2,291 research outputs found

    Analysis of Writing Inks on Paper Using Direct Analysis in Real Time Mass Spectrometry

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    Ink analysis is central to questioned document examination. We applied direct analysis in real time mass spectrometry (DART MS) to ballpoint, gel, and fluid writing ink analysis. DART MS acquires the mass spectrum of an ink while it is still on a document without altering the appearance of the document. Spectra were acquired from ink on a variety of papers, and the spectrum of the blank paper could be subtracted out to produce a cleanly isolated ink spectrum in most cases. Only certain heavy or heavily processed papers interfered. The time since an ink is written on paper has a large effect on its spectrum. DART spectra change radically during the first few months after an ink is written as the more volatile components evaporate, but the spectra stabilize after that. A library-search study involving 166 well-aged inks assessed the ability to identify inks from their DART spectra. The aggregate success rate was 92%

    An examination of the characteristics of disguised and traced handwriting

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    There has recently been a lack of judicial confidence in the evidence provided by handwriting analysis which has highlighted the need for objective research to be conducted in this area. In response this study has examined the principles and practices of two of the field’s most complex areas of analysis: disguised and artificially assisted (traced) handwriting. Any claims and observations made in the literature have been reviewed and empirically tested. A body of controlled data was collected from sixty volunteers who produced samples of disguised handwriting and traced signatures. A rigorous examination of these samples has been described and quantitative evidence found to support the conclusion that the act of disguising or tracing handwriting will have a negative influence upon the appearance and structure of that writing. Results have shown that disguised and traced writings are intimately related in that they share common characteristics that are indicative of the artificial manner by which they have been produced. Other features are also identified that can be directly associated with specific types of deviant writing to allow for distinctions to be made between them. The analysis is expressed in the form of a comprehensive taxonomy of the distinctive features of deviant writing

    Charlotte Bronte and the uses of creative writing : a study in function and form

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    This study examines the functions of Bronte's "scribblemania" at each stage of her intellectual and emotional development, as well as the narrative forms, many originating in the exceptional visual qualities of her imagination, which she employed to shape her thoughts into fictional correlatives.Young Bronte, while indifferent to contemporary fiction, aspired to become a painter, and looked upon her prose writings as a diary. Between 1829 and 1833, she recorded her visions of the realm of artists and poets in which she hoped one day to participate. In 1834 and early 1835, while the career in painting was becoming progressively elusive, she was baffled in her attempts to share in her imaginary Athens, but drew comfort from watching it through her narrator's eyes. During the Roe Head crisis, while at home for the holidays, she withdrew to the margin of Angria in order to allow her exhausted imagination to recover. Having failed in the later novelettes to devise a means of overcoming the burdensome reserve which shielded her imagination against an indifferent outer world, she resolved to leave Angria, but only for a while. Her half-hearted attempt to write a novel at the age of twenty-four was inspired by the hope of earning some money. In The Professor, another financial venture, she charted the struggles of an imaginative person who, like herself, was determined to win a stake in life. She returned to this theme in Jane Eyre. While writing Volume One of Shirley, she perceived a role for herself as a social reformer. The project collapsed after Emily's death. In Villette, she affirmed her faith in her memory and imagination.Three appendices discuss It is all up!, the dating of But it is not in Society (April 1839), and the dating of Bronte's letter to Hartley Coleridge (December 1841)

    Portmerion, Proportion and Perspective

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    The holiday village of Portmerion was created by Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis (1883 1978) over a period of fifty-one years, starting in 1926. It was grade II listed in 1971. However, Portmerion has become a part of western popular culture rather than of mainstream architectural history. Its use as the setting for the cult 1967 television series “The Prisoner” ensures continued worldwide interest and a constant stream of visitors. Williams Ellis’ design methods were empirical, initial designs being adjusted by eye on site in close collaboration with trusted builders. This paper analyses the development of Portmerion as a gesamtkunstwerk; considering the experience of movement through the village as a dynamic composition of shifting vistas, focussing the visitor on a series of constructed views. Through this analysis, Portmerion is revealed as both a manifestation of the architecture of pleasure and an exercise in the pleasure of architecture

    (Con)textual identities: British women’s autobiographical accounts of travel, India and the 1857 Mutiny

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    This dissertation analyses autobiographical writings by twelve British women who resided in India during the 1857 Mutiny: Katherine Bartrum, Charlotte Canning, Adelaide Case, Ruth Coopland, Caroline Dickson, Frances Duberly, Maria Germon, Georgina Harris, Julia Inglis, Matilda Ouvry, Georgina Paget and Harriet Tytler. The study contends that through exposure to travel, settlement and war, the writers use diaries, journals, letters and memoirs as a framework to construct (con)textual identities: textual personas that are strongly marked by context. By scrutinising two elements: self and place, the discussion determines that voyages, relocation and war induce a textual restructuring of the self that reflects a conflict between remaining womanly whilst simultaneously appearing new and exceptional. By denying the weaker parts of female identity, elevating the status of existing female functions and assuming unwomanly roles the writers challenge the boundaries of mid-Victorian femininity. Chapter One examines the origins of the writings and interrogates the relationship between the sea-voyage and identity, asserting that travel triggers the commencement of new personas. Chapter Two discusses settlement in India, revealing that physical displacement evokes a modification of gendered and national identity. Chapter Three argues that the beginning of war generates paradoxical portrayals of the self, from fearful victim to heroic participant. Chapter Four determines that the main months of the Mutiny prompt the ultimate textual collapse of conventional womanly functions, through the advent of masculine and militaristic personalities. Chapter five examines the aftermath of the rebellion. It contends that post-war personas reveal a multitude of anxieties and that publication provides one final challenging context. Ultimately, the dissertation contends that travel, India and the Mutiny provide new contexts for twelve women to interrogate the parameters of feminine identity in autobiographical personas that as a result of their transient nature are (con)textual identities

    The yagé aesthetic of William Burroughs: the publication and development of his work 1953-1965

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    PhDMy concern in this thesis is to show that a reconstruction of the publishing history of the work of William Burroughs offers a new, critical perspective on his experiments with psychoactive substances and their connection to his developing practice. I begin with an exploration of the publication of The Yage Letters (1963) and Naked Lunch (1959), and reveal how the complexities of their publishing histories shaped their critical reception. I examine the legal defence of Naked Lunch as it developed from the Big Table Post Office hearing through to the 1965 Boston trial and demonstrate the degree to which censorship came to define the published text. The legal defence of Naked Lunch, as it was incorporated into the Grove publication, emphasised the issue of opiate addiction. The way in which Burroughs’ 1953 letters to Allen Ginsberg were reworked as The Yage Letters did much to conceal the significance of yagĂ© for Burroughs’ later work. Together, these publishing histories have obscured the relationship between his use of psychoactive substances and his evolving aesthetic. At the same time many of Burroughs’ most experimental - and important - works appeared only in small, ephemeral magazines. His adoption of avant-garde strategies such as collaboration and collage and his dedication to multimedia experimentation with the non-chemical alteration of consciousness made conventional book publication problematic or unsuitable. These experiments in aesthetic production, I argue, are central to our understanding of Burroughs. His main published writings must be re-evaluated as one element in this collage of multimedia activities. 4 I argue that Burroughs’ experiences with yagĂ©, mescaline and dimethyltryptamine exerted an influence on his shift to experimentalism in the early 1960s, which sought to replicate the experience of these altered states of consciousness. That this is so is evident from a study of two collections of correspondence - Burroughs’ letters to Ginsberg held at Columbia University Library and his letters to Brion Gysin in the William S. Burroughs Papers held at the New York Public Library. My reading of these letters forms an important component of my argument, working to reveal what the conventional ‘published’ Burroughs serves to conceal.Arts and Humanities research Board. Queen Mary University of London English Department funding naked Lunch @ 50 conference in Pari

    Hearsay, Testimony and Conference: Citationality in the Works of Marguerite Duras, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida.

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    This dissertation involves an examination of the effects and implications of three modes of citationality: hearsay, testimony and conference. As a term coined by Jacques Derrida, citationality involves the problematization of questions related to borders and limits and to the attempt to re-present the originary event thought to lie beyond the performance of citational acts of bearing witness. In chapter one I situate my project theoretically through an examination of the principles of deconstruction. In particular, Jacques Derrida\u27s work on the metaphysical concepts of presence and speech, in terms of repeatability or iterability, bears heavily on my study. As a function of iterability, citationality refers to the potential inherent in every element, textual, linguistic, or otherwise, to be disseminated and cited in a plurality of contexts and to assume a new and different meaning. It is from this perspective, from the possibility of citation, of exceeding limits and escaping regulation, that I conduct my analysis of what I call hearsay, testimony and conference in certain twentieth century texts. Chapters two through four focus on an application of the previously mentioned modes of citationality in the texts of Marguerite Duras, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, respectively. In chapter two, I examine Marguerite Duras\u27 Lol V. Stein cycle in which a reliance on hearsay impedes textual closure while generating a multiplicity of other texts that cite and re-cite one another. In chapter three, I analyze several recits by Maurice Blanchot in terms of testimony. These texts reveal the problematic in attempting to access and re-present that which has already been present and result in an effect of mise-en-abime of citations. Chapter four involves a reading of several polylogues by Jacques Derrida as instances of conference. Their insistence on a plurality of voices enables a deconstruction of the logos of restitution. While chapters two through four are devoted to a narrow application of a practice of citationality, chapter five marks the expansion of my topic. In this chapter, I situate previously raised questions of citationality in contemporary contexts with political and cultural implications
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