Foreword and Prologue

Milton Konvitz (Ph.D. \u2733) embodied the spirit of Cornell University. An authority on civil rights and human rights, and constitutional and labor law, he served on the Cornell faculty for 27 years, holding dual appointments at the Law School and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. This section includes the foreword by Robert B. McKersie and the prologue in four chapters: (1) The Making of a Scholar; (2) Civil Rights; (3) Fundamental Liberties; and (4) Judaic and American Ideals

The structure of the Plutarchan book

This study focuses not on individual Lives or pairs of Lives, but on the book as a whole and its articulation across the full corpus. It argues that the Plutarchan book consists of up to four distinct sections: prologue, first Life, second Life, synkrisis. Each of these sections has a fairly consistent internal structure, and each has a distinct set of strategies for opening, for closure, and for managing the transition from one section to the next. Prologues provide an introduction to both Lives, and are clearly delineated from them, even though in our manuscripts they appear as part of the first Life; in fact, there is often a stronger break between prologue and first Life than there is between the two Lives themselves. Prologues usually begin with generalized reflections, to be followed only later by the naming of the subjects and a statement of their similarities. Most Lives begin with a thematically organized section (the ‘proemial opening’), which surveys the subject's life as a whole, not just their youth, and which is marked off with varying degrees of distinctness from the narrative that follows. Crucially, proemial openings do not narrate and the logic of their structure is not chronological. Closure in many Lives is signalled by ‘circularity’ and sometimes by a closural or transitional phrase, though first Lives are different here from second Lives. Synkriseis are structured both by a series of themes on which the two subjects are compared, and by a two-part, agonistic structure in which first one of the subjects is preferred, then the other. Synkriseis may also recall the prologue; both prologue and synkrisis operate at the level of the book, and between them frame and weld together the two Lives.</jats:p

Book Review of Kenneth F. McCallion, Shoreham and the Rise and Fall of the Nuclear Power Industry

Review of Kenneth F. McCallion, Shoreham and the Rise and Fall of the Nuclear Power Industry (Praeger 1995). About the author, acknowledgements, foreword by Irving Like, index, preface, prologue, selected bibliography. LC 94- 32930; ISBN 0-275-94299-6 [221 pp. Cloth $55.00. 88 Post Road West, Westport CT 06881.

Eros and Pilgrimage in Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s Poetry

The paper discusses erotic desire and the motif of going on pilgrimage in the opening of Geoffrey Chaucer’s General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales and in William Shakespeare’s sonnets. What connects most of the texts chosen for consideration in the paper is their diptych-like composition, corresponding to the dual theme of eros and pilgrimage. At the outset, I read the first eighteen lines of Chaucer’s Prologue and demonstrate how the passage attempts to balance and reconcile the eroticism underlying the description of nature at springtime with Christian devotion and the spirit of compunction. I support the view that the passage is the first wing of a diptych-like construction opening the General Prologue. The second part of the paper focuses on the motif of pilgrimage, particularly erotic pilgrimage, in Shakespeare’s sonnets. I observe that most of the sonnets that exploit the conceit of travel to the beloved form lyrical diptychs. Shakespeare reverses the medieval hierarchy of pilgrimage and desire espoused by Chaucer. Both poets explore and use to their own ends the tensions inherent in the juxtaposition of sacred and profane love. Their compositions encode deeper emotional patterns of desire: Chaucer’s narrator channels sexual drives into the route of communal national penance, whereas the Shakespearean persona employs religious sentiments in the service of private erotic infatuations

Review of: Charles R. Bennett, Risks in the Environment: How to Assess Them

Review of: Charles R. Bennett, Risks in the Environment: How to Assess Them (Burloak Publications 1996). Appendices, references for the appendices, prologue. ISBN 0-9680438-0-1 [305 pp. Paper $23.95. 277 Belvenia Rd., Burlington, Ontario.

Springs as a Civilizing Mechanism in Daphnis and Chloe

Abstract: In Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, springs are a central motif of the Prologue and the novel as a whole. This motif counters male domination, since it is associated with Chloe, while the flowers watered by springs in this novel are identified with Daphnis. This study will examine how the motif of springs reflects the resistance of Daphnis and Chloe to pervasive cultural constructions of gender, creating individuals who participate in the larger society without reproducing its structures.Abstract: In Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, springs are a central motif of the Prologue and the novel as a whole. This motif counters male domination, since it is associated with Chloe, while the flowers watered by springs in this novel are identified with Daphnis. This study will examine how the motif of springs reflects the resistance of Daphnis and Chloe to pervasive cultural constructions of gender, creating individuals who participate in the larger society without reproducing its structures

To sleep perchance to sing: the suspension of disbelief in the prologue to Francesco Cavalli's Gli Amori d'Apollo e di Dafne (1640)

In the newly popularized genre of opera during the seventeenth century, the allegorical prologue was commonly used as a preface from about 1600 to 1670, with no fewer than 98 opera prologues composed throughout Venice during this period. These prologues, often sung by allegories and/or characters from myth, set the stage for the proceeding drama. In the prologue to Francesco Cavalli’s 1640 opera Gli Amori d’Apollo e di Dafne, its characters, the gods of sleep and dreams, set the stage for an opera that revolves around a dream. This article explores the act of wishing the audience peaceful and pleasant dreams by using oratory as a method that the allegorical figures use to sing the audience a lullaby. The purpose of this lullaby is to instigate the suspension of disbelief required to allow the story to gain the audience’s credibility. This article will show how Cavalli’s opera does so uniquely by spatially extending its effects outwards onto the audience rather than only onto the characters onstage

Black Holes: A Window into A New Theory of Space Time

S. Chandrasekhar wrote in the prologue to his book on black holes, "The black holes of nature are the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe: the only elements in their construction are our concepts of space and time." In this contribution I briefly discuss recent developments in fundamental theory and black holes that vindicate this statement in a modern perspective. I also include some of my reminiscences of Chandra.Comment: One reference correcte

Boston University Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, December 5, 1987

This is the concert program of the Boston University Chorus and Symphony Orchestra performance on Saturday, December 5, 1987 at 8:00 p.m., at the Concert Hall, 855 Commonwealth Avenue. Works performed were "The King shall rejoice" by George Frideric Handel, Symphonie "Mathis der Maler" by Paul Hindemith, and Prologue from "Boris Godunov" by Modest Mussorgsky. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Humanities Library Endowed Fund