bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Immunocontraception of mammalian wildlife: ecological and immunogenetic issues
Authors: Cooper Desmond W , Larsen Elisabeth
Published: November 2006

Immunocontraception involves stimulating immune responses against gametes or reproductive hormones thus preventing conception. The method is being developed for the humane control of pest and overabundant populations of mammalian wildlife. This paper examines three fundamental issues associated with its use: (1) the difficulties of obtaining responses to self-antigens, (2) the likely evolution of genetically based non-response to immunocontraceptive agents, and (3) the possible changes in the array of pathogens possessed by the target species after generations of immunocontraception. Our review of the literature demonstrates that the barriers to an effective immunocontraceptive are at present very basic. Should they be overcome, the effects of immunocontraception on the immunogenetic constitution of wildlife populations through the selection for non-responders must be examined. We suggest that the attempt to use the animal’s own immune system to modulate reproduction may be incompatible with the basic biological function of protection against infectious disease. Research programs on mammalian immunocontraception should involve measurement of the heritability of non-response and an assessment of the likely change in the response of the contracepted population to possible pathogens.
Early zygotes are suitable recipients for bovine somatic nuclear transfer and result in cloned offspring
Authors: Schurmann Anita , Wells David N , Oback Björn
Published: November 2006

Cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) subverts sperm-mediated fertilization that normally leads to physiological activation of the oocyte. Therefore, artificial activation is required and it is presently unclear what developmental consequences this has. In this study, we aimed to improve cattle cloning efficiency by utilizing a more physiological method of activating SCNT reconstructs. We carried out in vitro fertilization (IVF) of zona-intact bovine oocytes before SCNT. We removed the zona pellucida 4 h after insemination, stained the fertilized eggs with Hoechst 33342 and mechanically removed both male and female chromatin. The enucleated pre-activated cytoplasts were fused with male adult ear skin fibroblasts (‘IVF-NT’ group). Chemically activated SCNT embryos, produced according to our standard operating procedure for zona-free SCNT, served as controls. After 7 days, in vitro development to blastocysts of morphological grade 1–3 or grade 1–2 was very similar in both groups (39 vs 40% and 20 vs 21% respectively). However, post-implantation development was improved after sperm-mediated activation. Across four replicate runs, pregnancy establishment at day 35 was significantly higher for IVF-NT than for control SCNT embryos (30/49 = 61 vs 17/41 = 42% respectively; P < 0.05). Development into calves at term or weaning was also higher in the IVF-NT group compared with control SCNT (9/49 = 18 vs 3/41 = 7% and 6/49 = 12 vs 3/41 = 7%; P = 0.11 and 0.34 respectively).
Expression of the adaptor protein m-Numb in mouse male germ cells
Authors: Corallini Serena , Fera Stefania , Grisanti Laura , Falciatori Ilaria , Muciaccia Barbara , Stefanini Mario , Vicini Elena
Published: November 2006

Numb is an adaptor protein that is asymmetrically inherited at mitosis and controls the fate of sibling cells in different species. The role of m-Numb (mammalian Numb) as an important cell fate-determining factor has extensively been described mostly in neural tissues, particularly in progenitor cells, in the mouse. Biochemical and genetic analyses have shown that Numb acts as an inhibitor of the Notch signaling pathway, an evolutionarily conserved pathway involved in the control of cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. In the present study, we sought to determine m-Numb distribution in germ cells in the postnatal mouse testis. We show that all four m-Numb isoforms are widely expressed during postnatal testis development. By reverse transcriptase-PCR and western blot analyses, we further identify p71 as the predominantly expressed isoform in germ cells. Moreover, we demonstrate through co-immunoprecipitation studies that m-Numb physically associates with Ap2a1, a component of the endocytotic clathrin-coated vesicles. Finally, we employed confocal immunofluorescence microscopy of whole mount seminiferous tubules and isolated germ cells to gain more insight into the subcellular localization of m-Numb. These morphological analyses confirmed m-Numb and Ap2a1 co-localization. However, we did not observe asymmetric localization of m-Numb neither in mitotic spermatogonial stem cells nor in more differentiated spermatogonial cells, suggesting that spermatogonial stem cell fate in the mouse does not rely on asymmetric partitioning of m-Numb.
Analysis of furin ectodomain shedding in epididymal fluid of mammals: demonstration that shedding of furin occurs in vivo
Authors: Thimon Véronique , Belghazi Maya , Dacheux Jean-Louis , Gatti Jean-Luc
Published: November 2006

Sperm cell surface proteins and proteins of their surrounding fluids are reported to be proteolytically processed in relation to acquisition of sperm fertility during epididymal transit. Several of these proteins might be potential targets for subtilisin-like pro-protein convertase. Using immunochemistry and mass spectrometry analysis, we found that an 80 kDa form of furin (EC 3.4.21.75) is present in the fluid from the mid-caput to the distal corpus regions of the epididymis of various domestic mammals. This protein is absent from the fluid of the caudal region, suggesting that it is reabsorbed or degraded. The cDNA sequence of ovine furin was obtained and the mRNA was found throughout this organ, although in greater amounts in the mid and distal caput regions. Metabolic labeling with 35S-amino acids indicated that the protein was synthesized and released from the epithelium only in a restricted area of the mid-caput, suggesting a specific regionalized mechanism of secretion. The fluid protein is not pelleted at 100 000 g and did not react with a C-terminal antibody indicating that it is not bound to membranous materials. These findings demonstrate that a furin ectodomain shedding occurs naturally in vivo in the epididymis where this enzyme could be involved in fluid and/or sperm membrane protein processing.
Alternative RNA splicing regulation in the testis
Authors: Elliott David J , Grellscheid Sushma N
Published: November 2006

Alternative splicing regulation has been shown to be critically important for several developmental pathways. It is particularly prevalent in the testis, which is the site of an extensive adult developmental programme. Alternative splicing is controlled by a splicing code, in which transcripts respond to subtle cell type-specific variations in positive and negative trans-acting RNA-binding proteins according to their unique set of binding sites for these proteins. Because of their unique combinations of cis-acting sequence elements, specific transcripts are able to respond individually to this code. In this review, we discuss how this code may be deciphered in germ cells to mediate a splicing response.
Relationships between sperm DNA fragmentation, sperm apoptotic markers and serum levels of CB-153 and p,p′-DDE in European and Inuit populations
Authors: Stronati A , Manicardi G C , Cecati M , Bordicchia M , Ferrante L , Spanò M , Toft G , Bonde J P , Jönsson B A G , Rignell-Hydbom A , Rylander L , Giwercman A , Pedersen H S , Bonefeld-Jørgensen E C , Ludwicki J K , Lesovoy V , Sakkas D , Bizzaro D
Published: November 2006

Persistent organochlorine pollutants (POPs) are suspected to interfere with hormone activity and the normal homeostasis of spermatogenesis. We investigated the relationships between sperm DNA fragmentation, apoptotic markers identified on ejaculated spermatozoa and POP levels in the blood of 652 adult males (200 Inuits from Greenland, 166 Swedish, 134 Polish and 152 Ukrainian). Serum levels of 2, 2′, 4, 4′, 5, 5′-hexachlorobiphenyl (CB-153), as a proxy of the total POP burden, and of 1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)-ethylene (p,p′-DDE), as a proxy of the total DDT exposure were determined. Sperm DNA fragmentation was measured by using the TUNEL assay, whereas immunofluorescence methods were utilized for detecting pro-apoptotic (Fas) and anti-apoptotic (Bcl-xL) markers. Both TUNEL assay and apoptotic markers were statistically differed across the four populations. No correlation between neither sperm DNA fragmentation nor apoptotic sperm parameters and the large variations in POPs exposure was observed for the separate study groups. However, considering the European populations taken together, we showed that both %TUNEL positivity and Bcl-xL were related to CB-153 serum levels, whereas our study failed to demonstrate any relations between DDE and %TUNEL positivity and apoptotic sperm biomarkers (Fas and Bcl-xL) in any region or overall regions. These results suggest that CB-153 and related chemicals might alter sperm DNA integrity and Bcl-xL levels in European adult males, but not in the highly exposed Inuit men. Additional issues (genetic background, lifestyle habits and characterization of total xeno-hormonal activities) need to be investigated in order to fully assess the population variations observed.
Proline-rich tyrosine kinase2 is involved in F-actin organization during in vitro maturation of rat oocyte
Authors: Meng Xiao-Qian , Zheng Ke-Gang , Yang Yong , Jiang Man-Xi , Zhang Yan-Ling , Sun Qing-Yuan , Li Yun-Long
Published: November 2006

Microfilaments (actin filaments) regulate various dynamic events during meiotic maturation. Relatively, little is known about the regulation of microfilament organization in mammalian oocytes. Proline-rich tyrosine kinase2 (Pyk2), a protein tyrosine kinase related to focal adhesion kinase (FAK) is essential in actin filaments organization. The present study was to examine the expression and localization of Pyk2, and in particular, its function during rat oocyte maturation. For the first time, by using Western blot and confocal laser scanning microscopy, we detected the expression of Pyk2 in rat oocytes and found that Pyk2 and Try402 phospho-Pyk2 were localized uniformly at the cell cortex and surrounded the germinal vesicle (GV) or the condensed chromosomes at the GV stage or after GV breakdown. At the metaphase and the beginning of anaphase, Pyk2 distributed asymmetrically both in the ooplasm and the cortex with a marked staining associated with the chromosomes and the region overlying the meiotic spindle. At telophase, Pyk2 was observed in the cleavage furrows in addition to its cortex and cytoplasm localization. The dynamics of Pyk2 were similar to that of F-actin, and this kinase was found to co-localize with microfilaments in several developmental stages during rat oocyte maturation. Microinjection of Pyk2 antibody demolished the microfilaments assembly and also inhibited the first polar body (PB1) emission. These findings suggest an important role of Pyk2 for rat oocyte maturation by regulating the organization of actin filaments.
The Barbarism of Virtue
Authors: Hook Sidney
Published: November 2006

The advocates of the philosophy of engagement assert that learning and scholarship are not value-free, that there is a ubiquitous, even if implicit, commitment to a moral, and therefore basically political, standpoint in the vocation of the scholar and in the mission of the university. The first thing to note about this philosophy is its high-mindedness, its exalted conception of the role of the scholar and scholarship. However, if the commitment of the scholar is moral and not only intellectual, to virtue and not only to truth, how can this supply guidance or a principle of decision where the scholar encounters conflict among moral values? Decisions as to which values are to be given priority flow from the judgments, inescapable moral and political judgments, with which the citizen must concern himself. But the traditional view is that the primary goal of the citizen in his role as scholar is not the quest for virtue or power but the quest for significant truths. The pursuit of truth does not entail withdrawal or isolation from but service to society. Scholars cannot and should not escape the world of politics. But in a rational and humane society there must be some activities and institutions that are beyond politics.
Der Walpurgisnachtstraum in Goethes Faust: Entwurf, Gestaltung, Funktion
Authors: Dietze Von Walter
Published: November 2006

The 176 verses (44 epigrams) of the Walpurgis Night's Dream in Faust, Part I, are structurally divided into three themes and contain elements of aesthetics, cognition theory, and social criticism. In the relationship between Walpurgis Night and Walpurgis Night's Dream, overlapping tendencies toward concrete characterization and abstract figure-allegories pave the way for that interrelation of the “big” and “small” world which is the basic principle of the artistic link between Faust, Part I, and Faust, Part XI. With polemical intentions, Goethe draws a series of types and characters which, as a body, must be understood in the sense of Hegel as an “abolition” of irony in romanticist comedies. In regard to tradition, borrowings from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night'sDream and The Tempest are combined with adaptations of Domenico Cimarosa and the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is the inherent unity of seriousness and levity, of the tragic and the comic, of constructive profoundness and slapstick in all these elements which give Walpurgis Night's Dream an important but up to now functionally underestimated place in the complete work of Faust. (In German)
The Damned Crew
Authors: Sprott S. E.
Published: November 2006

The Damned Crew was a class of roisterers in London from the early 1590's to the late 1620's, their self-styled captain being at one time Sir Edmund Baynham, who was also involved in the Gunpowder Plot. Represented in literature as perjurers, assassins, dissidents, and revellers, they were thought to be reprobate with the damned crew of devils in hell. Indeed, they may have thought so themselves, reacting from misconstrued predestinarianism as desperate libertines with a limited Manichean outlook. Some such interpretation explains their title and behaviour and the view of them taken by theological controversialists such as Dove, Kellison, and Sutcliffe, and by playwrights like Chapman.
Cardenio, by Shakespeare and Fletcher
Authors: Freehafer John
Published: November 2006

Cardenio, a “lost” play of 1612-13 based on Shelton's translation of Don Quixote (1612), is partly preserved, in altered form, in Lewis Theobald's Double Falshood of 1727. Theobald probably altered Cardenio drastically, as he did Richard II. To internal evidence that Cardenio was written by Shakespeare and Fletcher can be added chronological evidence and reluctant testimony to the joint authorship by the publisher Moseley, Charles Gildon, and Theobald. One of Theobald's three manuscripts can be traced in the hands of Moseley, the Davenants, Betterton, Gildon, Theobald's patron (Charles Boyle), and Theobald. A Restoration performance probably was intended. Theobald persisted in claiming that the original play was by Shakespeare alone after he learned otherwise, from Gildon and the Stationers' Register, to save his reputation as a Shakespeare scholar and please his patron. To protect his “Shakespeare” play, Theobald obtained a unique royal license, which Pope ridiculed in the Dunciad. Theobald probably sold his play and Shakespeare manuscripts outright to his publisher. He was prevented from publishing Cardenio by the copyright Act of 1710, the practice of regarding copyright as perpetual, and his quest of money and patronage.
Action and Suffering: Samson Agonistes and the Irony of Alternatives
Authors: Low Anthony
Published: November 2006

To the various kinds of irony that critics have noticed in Milton's Samson Agonistes may be added another, the irony of alternatives. This irony is based on a proposition with alternative possibilities posited by one of the characters: either this will happen or that; but both choices eventuate, although they appear to be mutually exclusive. Milton calls this kind of proposition axioma disjunclum contingens in his Art of Logic. Samson s prophecy that he will either die or do some great deed, the doubts of his friends whether he has been slain by or is slaying the Philistines, their expectation of either good or bad news are all ironically resolved in the catastrophe, which combines alternatives and reveals the simplifying power of providence. Similarly, although the Chorus states that there are two kinds of heroism, active and passive, either of which may be Samson s, both eventuate. Samson s heroism includes both courageous action and Christian patience as he slays and is slain. In his conclusion, Milton fuses genuine tragedy with religious drama, because Samson as an active hero dies tragically, and as a martyr wins a spiritual victory and the crown of patience.
The Time Machine; or, the Fourth Dimension as Prophecy
Authors: Philmus Robert M.
Published: November 2006

Most of the early science fantasies of H. G. Wells are, as he defines the term, prophetic: the myths that they develop to a logical conclusion represent a critique of some historical or essential aspect of the human condition. The Time Machine, his first scientific romance, explores the premises of prophetic fantasy at the same time that it embodies a myth of its own. In it Wells envisions the future devolution of man, already outlined in previous essays of his, as the ultimate consequence of what he perceived as a present attitude of complacent optimism, an attitude he dramatizes in the reaction of the Active audience to the Time Traveller's account of the world of 802,701 and beyond. Although the Time Traveller accepts this vision as literally true, his own theories about that world make it clear that its significance pertains to it only as a metaphoric projection of tendencies existing in the present. Thus the structure of The Time Machine reveals the Time Traveller's point of view, like that of his audience, to be limited: his final disappearance into the fantasied world of the future vindicates the rigorous integrity of Wells s prophecy.
Functions of the Framework in La Fontaine's Psyché
Authors: Gross Nathan
Published: November 2006

By keeping the frame-characters before the reader while they visit Versailles and listen to the tale of Cupid and Psyche, and by informing us of the kinds of emotions Psyché's adventures inspire, La Fontaine uses the elaborate framework to place into perspective our reactions to his art. The frame makes the reader recognize his reactions to the story, mirrored in the four friends responses, as well as to the poet's stylistic devices: badinage, reminders of the tale's oral narration, a variety of rhetorical and narrative modes including verse passages that decorate the tale. The friends intrude according to temperament; each prefers a different literary style for the emotions it induces. Their comments lead to the central “digression” on tragedy and comedy, between Parts I and n of Psyché's adventures. This discussion permits transition between the tragic and comic parts of the tale, and the analysis of pity there prepares for Part n in which compassion is the principal emotion experienced by the characters in the tale and the frame. La Fontaine's strategy of holding the frame-characters before the reader is his most significant contribution to his version of Apuleius' tale.
Language, Style, and Meaning in Troilus and Cressida
Authors: McAlindon T.
Published: November 2006

For those who regard Troilus and Cressida as a play marred by incongruous elements and an uncertain purpose, Act iv, Scene v, will always constitute an obvious source of dissatisfaction. Here, a long-awaited andloudly heralded climax—the duel between Ajax and Hector—rapidly subsides into anticlimax: before Ajax is even warm with action, Hector calls an end to the combat on the ground that he and his opponent are cousins. Moreover, Hector explains his motive for withdrawal, and comments on Ajax's reply, in speeches whose diction and style merely add to the discordant effect of his behavior:
Wrestling with This World: A View of George Chapman
Authors: Presson Robert K.
Published: November 2006

IN commenting on Chapman's tragic heroes, Robert Ornstein observes that “Dangerous as it would be to identify Chapman with his Stoic heroes, I cannot but feel that he shared their spiritual isolation and their sense of alienation from an unworthy society.”1 However dangerous (and unfashionable) it may be to look for the author himself in dramatic works, I think a case can be made that Chapman does reveal himself not only in his Stoic heroes but also in many of his poems, plays, and translations, and that he deliberately sought subject matter which best expressed his own outlook and personal feelings. Critics have had a way of not looking into Chapman's works as a whole,2 but to do so is to see a relatively constant pattern, and when the usual pattern does not occur (as sometimes it does not in his comedies and tragedies), even then we have but a variation on it. The good man's confrontation with a corrupt, harsh, hostile, and often destructive world is the image of reality Chapman favors writing about, but a quest for consolations for numerous adversities is not infrequently a concomitant part of that experience. Many characters, fictional and actual, past and present, in the essentials of their experiences, can be read as guises for Chapman's own struggles with the world.
Milton's “Destin'd Urn”: The Art of Lycidas
Authors: Wittreich Joseph Anthony
Published: November 2006

T.S. Eliot has appropriately cautioned us against disposing of Dr. Johnson's criticism with indecent haste.1 He may just as appropriately have told us that Dr. Johnson, while always pointing to significant issues, has occasionally said the wrong things about them; though in doing so, Johnson has unwittingly drawn our attention to poetical subtleties that he himself does not perceive. So it is with much that Johnson says of Lycidas, and particularly with what he says of the poem's rhyme scheme. He tells us rather tartly that the rhymes are “uncertain”;2 he does not tell us, however, that the rhymes tend toward certainty until regularity is triumphantly achieved in the penultimate verse paragraph.
Byron's Cain
Authors: Michaels Leonard
Published: November 2006

BYRON'S Cain, to no one's surprise, is a Byronic hero—disaffected, self-pitying, self-hating, suicidal—but he can be distinguished from such Byronically heroic figures as Lara and Manfred because, for one thing, he is not directly presented to us agonizing over his guilty past. Cain is presented in fact with no past except divine history and he protests, again and again, that this belongs not at all to him but to his blundering parents and God. There is no crime, then, no wretchedly sinful experience, for which this hero can be held responsible, and he is thrust upon us, embittered and complaining, without any personal history to account for the difference between himself and his pious community. Ultimately, however, there is the murder of Abel and, to compare Cain with other Byronic heroes, it should be said the murder replaces the sin or crime in the hero's past which Byron ordinarily leaves obscure. More relevant to my present concern is the fact that the murder has the effect of identifying Cain to himself and his community as none other than Cain, the infamous Biblical murderer. “Am I then my brother's keeper?” he asks.1 The addition of “then” to the notorious question suggests that Cain has read the Bible; it also reveals the curious way in which Byron has conceived this particular hero—as reliving rather than living the Biblical myth. In effect, Byron's Cain is a dramatic creature who plays Cain until, voilà, he murders his brother and discovers he is Cain.
Sebastian Brant's Narrenschiff and the Humanists
Authors: Gaier Ulrich
Published: November 2006

Brant's Humanistic friends viewed the Narrenschiff (1494) as a satire in the Roman tradition which marked the beginning of a literary Renaissance in the German vernacular. That contemporary interpretation of the work justifies a comparison of the Narrenschiff with Erasmus' Encomium Moriae, “the most important remaining problem in Brant research” (Zeydel). The two works are formally comparable since both use rhetorical forms (e.g., oralio) as a structural basis for their satiric intent. Since the two satires also coincide on many points of content, the “Erasmian duplicity” seems the only obstacle to a complete juxtaposition. This duplicity, however, is a necessary consequence of Erasmus' use of prosopopoiia and is not characteristic of his frame of mind, as can be shown in his firm reliance on divine wisdom. In this he coincides again with Brant's attitude in the Narrenschiff. Thus, the difference between the two works is not one in kind or outlook but one mainly determined by the different audiences addressed.
“Rappaccini's Daughter”: A Keatsian Analogue?
Authors: Anderson Norman A.
Published: November 2006

“Rappaccini's Daughter” (1844) has conspicuous narrative and conceptual parallels to Keats's “Lamia” (1819), and the allegorical points in both tales are remarkably similar. Both tales focus on a beautiful, innocent, but unnatural girl who dwells in a brilliant, illusory world apart from the mundane; both girls are loved by callow young men who unwittingly contribute to the destruction of the girls and of themselves; and both young men have tutors, rational men of science, who intrude upon the world of illusion and wilfully destroy it. Keats and Hawthorne seem sympathetic toward their heroines and sternly antipathetic toward the men of science; their attitudes toward the young men are ambivalent and unhappy. Both writers invest the story with an ambiguity arising from the dilemma of trying to reconcile real and illusory experience because the writers themselves had not made up their minds about this dilemma. An appendix presents textual parallels from the two stories.
Murder as a Fine Art: Basic Connections Between Poe's Aesthetics, Psychology, and Moral Vision
Authors: Moldenhauer Joseph J.
Published: November 2006

The theories of art and the mind which Poe advances systematically in his criticism and elaborates into the cosmology of Eureka are also expressed in his literary works on all levels of theme and form, including recurrent actions, symbols, settings, patterns of characterization, and narrative stances. Despite his separation of beauty from truth and duty, and of the imaginative faculty from reason and conscience, Poe's aesthetic is a self-contained metaphysics and ethics. Unity, the essential condition and supreme value of art, is the condition likewise of death, as pursued by Poe's fictional characters through destructive acts which are vicariously and finally suicidal. Often literally artists or connoisseurs, these protagonists are motivated by a “perversity” indistinguishable in its goals and techniques from those of the divinely inspired imagination. In killing others, they impose unity upon the diverse and particular, assimilating into themselves identities which were tangible reflections of their own beings, and were, so to speak, imperfect art objects. When the hero is victim rather than aggressor, his passage into unconsciousness or mystic awareness is again governed by his longing for unity and attended by aesthetic insight. The relationship in Poe's essays between artist and critic illuminates the ratiocinative tales. Here, the detective's solutions arise from imaginative identification with the criminal and internal enactment of his deed. Obedient to the same intuitive forces, the critic-detective and the creator-criminal display a kinship which conforms to the doubling of aggressive and passive figures in the tales of terror. Life, in Poe's value system, is inimical to an aesthetic bliss; and the didactic implications of his poetry and fiction are reversals of conventional humanistic judgments.
The History of the Third Nasal Phoneme of Modern German
Authors: Penzl Herbert
Published: November 2006

The distributional environment of the nasal phoneme /ŋ/, compared to those of /n/ /m/, is restricted in Modem German but reflects its origin from an allophone (variant) of /n/ before velar consonants. The phoneme developed first in medial position through the loss of /g/ in the cluster /ng/; in final position the frequent replacement of /g/ by its fortis counterpart /k/ largely prevented this loss. Late Old High German n-spellings (e.g., sinen), particularly in the 11th-century Physiologus, are the first evidence for the /ŋ/-phoneme, which generally continues, however, to be written ng (singeri). Middle High German assonances made medial/ŋŋ/ likely, which is still found in some Swiss dialects. Descriptive statements by Early New High German grammarians clearly reveal the phonemic status of /ŋ/.
Johann Heinrich Merck Über Den Roman
Authors: Vaget H. Rudolf
Published: November 2006

Merck's concept of the novel which emerges very clearly from his reviews and his essay “Über den Mangel des epischen Geistes in unserm lieben Vaterland” represents the only major contribution of Storm and Stress to the incipient discussion of the theory of the novel. In accordance with the realistic tendencies of Storm and Stress, he advocated a realistic novel which was to deal seriously with everyday life and contemporary society, excluding, however, political themes. Among the earliest critics of the novel, Merck was unique in paying particular attention to narrative technique. Whereas Blanckenburg propagated a character novel told by a personal narrator (Tom Jones, Agathon), Merck—long before Spielhagen—called for an objective narrative technique without intrusions from the narrator, his ideal being Homer. Characteristic is his attitude toward Sterne; he rejected Blanckenburg's and Wezel's imitation of Sterne's personal comments but admired the latter's gift for realistic scenes. In the history of the theory of the novel Merck occupies a significant place in the long line of critics who saw in the objectivity of the epic the ideal for the narrative technique of the modem novel.
Milton and Self-Knowledge
Authors: Fields Albert W.
Published: November 2006

Milton's notion of self-knowledge places him in the Socratic-Christian tradition which distinguishes between man's rational part, or self-like-God, and his passional nature, the aspect of self most easily subverted by Satan. Only the self-knowing man, by introspection and by seeing the reflection of self in the mirror of the world's stage, achieves a harmony between the two aspects of self. Milton's concept of self-examination, apparent in his prose and verse, is symbolically represented in Paradise Lost. The world of Adam-Eve mirrors both God's realm of pure truth and reason and Satan's realm of unreason and unrestrained passion. These realms represent those aspects of self that man must necessarily discover within. The Fall is inevitable and irrevocable in the creation of self: in Adam's discovery of his obligation to know himself “aright,” he understands that his rational self-like-God must rule the darker passionate self. Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes also represent man as achieving self-knowledge by the twofold means of introspection and viewing the reflection of himself in the external world.
Dryden's The Hind and the Panther and Roman Catholic Apologetics
Authors: Hamm Victor M.
Published: November 2006

A mass of now forgotten Roman Catholic apologetic and controversial writings appeared in English during Dryden's lifetime. Study reveals the fact that Dryden was acquainted with some of the most notable of these, particularly Hugh Cressy's Exomologesis (1647, 1653), Rushworth-White's Dialogues (1654), John Sergeant's Schisme Dis-Arm'd (1655) and Sure-Footing in Christianity (1665), Edward Worsley's Protestancy Without Principles (1668), and Abraham Woodhead's Rational Account (1673), as well as with the principal Anglican publications of the day (especially those of Stillingfleet and Tillotson). Dryden used the arguments, sometimes the very phraseology, of these and other writings in his poem. The Hind and the Panther thus justifies Charles E. Ward's judgment that the poet's conversion was “a result of long thought and long study of the problems of faith,” and takes its place in the Catholic-Anglican controversy of the age.
The Composition of Clarissa and Its Revision Before Publication
Authors: Duncan Eaves T. C. , Kimpel Ben D.
Published: November 2006

As a detailed chronology of the composition demonstrates, Richardson revised Clarissa carefully and thoroughly before its first publication and consulted several of his friends about it, but his correspondence does not show that he changed his basic plan or took advice from anyone on important matters. The first extant references to the novel are in letters from Edward Young and Aaron Hill in June and July 1744. By this time the general plan of the novel was fixed and a first version may have been already completed. It was certainly completed early in 1746. By that time Richardson had begun an extensive revision, and before publication he revised once again. A study of his revisions shows that he was especially concerned about reducing the length of his book, and he also blackened the character of Lovelace, tried to clarify the motives of his characters, and elevated his language.
Burns's Comedy of Romantic Love
Authors: Beaty Frederick L.
Published: November 2006

Though Burns enunciated no critical precepts on the comedy of love, he composed much of his best poetry not only within the eighteenth-century sanction of aggressive wit but also according to the tradition of humor as it later became associated with the distinctively Romantic expression of the comic spirit. Illustrative poems and letters reveal his mirthful delineation of human affection. With extraordinary insight into the realities of amatory experience, he treated a rich variety of subjects—the multifarious joys and problems of courtship, unrestrained passion, adultery, unwed parenthood, marriage, artificial conventions and morals, alcoholic stimulation, and defiance of social hypocrisy. His sympathy with the essential seriousness of love counterbalanced a perceptive awareness of human frailties; his basically empathic approach to the dilemmas of love often coalesced with portrayals of ludicrous situations or character traits that invited laughter. It was the fusion of these seemingly antithetical elements that impressed his nineteenth-century admirers, and this outstanding achievement has become increasingly significant in the light of more recent psychological analyses.
The Expanding Humanities and the Individual Scholar
Authors: Ong Walter J.
Published: November 2006

A common assumption about the humanities used to be that they were always the same: both their subject matter and the ways of studying them were invariable. “The proper study of mankind is man” was an evident enough truth, and when one got down to the study, one found oneself at best working over again “what oft was thought but ne'er so well express'd.”
From the Basic Issues Conference to the Dartmouth Seminar: Perspectives on the Teaching Of English
Authors: Marckwardt Albert H.
Published: November 2006

It has been said with some justice that during the past one hundred years committees have functioned as the task forces of American educational reform. It might also have been added that the preliminary scouting or reconnaissance has been accomplished through the device of the conference. It is quite likely, therefore, that a comparison of the aims, organization, and outlook of the Basic Issues Conference of 1958 and the Dartmouth Seminar of 1966 will serve to place in some kind of perspective the significant trends in English teaching which are taking place in the country today and which may continue to be influential for some time to come.
John Crowe Ransom's Poetic Revisions
Authors: Mann David , Woods Samuel H.
Published: November 2006

With Selected Poems, 1963, Ransom's canon of “authorized” poems stands at fifty-three. Comparison of this latest collection with his 1945 and 1955 collections reveals minor and major changes of the 1945 and 1955 collections, particularly in his lesser-known poems, and inclusion of revised versions of earlier poems. Most changes show Ransom simplifying diction, smoothing meter, or removing obscurities. Minor changes (word and punctuation changes) occur in eight poems. Major changes (revisions of whole lines, addition or deletion of material longer than one line, and complete revision) occur in fourteen poems (“Agitato ma non troppo,” “First Travels of Max,” “Armageddon,” “Prometheus in Straits,” “Eclogue,” “Hilda,” “What Ducks Require,” “Master's in the Garden Again,” and others). “Old Man Pondered,” reprinted without change from the Saturday Review of Literature, is considered a major change since it did not appear in the 1945 or 1955 collections.
A New Chaucer Manuscript
Authors: Doyle A. I. , Pace George B.
Published: November 2006

The Coventry MS, which contains writings by Chaucer, Hoccleve, Lydgate, Mandeville, and others, belonged to the Grammar School at Coventry from shortly after 1602 until the early years of the present century, when it disappeared. The volume reappeared, in private hands, in the 1950's and was bought by the Coventry City Council. Virtually nothing has been known of the contents of the MS. The Chaucerian texts (transcriptions printed in the article) are A B C, Bukton, Purse, Gentilesse, Lak of Sledfastnesse, Truth. These texts generally represent a good tradition (Brusendorff's “Bradshaw group”) and exhibit an interesting relationship with the important Canterbury Tales MS, Cambridge University Library Gg. 4. 27. The Coventry MS was written in the middle or third quarter of the fifteenth century. Its Chaucerian texts mark it as the fourth largest anthology of Chaucer's Short Poems known from medieval times.
Anacreon Moore and America
Authors: Eldridge Herbert G.
Published: November 2006

A dramatic incident in the literary warfare between England and America during the first quarter of the nineteenth century was Tom Moore's indictment of the American character in Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (1806), inspired by a tour through the United States in the summer of 1804. Four Juvenalian “epistles” developed the contrast in America between man's humanitarian dreams and his actual moral and political performance. Because of the poet's popularity, his diatribe, which included slanderous portraits of Jefferson and Washington, was widely discussed and deeply resented even by Moore's American friends. The most substantial rebuttals came in a lengthy critique of Moore's work offered as prefatory material to an American edition of Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (Philadelphia, 1806); in a serial review by William Coleman in the New-York Evening Post (October-November 1806); and in an anonymous poem entitled An Attempt to Vindicate the American Character (Philadelphia, 1806). So violent was the reaction that not until the publication of Lalla Rookh in 1817 did “Anacreon” Moore regain favor among Columbian readers, and by that time he had come to regret what he called his “crude and boyish tirades against the Americans.”
The Devil and Major Barbara
Authors: Berst Charles A.
Published: November 2006

The usual interpretations of Major Barbara, which focus on Barbara and align Undershaft's views with those of Shaw, lead to a distorted estimate of the play. Shaw is concerned less with Barbara's religious experience than with the character of Undershaft and the social implications of a philosophy of money and gunpowder. He admires Undershaft's vital genius, but maintains esthetic distance by revealing the arms maker as psychologically conditioned by the experience of his rise to power, his idealism being debilitated by cynicism. In clarifying the social, political, and economic fact of society's dependence on money and gunpowder, Undershaft provides dramatically viable social criticism and suggests a basis for reform. But he is too ensnared in his profession to effect reform himself. Poetically, dramaturgically, and dialectically he plays a devil's role, part social and part Blakean, imposing his diabolism on the well-meaning but misdirected angelicalness of Barbara. Barbara's more sympathetic role offers the audience a spiritual bridge between the simplicity of Stephen and the complexity of Undershaft. As she comes to understand the devil's realities, she provides for the future a hope which Undershaft, with his entanglements, cannot fulfil.
Richard Lewis and Augustan American Poetry
Authors: Leo Lemay J. A.
Published: November 2006

Most Augustan poetry in America remains unattributed and unstudied. However, a critical study of the poems by Richard Lewis (1700?-34) reveals that he was not only the best Augustan American poet but also the first and most successful American nature poet before Bryant. His “To Mr. Samuel Hastings,” a progress piece on shipbuilding, is the earliest poem on an American industry. “A Journey from Patapsco to Annapolis,” a Thomsonian nature poem, and “Food for Clitics,” which anticipates Freneau, both contain the best elements of Lewis' poetry: a philosophy of scientific deism, praise of nature and the Creator, extended descriptions and catalogues of flowers, wildlife, and rivers presented in fine images which show his exact powers of observation, and the themes of the superiority of American nature, the wilderness as Eden, and the lost innocence of America. Pope refers to Lewis' “A Journey” in the Dunciad. His occasional verses, such as the one in honor of Lord Baltimore which shows Lewis' sense of history and patriotism, and his poems on Governor B. L. Calvert also reveal his merit. His reflection of contemporary poets and philosophers, his anticipation of significant American themes, and the excellence of his poetry all suggest that Lewis was an important poet.
The Style of Bellow's Comedy
Authors: Shulman Robert
Published: November 2006

In Augie March, Henderson, and Herzog, Bellow has created an open style of ideological comedy that relates him to Rabelais, Burton, Sterne, Melville, and Joyce, earlier masters of an encyclopedic comedy of knowledge. The lively voice and intellectual probing in Augie March can be more fully valued when the book is related to such predecessors rather than to the picaresque tradition. Bellow's comic characters have an individual idiom, voice, and range of concern that unobtrusively unify his apparently formless books. What emerges in Augie March and Herzog—the comedy, suffering, and encyclopedic speculation; the concern for personal fates, social facts, and cosmic issues; the interest in observed actuality and abstract symbol; the tension between a cruel, deterministic reality and the impulse toward creative freedom and joy; the precarious reliance on metaphoric probing and an open form—all suggest that against great odds, both public and personal, Bellow has succeeded in reanimating a style of intellectual comedy that illuminates and celebrates the present even as it connects us and Bellow with some of the most powerful imaginations of the past.
Kafka's Eternal Present: Narrative Tense in “Ein Landarzt” and Other First-Person Stories
Authors: Cohn Dorrit
Published: November 2006

Many of Kafka's stories in the first person either use the present tense throughout or shift from past to present in the course of narration. The stories told entirely in the present render the inner monologue of a speaker caught in a durative psychic struggle; the stories in which the tense changes tell of a past calamity that leads to an everlasting predicament. “Ein Landarzt” is structured on an “einmal-niemals” pattern, and thus belongs to the second of these general types; but in this story Kafka also tries—again by shifting to the present tense—to achieve within the narration of past events the immediacy of present experience. He thereby effaces the demarcation between outer event and inner reflection and eliminates the temporal distance between the narrating and the experiencing self. This use of the present tense results in mutually exclusive verbal gestures and contradictory temporal references. The stylistic incongruities in “Ein Landarzt” thus point up the difficulties of rendering the immediacy of experience in a first-person narrative, and help to explain why Kafka usually preferred to use the third person in his novels and novellas.
The Revival of Rhetoric
Authors: Booth Wayne C.
Published: November 2006

As teachers of language and literature, you have all noticed that my title is even more ambiguous than most. Those of you who are amiably disposed may even have called it general, in the old style, rather than ambiguous, in the new. The word “rhetoric” has for a long time served for both the study of the art of persuasion and for the art itself; Aristotle's Rhetoric, upper-case, is still unsurpassed, but take away the capital letter and Aristotle's rhetoric is often very bad indeed, at least as we view it. In the second sense rhetoric has never had a real quantitative revival because it has always thrived; but in the first sense we seem to be in the midst of a revival of rhetoric unmatched in the twentieth century. Unfortunately, in spite of some very good work, there are signs that it may prove a very shoddy revival indeed, with no more lasting effect than the rhetorically-oriented “communications” movement of a decade ago, unless we take thought about what we are doing. Judging from some of the recent freshman texts I have seen, I would not be surprised to find in my box tomorrow when I return a new work entitled A Speller's Rhetoric.
The Silence of Iago
Authors: Stempel Daniel
Published: November 2006

In his speech on “vertue” (I.iii) Iago defends the absolute power of the individual to will freely. This doctrine of the autonomous will was commonly attributed to the Jesuit theologian, Molina, whose writings were then the subject of bitter controversy. Iago's subtle twisting of moral values also falls into the pattern of malign casuistry and cynical self-aggrandizement associated with the Jesuit image in England. Iago, then, is not the usual Machiavel who spurns both religion and morality; he is the Jesuitical Machiavel who employs the language of piety to “enmesh them all.” Convinced that he is the master of his will, Iago usually finds no difficulty in supplying motives for his actions; yet, after he is unmasked, he doggedly remains silent. From the Augustinian (and Shakespearean) point of view this is simply the ultimate mute evidence that, contrary to his belief, Iago has been mastered by a radically evil will for which he has merely supplied both motive and opportunity. Like the Pardoner and the Ancient Mariner, he knows what he has done, but does not (in the fullest sense of the word) know why he has done it.
The Drama of Memory in My Ántonia
Authors: Martin Terence
Published: November 2006

The focus of My Antonia is controlled by Jim Burden's attempt to invest the memories of his youth in the image of Antonia. Jim gives us first an extended portrait of the Nebraska prairies, of the Shimerdas' struggle for survival, and of an Antonia who grows muscular under the strain of work. An idyllic quality pervades the narrative, a sense of happiness remembered. Incidents of bitterness and violence are muted by a style which sacrifices immediacy to the afterglow of remembrance. At the midpoint of the novel, Lena Lingrad, enticing, sensually eloquent, poses a challenge to Jim and his memories. A latter-day enchantress, Lena inspires irresponsibility, forgetfulness, and dream. But Jim's narrative is dedicated to showing the value of memory in and for the present; he identifies Antonia with the prairie and clusters its meanings around her. When, after years have passed, he returns to Nebraska and sees Antonia's large, joyous, and vibrant family, the past and the present finally merge for him in a dynamic new image of happiness. Antonia comes to be Jim's personal symbol of the value of human experience. The novel first validates his memory, then transfigures it into something fertile, fresh, and living.