the Lion and Caesar's Tears ( Silvae 2.5)
Authors: Augoustakis Antony
Published: June 2007

Silvae 2.5 addresses the problematic aspects of the domesticated, acculturated natural world and its impact. Sorrow for a lion's death is transformed into a discussion of the problematics of culture imposed contra naturam. The lion's unused skills and gentleness did not help at all when it was exposed to the merciless arena. And yet the lion opposes the artificiality of its own domesticity and fights back against its fleeing enemy. As the Romans transgress human and natural boundaries, the poet questions the advantage of such achievements while becoming involved in a continuous rewriting of the Thebaid.
Fashioning Crispinus through his Ancestors: Epic Models in Statius Silvae 5.2
Authors: Bernstein Neil W.
Published: June 2007

Silvae 5.2 is an encomium addressed to Crispinus upon the occasion of his appointment as tribunus militum. This paper investigates how Statius employs epic intertexts in order to address potentially negative judgments of Crispinus caused by the young man's inexperience and the memory of his mother's crime. Allusions to Virgil's Aeneid affirm Crispinus's ability to emulate his father, exclude his criminal mother as a formative influence, and specify the roles of the young man's preceptors. Recollections of Statius's Thebaid, meanwhile, highlight the emperor's successful resolution of Crispinus's familial conflict through contrast with the epic's fratricidal violence.
Bringing It All Back Home: Togetherness in Statius Silvae 3.5
Authors: Henderson John
Published: June 2007

In Silvae 3.5, Statius seizes the moment to present a picture of the complicated composition of his domestic ménage: determined on "retirement" from the court at Rome and relocation to his hometown of Naples, he articulates considerations which might convince his wife Claudia to come join him. The essay tracks the collage of improvisational family structures and sentimental bonds that frame and distrain the collection's "modern" Flavian world, pinpoints the pivotal positioning of this finale to Book 3 within the narrative progression of the Silvae, and derives Statian uxoriousness from a blend of literary prototypes from Cicero, Ovid, and Lucan.
Violentilla Victa
Authors: Hersch Karen K
Published: June 2007

This paper explores how in Silvae 1.2 Statius provided an important precedent for later epithalamia by expanding the genre's rhetoric with epic topoi, creating a novel epithalamium of epic scope. Violentilla is bound to be tamed under the yoke of Rome, just as the power of Aphrodite brings Medea to live among civilized Greeks in Apollonius's Argonautica. Violentilla is transformed from recalcitrant widow into a subdued and Romanized bride. As friend and fellow poet, the poem's recipient Stella would appreciate the wit of his association with one of myth's most glamorous if dangerous couples.
Statius, Orpheus, and the Post-Augustan Vates
Authors: Lovatt Helen
Published: June 2007

This paper puts together the figure of Orpheus and the idea of the vates in order to explore the poetics of Statius in the Silvae. It shows that Statius struggles to be a serious and political poet. Orpheus is a reflection of both the power and the powerlessness of poetry: the poet and the patron in the world of the Silvae have intermittent power over the natural world, but neither has control over grief. The Orpheus of Statius's poems of lament is a voiceless vates: the effectiveness of poetry in the world is severely limited.
A Spectacular Feast : Silvae 4.2
Authors: Malamud Martha A.
Published: June 2007

This paper examines how Statius sets up his portrait of Domitian as host in Silvae 4.2 through a series of interrelated allusions, mostly to the epic tradition. Though the poem is often read as a flattering panegyric, in keeping with Domitian's own use of feasting as part of his self-presentation as a benevolent emperor, an analysis of the pattern of allusions employed in the poem suggests a more complex text. The portrait of Domitian that emerges is consistent with the negative portrayal of Domitian's hospitality sketched by later writers, particularly with Pliny's description of Domitian at Panegyricus 48.3-6.
Wood: Statius's Silvae and the Poetics of Genius
Authors: Wray David
Published: June 2007

This paper explores the various meanings of silva (and of the Greek Ïlh) as a more robust notion of poetic value than has been accepted. Ingenium is a favourite word of Statius meaning both innate aptness and aptitude. Under the concept of ingenium, there is an absence of a sharply drawn division between art and nature. The concept of silvae and ingenium come together in Silvae 2.3, an allegory of the virtuosity of Statius's poetics—of the craft of writing poetry and of the genius that makes it endure.
Perfecting the Ideal: Molding Roman Women in Statius's Silvae
Authors: Zeiner Noelle K.
Published: June 2007

Women in Statius's Silvae appear frequently and prominently. Focusing on Silvae 1.2 and 5.1, this paper examines how Statius consciously creates portraits of Violentilla (1.2) and Priscilla (5.1) which both reflect these historical figures and also embody the traditional feminine ideals appropriate to the celebratory occasions and corresponding poetic genres in which they appear (epithalamium and epicedion respectively). This approach relies in part on Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theories: ultimately Statius exploits his feminine constructs to fulfill his primary poetic purpose, namely to create distinction (symbolic capital) for the poems' male addressees.
Nightmares of Absence: Hugo and "Le Rouet d'Omphale"
Authors: Cox Fiona
Published: June 2007

This article offers a new reading of an understudied poem from Les Contemplations (1856), 'Le Rouet d'Omphale.' By analysing the poem's rich web of intra- and intertextual allusions, from Ovid and Catullus to Hugo's 'La Pente de la rêverie' (1831), William Shakespeare (1864) and Le Rhin (1845), it becomes clear that Hugo's fascination with the legend of Hercules and Omphale, a legend in which Hercules is humiliated and emasculated, is linked to his own terrors of non-existence that are intimately bound up with his insecurities about the act of creation.
Le Réveil helléniste et les goûts culturels bourgeois: Le poème "Vénus de Milo" de Leconte de Lisle et son arrière-pays esthétique
Authors: Earl Anthony
Published: June 2007

From the eighteenth century, interest in Hellenism had been stimulated by early travel accounts, and by researches into Greek religion. In France, archaeological findings and enthusiasm for Greek literature induced critical speculations which culminated with the placing in the Louvre of the Vénus de Milo. Public fervour extended beyond pictorial and plastic arts into bourgeois tastes. Victor de Laprade's poem "Psyché" based on a theme found in decorative arts expressed this taste. Approaches to phenomena of Hellenic culture were subsumed into poetry about Greek female statues, notably Leconte de Lisle's own "Vénus de Milo" of 1846. Free of the political echoes of the poet's earlier poetry, this poem expresses admiration for the artistic integrity of the statue and converts visual experience into linguistic. Critical discussions, public taste and learned inquiry are transformed into creativity. (In French)
La Dynamique descriptive chez Zola et les Goncourt
Authors: El Kettani Soundouss
Published: June 2007

La présence nécessaire de personnages observateurs intermédiaires, entre le lecteur et le visible romanesque chez Zola, est la clé d'une dynamique descriptive qui mène tout objet de regard, animé ou non animé, vers une dissolution progressive. C'est là que réside une différence fondamentale entre le chef de file du naturalisme et les Goncourt, ses frères ennemis. Les créateurs de "l'écriture artiste" tournent en dérision, particulièrement dans Manette Salomon, la dictature d'une des techniques les plus célèbres des naturalistes, la délégation du regard descripteur à une instance intradiégétique. Ce faisant, ils inscrivent leurs romans dans une esthétique de l'éternité et de l'absolu qui s'oppose à l'esthétique de la temporalité et de la relativité zolienne.
Art as Passion in Anatole France's Le Lys rouge
Authors: Emery Elizabeth (Elizabeth Nicole)
Published: June 2007

At first glance, Anatole France's Le Lys rouge (1894) is a straightforward love story capitalizing on a fin-de-siècle vogue for medieval Italian art. Closer study, however, reveals a mordant satire of contemporaries' aesthetic pronouncements. A regular guest on the salon circuit, France was a privileged witness to contemporary taste and a powerful arbiter of aesthetic trends. Although Le Lys rouge is a work of fiction, his careful descriptions of fin-de-siècle taste and his sly references to real-life writers, artists, and collectors influenced his readers, while providing twenty-first century scholars with a valuable appreciation of late nineteenth-century French attitudes to art.
Rue Cuvier, rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, rue Lamarck: Politics and Science in the Streets of Paris
Authors: Henry Freeman G
Published: June 2007

In the City of Light the hegemonic right to affix identities is everywhere encoded in the commemorative nomenclature exhibited by streets and squares, statuary and monuments. The Paris city council's belated decision to grant space to a rue Lamarck, opened in 1875 and located far across the great city from the area surrounding the Jardin des Plantes where fellow scientists are memorialized, may be read as political metaphor. Indeed, such reading resurrects the institutional and political history of French science from the founding of the Jardin du Roi in 1635 to the anti-Darwinism of the late-nineteenth century.
L'Empereur fardé: Napoléon III des Châtiments à La Débâcle
Authors: Lintz Bernadette C
Published: June 2007

This article takes as its point of departure the historically controverted detail of the makeup that Napoleon III was said to have worn on the battlefieds of Sedan. Tracing the origin of the Emperor's rouge to Victor Hugo's Les Châtiments (1853), it explores the intertextual connections that tie Zola's La Débacle (1892) to Hugo's historical writings on Napoleon III and the Second Empire (Les Châtiments, Napoléon le Petit, Histoire d'un crime). Reading the cosmetic detail and its figural associations within the discursive context of Hugo's writings, I argue that Zola draws on and recontextualizes Hugolian motifs of theatricality, histrionics, blood, corruption, contamination, and expiation with a view to humanizing, in the context of the defeat at Sedan, the vilified Hugolian figure of the Emperor. Like a palimpsest, the makeup reveals Zola's debt to a body of texts that lie at the foundation of the Rougon-Macquart's historical poetics. (In French)
"À une dame créole" de Charles Baudelaire: de l'ambiguïté colonialiste à l'ambiguïté plurielle
Authors: Morisi Eve Célia
Published: June 2007

This essay supplements existing readings of Baudelaire's sonnet "À une dame créole" (1845) by apprehending it not as a univocal piece centered on colonialist ambiguity, but as a locus of semantic plurality where this ambiguity coexists with its self-subversion. I argue that, by conferring polysemous connotations on the sonnet's key terms and by cultivating irony and the paradigms of illusion and representation, Baudelaire bars us from assigning a definite meaning to his composition, establishing it instead as a space of slippage and mobility. Lastly, I read the self-subversion of the text's apparently unquestionable colonialist ambiguity in its dramatic and lyrical intertexts as well as in its inclination for self-reflexivity which paradoxically reveal that the poet further distances himself from a position of detachment and power. (In French)
Jules Vallés and the Anarchist Novel
Authors: Nematollahy Ali
Published: June 2007

Vallès's anarchism has often been seen in terms of his sensibility, his biography, and particularly his relationship with Proudhon. His writing and his theory of literature, however, have very little to do with Proudhonian aesthetics. Instead, Vallès's writing is best understood in the context of Bakunin's theories on literature and politics, as well as a current of literature in the second half of the nineteenth century that Jacques Dubois termed instantanéisme. Anarchist aesthetics and instantanéisme both reject politics; they are not based on the political commitment of the writer or the work, but rather on rupture and singularity. Vallès's work thus has to be distinguished from the various strands of realism and naturalism in the nineteenth century – from the mimetic tradition in general – and viewed within the much more tenuous current of the anarchist novel in the nineteenth century.
Rhetorical and Social Geographies in Stéphane Mallarmé's "Bucolique"
Authors: Pies Stacy
Published: June 2007

Two themes of Mallarmé's later work – the expansion of poetic language and the changing public role of literature – converge in Stéphane Mallarmé's 1895 poème critique [critical poem] "Bucolique." In her reading of the poem, Pies analyzes how the poem's dialogue between the poet's public and private selves and the use of blank space enact the expansion of poetic language that Mallarmé proposes in his later work, especially "La Musique et les lettres." Arguing that "Bucolique," like "Déplacement avantageux," traces a mental journey in which the flight from the city involves a return to the urban center, she suggests that "Bucolique" reveals the city, the site of public life, as a locus of poetry.
Désir Colonial et "Conscience Historique Authentique": "La Belle Dorothée" de Charles Baudelaire
Authors: Sicard-Cowan Hélène
Published: June 2007

Contemporary critics of Charles Baudelaire's 1863 prose poem "La Belle Dorothée" have interpreted the figure of the liberated female slave Dorothée as a slave of imitation of whiteness. Drawing on colonial history, postcolonial theory, as well as recent developments in Baudelairean criticism, this article focuses on the poem's formal features to argue for a reading of Dorothée as a successful embodiment of emancipation without cultural assimilation. (In French)
The Sensuous Dimension of Literary Experience: An Alternative to Materialist Theory
Authors: Altieri Charles
Published: June 2007

I argue that three versions of materialist theorizing ironically fail to give adequate accounts of two basic features of literary experience—its ways of being sensuous and its manifestation of particular features of labor that can produce compelling singularity for the reader. Ultimately I reject materialist ontologizing because it is has now no significant other—our basic task is to characterize fully how sensuousness is achieved and put to work for the imagination.
Habitus Clivé: Aesthetics and Politics in the Work of Pierre Bourdieu
Authors: Bennett Tony
Published: June 2007

Habitus is a key concept in the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and plays an organizing role in his classic study Distinction where tastes are divided between different class-based habitus. These divisions are set in the context of Bourdieu's account of the French cultural field as being polarized between a bourgeois habitus defined by the Kantian ethos of disinterestedness and a working-class habitus governed by the choice of the necessary. This paper probes this account of the habitus and aesthetics and its political implications, in the light of the challenges to it that are presented by Bernard Lahire's sociology of individuals and Jacques Rancière's account of the politics of aesthetics. It is illustrated by drawing on the evidence regarding the social distribution of cultural tastes from a recent study of the relationships between cultural practices and cultural capital in the United Kingdom. The central argument of the paper is that, far from succeeding in using the techniques of empirical sociology to map out a space that is beyond aesthetics, Bourdieu's account remains complicit with those tendencies in the history of western aesthetics that have functioned to exclude the working classes from full political participation.
The Knowing of Literature
Authors: Cochran Terry
Published: June 2007

In this essay, I consider the relationship between literature and knowing. In pursuing this reflection, I underscore the way in which historical understanding, as the basis for the organization of knowledge in the human sciences, restricts the epistemological import of the literary. In distinction with this prevailing historical model of literary discourse, I elaborate an understanding of literature – viewed as imaginary projection or idealized discourse – that places in the foreground its necessary role in thinking.
What Is Literature's Now?
Authors: Dubreuil Laurent
Published: June 2007

Yes, it is still time to read literature and to write about it. In this essay, I consider the different moments of the literary experience and how diffracted "nows" lead us to nonrational and exceeding thought. If poetical oeuvres always come after other discourses (and not before them, as it is usually said), we need to reinspect the very notions of time and history through the prism of literature. In reading several discrete corpus (from the Francophone negritude movement to Aristotle and Ranciere, from John Ashberry to Ovid or Freud), I show how the literary responds to the disciplines (such as anthropology, history, psychoanalysis or criticism) in such a way that the very forms of our knowledge should be altered.
Qu'est-ce que la littérature, aujourd'hui?
Authors: Gans Eric Lawrence
Published: June 2007

The concept of Literature is associated with the emergence of national consciousness around 1800; its master genre is the novel. But in the developing consumer society of the nineteenth century, the novelist's fiction of authentic life becomes asymptotic to his own, culminating with Proust, whose novel is a series of intermittent narratives structured only by the ultimate realization of the narrator's literary vocation. This desultory structure is homologous to that of the blog, the auto-narrative of today's archival society. But although the ultimate narrative artwork is a series of semi-connected tales, we still need traditional novels and stories that give meaning to the life of desire.
Imagined Identities: Autobiography at One Remove
Authors: Hagberg Garry
Published: June 2007

Of a rather extended family or ways we engage with literary works, one constitutes an occasion for self reflection of a distinctive kind. The relational conception of selfhood as developed in American pragmatic thought, viewed against the Cartesian picture of the self, allows us to see the way in which the comparisons we make between ourselves and literary characters yields self-knowledge. And more strongly, the relational conception of experience derived from pragmatism allows us to see the way in which autobiographical or reflexively-engaged literary experience itself becomes self-constitutive. In short, the self-negotiated profiles of our own identities are both sharpened by, and indeed in part constituted by, literary engagement. If we are in part composed of relations, the selves that enter those imaginary worlds do not remain unchanged.
Intermediation: The Pursuit of a Vision
Authors: Hayles N. Katherine
Published: June 2007

Twenty-first century literature is computational, from electronic works to print books created as digital files and printed by digital presses. To create an appropriate theoretical framework, the concept of intermediation is proposed, in which recursive feedback loops join human and digital cognizers to create emergent complexity. To illustrate, Michael Joyce's afternoon is compared and contrasted with his later Web work, Twelve Blue. Whereas afternoon has an aesthetic and interface that recall print practices, Twelve Blue takes its inspiration from the fluid exchanges of the Web. Twelve Blue instantiates intermediation by creating coherence not through linear sequences but by recursively cycling between associated images. Intermediation is further explored through Maria Mencia's digital art work and Judd Morrissey's The Jew's Daughter and its successor piece, The Error Engine, by Morrissey, Lori Talley, and Lutz Hamel.
What Is the Text? Who Is the Reader? A Meditation on Meanderings of Meaning
Authors: Swearingen C. Jan
Published: June 2007

The displacement of literature by culture and ideology as the primary texts studied in many English departments has brought with it new practices of reading. Alongside and sometimes instead of literary works, "the text" and its construction are the objects of reading, with special attention given to the "culture" of which texts are seen as a result or trace, a partial or distorted representation. There is increasing reference to the text and to histories of the book instead of to literature, more reference to discourse than to rhetoric, and less engagement with rhetorical criticism that examines the relationships among author, text, and reader that together constitute meaning. The companionship among cultural, historical, and rhetorical studies shared by the first new historicists sometimes seems to have dissolved in conflict and alterity-driven models of identity, meaning, and even history. The present state of new historicism, particularly its many different methods of reading for alterity, difference, and the culturally determined constructs, invites us to reform and refine current objects and methods of reading, particularly the postreading practices we teach and model for others. Through this process we may rediscover, or create, a new sense of what literature is and may become.
What Is Literature For?
Authors: Todorov Tzvetan
Published: June 2007

This article begins with a critical analysis of the way literature is taught in French high schools today and attributes the shortcomings of this method to the predominant conception of literature as a self-sufficient object without any relevant relationship to the surrounding world. This conception is also widespread outside of school among critics and even writers. This is an unnecessarily restricted view; in fact literature helps us to better understand the world and lead more meaningful lives.
Recognizing the Patterns
Authors: Wegner Phillip E.
Published: June 2007

I argue that the question framing this symposium, "What Is Literature Now?" is itself always already an interrogation of the nature of globalization in our contemporary moment. I do so by way of a detailed discussion of William Gibson's most recent novel, Pattern Recognition (2003). The questions Gibson asks in this work concern the future role of one of the most important forms of modern literature, the novel, in a world in the midst of dramatic political, economic, and technological changes. In a present rendered so fluid and unstable as to make the classical vocation of the realist novel impossible—any picture of the present hopelessly obsolete long before the work sees the light of day—the novelist's task shifts to the labor of what Gibson names "pattern recognition," a mapping of broader trends and directions in which our global situation tends. There is a deeply polemical element at work here as well: for Gibson, the novel, like the nation-state to which it is inextricably linked, is a residual form, and the unfinished projects of modernist innovation and Utopian communal formation will be continued only through new electronic media forms allegorized in Pattern Recognition by the "footage." However, underlying this vision is a deeper anxiety that the potentialities opened up by the end of the Cold War and the globalizing 1990s will in fact be derailed by the virulent forms of U.S. nationalism unleashed following the events of September 11, 2001, events too that Gibson's novel is among the first to incorporate directly into its thematic structure. There is thus a performative as well as a constative force to the operation of pattern recognition outlined in this work: Gibson asks us to recognize the real movement of the present before we commit ourselves to a course of action from the "gray muck and bones" of which we may not be able to extricate ourselves for a long time.