11 research outputs found

    Indexing Heterogeneous XML for Full-Text Search

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    XML documents are becoming more and more common in various environments. In particular, enterprise-scale document management is commonly centred around XML, and desktop applications as well as online document collections are soon to follow. The growing number of XML documents increases the importance of appropriate indexing methods and search tools in keeping the information accessible. Therefore, we focus on content that is stored in XML format as we develop such indexing methods. Because XML is used for different kinds of content ranging all the way from records of data fields to narrative full-texts, the methods for Information Retrieval are facing a new challenge in identifying which content is subject to data queries and which should be indexed for full-text search. In response to this challenge, we analyse the relation of character content and XML tags in XML documents in order to separate the full-text from data. As a result, we are able to both reduce the size of the index by 5-6\% and improve the retrieval precision as we select the XML fragments to be indexed. Besides being challenging, XML comes with many unexplored opportunities which are not paid much attention in the literature. For example, authors often tag the content they want to emphasise by using a typeface that stands out. The tagged content constitutes phrases that are descriptive of the content and useful for full-text search. They are simple to detect in XML documents, but also possible to confuse with other inline-level text. Nonetheless, the search results seem to improve when the detected phrases are given additional weight in the index. Similar improvements are reported when related content is associated with the indexed full-text including titles, captions, and references. Experimental results show that for certain types of document collections, at least, the proposed methods help us find the relevant answers. Even when we know nothing about the document structure but the XML syntax, we are able to take advantage of the XML structure when the content is indexed for full-text search.XML on yleistynyt tekstidokumenttien formaattina monessa ympÀristössÀ. Erityisesti konsernitason dokumenttienhallinta perustuu juuri XML:ÀÀn, mutta myös kotikoneilla ja WWW-ympÀristössÀ XML on yleinen tallennusmuoto sekÀ tekstille ettÀ datalle. Dokumenttien mÀÀrÀn voimakas kasva korostaa indeksointi- ja hakumenetelmien tÀrkeyttÀ, koska dokumenttien sisÀltÀmÀ tietomÀÀrÀ ei ole hallittavissa ilman tiedonhakujÀrjestelmÀÀ. Keskitymme siis XML-muodossa tallennetun sisÀllön indeksointiin tekstihakua varten. Dokumenttiformaattina XML ei mitenkÀÀn rajoita itse tallennetun sisÀllön laatua, vaan XML-dokumenteista löytÀÀ kaikkea mahdollista tietokoneiden raakadatasta kaunokirjalliseen proosaan. Siksi on tÀrkeÀÀ tunnistaa sisÀllön laatu ennen sen indeksointia. Yksi menetelmÀ datan erottamiseen tekstistÀ on XML-dokumenttien sisÀisen rakenteen analysointi: data vaatii tiukasti sÀÀnnöllisen ja mÀÀrÀmuotoisen rakenteen, kun taas tekstidokumenttien XML-rakenteessa on paljon vaihtelua. Kun datan jÀttÀÀ indeksoimatta, saavutetaan n. 5-6% pienempi indeksi sekÀ tarkemmat hakutulokset. XML-dokumenteilla on myös muita ominaisuuksia, joita ei aikaisemmin ole hyödynnetty tekstin indeksointimenetelmissÀ. SisÀltö, jota kirjoittaja haluaa korostaa esim. toisella kirjasintyypillÀ, on erikseen merkitty XML-koodiin. Korostettu sisÀltö on siten helppo paikallistaa. Antamalla sille enemmÀn painoarvoa indeksissÀ kuin korostamattomalle sisÀllölle, saadaan hakutuloksia ohjattua parempaan suuntaan. Sama vaikutus on otsikkojen, kuvatekstien ja viitteiden analysoinnilla ja painotuksella. Alustavien testitulosten mukaan esitetyt indeksointimenetelmÀt auttavat relevantin tiedon löytÀmisessÀ XML-dokumenteista

    Natural vs anthropogenic streams in Europe: History, ecology and implications for restoration, river-rewilding and riverine ecosystem services

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    This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordIn Europe and North America the prevailing model of “natural” lowland streams is incised-meandering channels with silt-clay floodplains, and this is the typical template for stream restoration. Using both published and new unpublished geological and historical data from Europe we critically review this model, show how it is inappropriate for the European context, and examine the implications for carbon sequestration and Riverine Ecosystem Services (RES) including river rewilding. This paper brings together for the first time, all the pertinent strands of evidence we now have on the long-term trajectories of floodplain system from sediment-based dating to sedaDNA. Floodplain chronostratigraphy shows that early Holocene streams were predominantly multi-channel (anabranching) systems, often choked with vegetation and relatively rarely single-channel actively meandering systems. Floodplains were either non-existent or limited to adjacent organic-filled palaeochannels, spring/valley mires and flushes. This applied to many, if not most, small to medium rivers but also major sections of the larger rivers such as the Thames, Seine, Rhîne, Lower Rhine, Vistula and Danube. As shown by radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating during the mid-late Holocene c. 4–2 ka BP, overbank silt-clay deposition transformed European floodplains, covering former wetlands and silting-up secondary channels. This was followed by direct intervention in the Medieval period incorporating weir and mill-based systems – part of a deep engagement with rivers and floodplains which is even reflected in river and floodplain settlement place names. The final transformation was the “industrialisation of channels” through hard-engineering – part of the Anthropocene great acceleration. The primary causative factor in transforming pristine floodplains was accelerated soil erosion caused by deforestation and arable farming, but with effective sediment delivery also reflecting climatic fluctuations. Later floodplain modifications built on these transformed floodplain topographies. So, unlike North America where channel-floodplain transformation was rapid, the transformation of European streams occurred over a much longer time-period with considerable spatial diversity regarding timing and kind of modification. This has had implications for the evolution of RES including reduced carbon sequestration over the past millennia. Due to the multi-faceted combination of catchment controls, ecological change and cultural legacy, it is impractical, if not impossible, to identify an originally natural condition and thus restore European rivers to their pre-transformation state (naturalisation). Nevertheless, attempts to restore to historical (pre-industrial) states allowing for natural floodplain processes can have both ecological and carbon offset benefits, as well as additional abiotic benefits such as flood attenuation and water quality improvements. This includes rewilding using beaver reintroduction which has overall positive benefits on river corridor ecology. New developments, particularly biomolecular methods offer the potential of unifying modern ecological monitoring with the reconstruction of past ecosystems and their trajectories. The sustainable restoration of rivers and floodplains designed to maximise desirable RES and natural capital must be predicated on the awareness that Anthropocene rivers are still largely imprisoned in the banks of their history and this requires acceptance of an increased complexity for the achievement and maintenance of desirable restoration goals.OSL dating from the Severn-Wye Basin was undertaken at the Geochronology Laboratories, University of Gloucestershire under grants from the EU Leader+ Programme (administered by English Heritage) and the Leverhulme Flood and Flow Project (RPG-2016-004)

    Mining Meaning from Wikipedia

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    Wikipedia is a goldmine of information; not just for its many readers, but also for the growing community of researchers who recognize it as a resource of exceptional scale and utility. It represents a vast investment of manual effort and judgment: a huge, constantly evolving tapestry of concepts and relations that is being applied to a host of tasks. This article provides a comprehensive description of this work. It focuses on research that extracts and makes use of the concepts, relations, facts and descriptions found in Wikipedia, and organizes the work into four broad categories: applying Wikipedia to natural language processing; using it to facilitate information retrieval and information extraction; and as a resource for ontology building. The article addresses how Wikipedia is being used as is, how it is being improved and adapted, and how it is being combined with other structures to create entirely new resources. We identify the research groups and individuals involved, and how their work has developed in the last few years. We provide a comprehensive list of the open-source software they have produced.Comment: An extensive survey of re-using information in Wikipedia in natural language processing, information retrieval and extraction and ontology building. Accepted for publication in International Journal of Human-Computer Studie

    MAMMALS ON MOUNTAINSIDES REVISITED: ANALYZING MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS OF DIVERSITY TO GAIN NEW INSIGHT ON COMMUNITY ASSEMBLY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY

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    Understanding how biodiversity is distributed, maintained, and altered is a fundamental goal of ecology and is especially important for predicting the effects of ongoing rapid environmental change. Traditionally, diversity has been described in taxonomic terms using the number and abundance of species (e.g., species richness). However, biodiversity is multi-faceted and includes functional (ecological traits) and phylogenetic (evolutionary relationships) dimensions that emphasize the similarities and differences among species. Functional diversity is particularly appealing because it quantifies the range and prevalence of traits in an assemblage and helps link patterns of diversity to the ecological processes that generate them. I used a multi-dimensional diversity approach to investigate elevation-diversity patterns, community assembly processes, and patterns and drivers of change in small mammal community structure over the last century in mountain ranges in the Great Basin of western North America. In Chapter 1, I developed a novel trait-based approach for discriminating between environmental filtering and biotic interactions as possible drivers of species co-occurrence across environmentally heterogeneous sites. Expectations of environmental filtering were assessed using species similarity in the traits of habitat affinity and geographic range location whereas expectations of biotic interactions were based on similarity of diet and body size. When applying this hypothesis-testing framework to small mammal species pairs distributed among and within local sites distributed across three broad elevational gradients, most associations were consistent with environmental filtering. However, negative associations among four species pairs were consistent with expectations under biotic interactions, including two pairs for which competitive exclusion has previously been documented (two species of chipmunk of the genus Tamias and two species of pocket mice of the genus Perognathus). Discerning the mechanisms responsible for co-occurrence patterns was made possible by developing and testing explicit hypotheses based on trait similarity. Although the appreciation and measurement of multiple dimensions of biodiversity has grown recently, refinement of trait data for mammals is much needed. Most studies rely on categorical rather than continuous traits. As a result, finer variation present among species is overlooked which may obscure patterns, particularly for studies on smaller species pools. In Chapter 2, I identified three continuous ecomorphological traits that have a demonstrable link to function and reflect traditionally used functional guilds. Specifically, I investigated the relative medullary thickness (RMT) of the kidney as a measure of habitat affinity (mesic-to-xeric spectrum), hair density as a measure of thermoregulatory ability, and an integrated suite of cranial and dental measurements as an indication of diet specialization. Each trait captured traditional functional group differences for 32 species of Great Basin small mammals while also illuminating meaningful within-group variation. Although each trait had a strong phylogenetic signal, phylogeny alone obscures informative ecological differences (similar to the use of categories). The greater resolution of continuous trait data will facilitate more refined assessments of functional diversity and improve efforts to test ecological theories and track responses to environmental change. With an improved functional trait matrix, including the ecomorphological traits from Chapter 2, I revisited the classic elevation-diversity relationship in Chapter 3 by investigating patterns of functional and phylogenetic diversity in addition to species richness along three elevational gradients. Elevation-species richness relationships are one of the most widely studied biogeographic patterns, but there have been few investigations using other dimensions of diversity. In contrast to the well-established mid-elevation peak in species richness, functional and phylogenetic diversity generally increased with elevation. Deviations among dimensions reveal that species richness is a poor surrogate for these other dimensions of diversity for small mammals. Decomposing functional diversity into subsets of traits that reflect specific niche axes can provide insight into the drivers of community assembly over elevation. Specifically, clustering of traits associated with abiotic conditions and habitat affinities provides evidence for environmental filtering where overdispersion among traits corresponding to resource acquisition and use suggests biotic interactions (namely competition) are structuring assembly among community members. I found strong evidence for environmental filtering in both low and high-elevation communities. Evidence for competition as a driver was not consistent with theoretical expectations under the stress dominance hypothesis, guild assembly rules, or competitor limitation of range margins. In Chapter 4, I used resurveys of sites in Great Basin National Park and vicinity to track functional diversity responses to climate and habitat change. Over the 86-year interval between surveys, functional diversity decreased even though species richness and total community abundance were stable at sites. In general, communities become less functionally even; species with more generalized traits became more dominant and climate and habitat specialists constituted smaller components of most communities. Larger species with lower reproductive potential also tended to fare worse over time. Functional evenness decreased more due to climate responses whereas functional divergence and dispersion were reduced more among habitat traits. In sum, this analysis indicates how the individual and interactive effects of change in abiotic conditions, cover types, and resource base are translated to change in community structure through species’ traits. My results emphasize the importance of using abundance-weighted functional diversity metrics to detect subtle or early-stage changes to community structure that may serve as an early warning of more dramatic diversity loss in the future

    Forest landscapes and global change. New frontiers in management, conservation and restoration. Proceedings of the IUFRO Landscape Ecology Working Group International Conference

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    This volume contains the contributions of numerous participants at the IUFRO Landscape Ecology Working Group International Conference, which took place in Bragança, Portugal, from 21 to 24 of September 2010. The conference was dedicated to the theme Forest Landscapes and Global Change - New Frontiers in Management, Conservation and Restoration. The 128 papers included in this book follow the structure and topics of the conference. Sections 1 to 8 include papers relative to presentations in 18 thematic oral and two poster sessions. Section 9 is devoted to a wide-range of landscape ecology fields covered in the 12 symposia of the conference. The Proceedings of the IUFRO Landscape Ecology Working Group International Conference register the growth of scientific interest in forest landscape patterns and processes, and the recognition of the role of landscape ecology in the advancement of science and management, particularly within the context of emerging physical, social and political drivers of change, which influence forest systems and the services they provide. We believe that these papers, together with the presentations and debate which took place during the IUFRO Landscape Ecology Working Group International Conference – Bragança 2010, will definitively contribute to the advancement of landscape ecology and science in general. For their additional effort and commitment, we thank all the participants in the conference for leaving this record of their work, thoughts and science

    Real-world clinical and service outcomes of pre-bariatric weight loss interventions and post-bariatric outcomes among patients with insulin-treated Type 2 Diabetes living in the UK: public Health and epidemiological approach

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    In numerous countries globally, the morbid obesity pandemic is increasingly posing a major lifelong disorder. With one-in-four adults classed as obese, while two-thirds are overweight, obesity’s prevalence in England is among the highest in Europe. The effect of obesity and obesity-related comorbidity on the UK’s NHS public health budgets is second only to smoking, estimated to cost £44.7 billion annually. The official UK obesity management is attained via a commissioned service that adopts a four-tiered pathway. The first two tiers are outside of this study’s remit, pertaining to environmental and population-wide schemes for obesity prevention and promotion of a healthy weight and nutritional balanced diet. Tier 3 is a Multidisciplinary Weight Management Service, aimed at those whose obesity is complex and/or is accompanied by medical needs; patients in this tier may be considered for Tier 4, namely bariatric surgery. Exposure to these two clinical tiers is the focused in this thesis, which evaluates the clinical effect and health outcomes of the commissioned clinical interventions. To comprehend the comorbidities and metabolic status of individuals with severe obesity living in the UK, the Tier 3 and similar programmes were systematically reviewed. Furthermore, Tier 3 was supplemented by research conducted at a local clinic. This research extends to patients with a major comorbidity (i.e. insulin-treated T2D) and were at high risk of CV, nephropathy or hepatic disease (i.e. respectively microalbuminuria and NAFLD at baseline), who had been referred for bariatric intervention. Analysis of CV, metabolic and renal outcomes was undertaken. Additionally, this thesis presents a chapter appraising the economic effect of surgical treatment provision for the morbidly obese. It assesses the costs involved in providing clinical care, laboratory tests and pharmacotherapy (typically, antihypertensives, aspirin, insulin, GLP-1 analogues, lipids lowering and oral antidiabetic drugs). Moreover, it evaluates the likelihood of T2D remission and insulin independency in post-bariatric intervention, alongside an in-depth analysis of composite obesity-related comorbidity events—including asthma, atherosclerosis, cancers (breast, bowel or uterine), chronic kidney disease, coronary heart disease, dementia, depression, gallstones or gallbladder disease, GORD, gout, hyperlipidaemia, hypertension, liver diseases, osteoarthritis, sleep apnoea and stroke. Drawing on the systematic review results and local clinic study, a strong correlation was identified between those patients requiring Tier 3 services and their risk of developing serious comorbidities, profoundly with advanced T2D. Although subtle, the short- to mid-term effects of Tier 3 are statistically positive for patients with severe obesity. Bariatric patients with serious comorbidities (i.e. insulin-treated T2D), gained a longer-term protective effect against certain major elements of CV diseases and CKD events, while significant metabolic improvements were experienced by patients with NAFLD at baseline. Concerning the analyses of composite obesity-related comorbidities, the protective effect conferred by the Tier 4 bariatric intervention is significant, therefore justifying its cost effectiveness. Therefore, clinical interventions for preventing morbid obesity are effective in mitigating or resolving numerous comorbidities that affect patients with severe obesity living in the UK

    Real-world clinical and service outcomes of pre-bariatric weight loss interventions and post-bariatric outcomes among patients with insulin-treated Type 2 Diabetes living in the UK: public Health and epidemiological approach

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    In numerous countries globally, the morbid obesity pandemic is increasingly posing a major lifelong disorder. With one-in-four adults classed as obese, while two-thirds are overweight, obesity’s prevalence in England is among the highest in Europe. The effect of obesity and obesity-related comorbidity on the UK’s NHS public health budgets is second only to smoking, estimated to cost £44.7 billion annually. The official UK obesity management is attained via a commissioned service that adopts a four-tiered pathway. The first two tiers are outside of this study’s remit, pertaining to environmental and population-wide schemes for obesity prevention and promotion of a healthy weight and nutritional balanced diet. Tier 3 is a Multidisciplinary Weight Management Service, aimed at those whose obesity is complex and/or is accompanied by medical needs; patients in this tier may be considered for Tier 4, namely bariatric surgery. Exposure to these two clinical tiers is the focused in this thesis, which evaluates the clinical effect and health outcomes of the commissioned clinical interventions. To comprehend the comorbidities and metabolic status of individuals with severe obesity living in the UK, the Tier 3 and similar programmes were systematically reviewed. Furthermore, Tier 3 was supplemented by research conducted at a local clinic. This research extends to patients with a major comorbidity (i.e. insulin-treated T2D) and were at high risk of CV, nephropathy or hepatic disease (i.e. respectively microalbuminuria and NAFLD at baseline), who had been referred for bariatric intervention. Analysis of CV, metabolic and renal outcomes was undertaken. Additionally, this thesis presents a chapter appraising the economic effect of surgical treatment provision for the morbidly obese. It assesses the costs involved in providing clinical care, laboratory tests and pharmacotherapy (typically, antihypertensives, aspirin, insulin, GLP-1 analogues, lipids lowering and oral antidiabetic drugs). Moreover, it evaluates the likelihood of T2D remission and insulin independency in post-bariatric intervention, alongside an in-depth analysis of composite obesity-related comorbidity events—including asthma, atherosclerosis, cancers (breast, bowel or uterine), chronic kidney disease, coronary heart disease, dementia, depression, gallstones or gallbladder disease, GORD, gout, hyperlipidaemia, hypertension, liver diseases, osteoarthritis, sleep apnoea and stroke. Drawing on the systematic review results and local clinic study, a strong correlation was identified between those patients requiring Tier 3 services and their risk of developing serious comorbidities, profoundly with advanced T2D. Although subtle, the short- to mid-term effects of Tier 3 are statistically positive for patients with severe obesity. Bariatric patients with serious comorbidities (i.e. insulin-treated T2D), gained a longer-term protective effect against certain major elements of CV diseases and CKD events, while significant metabolic improvements were experienced by patients with NAFLD at baseline. Concerning the analyses of composite obesity-related comorbidities, the protective effect conferred by the Tier 4 bariatric intervention is significant, therefore justifying its cost effectiveness. Therefore, clinical interventions for preventing morbid obesity are effective in mitigating or resolving numerous comorbidities that affect patients with severe obesity living in the UK

    Do feet have mouths? Slander, metaphor, and the body politic in early modern England

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    In sixteenth and seventeenth century England slander was increasingly understood as a distempering force that had the potential to spread from a subject’s body to the body politic, a fear that pervaded legal, religious, and medical discourses. My dissertation—the first sustained study of slander’s real and perceived ability to affect both individual and social bodies—examines the internal responses incited by slander and their effects on community bonds. Because slander was conceived as a domestic threat undermining unity at all levels of society in early modern England, writing of the period relies on metaphor to explain this verbal ill’s genesis and to illustrate its effects on individual and figurative bodies, including its ability to incite anger, wound, or kill. As my title suggests, slanderous speech could emerge from any social rank; commoners (the “feet” of the social body) and those of gentle status could and did use the language of critique (their “mouths”) to identify and attempt to ameliorate the ills of the body politic, even as the monarch and others in authority countered such charges by labeling them sedition. Each chapter of my project places literary texts from the period roughly spanning the 1560s to the 1630s alongside little-studied treatises about slander and sins of the tongue, all of which I consider within the developing legal framework of slander law. The fear that slander could spread from an offender’s body to the kingdom is newly evident in the sedition statute of 1554, which decreed slander against the monarch a criminal offense punishable by public mutilation, and called for convicted seditionists to be punished at the market of the town where the slander was first voiced. Literary critics have focused on period authors’ demonization of slander, its relation to gender, and its depiction in drama. “Do Feet Have Mouths,” in contrast, cuts across a variety of media and several genres, engaging and extending recent scholarship in literature and the law, the history of slander, and the history of the senses. Furthering Lindsey Kaplan’s arguments concerning slander’s unstable nature, I argue that this volatility allowed it to be put to many uses, from policing the behavior of others to defining exclusive communities. Combining the approaches of historians such as R.H. Helmholz who have delineated the development of slander law, and cultural historians, particularly Gail Kern Paster, who have illustrated how the early modern body was conceived as a vulnerable, almost porous entity, I demonstrate how conceptions of slander developed from a spiritual sin under the purview of church courts to a dangerous and potentially criminal threat against a person’s body, livelihood, and society itself. Chapter One investigates three Tudor case studies that collectively exhibit slander’s dangerous nature and the body of law that emerged to contain threat. This chapter introduces a central claim: in the cultural history of slander, social status plays a determinative and often overlooked role. I examine how legal punishments were influenced by the social status of convicted slanderers as well as numerous, unpredictable factors including the socio-political climate. The first two case studies, John Bale’s King Johan (circa 1538, revised post 1558) and John Stubbs’s The Discovery of a Gaping Gulf (1579), concentrate on a particular type of slander, religiously motivated sedition. Commoners used religion to define sedition as anything— including a monarch’s marriage—opposed to individual religious belief. The community’s sundry responses to Stubbs’s text and eventual punishment emphasize the draconian nature of the era’s slander laws, partly shaped by social status which resulted in the removal of Stubbs’s offending hand. The final case study, the 1590 infanticide rumors alleged against Queen Elizabeth, underscores the importance of the socio-political climate when addressing slander. Chapter Two turns to the body and focuses on the surprising and often conflicting range of emotions that slander could elicit from commoners and monarchs alike. Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1603-04) depicts a range of corporeal responses to slander, many of them organized through the play’s neglected heart and tongue imagery. In his capacity as ruler of Vienna, the Duke’s fear of and attempt to eradicate slander portrays the impossibility of exorcising this threat, a fantasy that could only occur if the government routinely employed public mutilation. My examination of “The Five Senses” (1621-23), a widely circulated manuscript libel that brazenly depicted James I’s body as dangerously open to outside influences, demonstrates an unexpected reply to slander: mercy. The King chose not to interpret this libel as slander, instead demonstrating his authority by merely quipping that the author “wished good things for him.” In contrast, John Rous, the man who preserved this forbidden libel and recorded James’s purported reply, showed palpable anxiety because of the risk he ran by recording the poem. I contend that these individuals’ contrasting responses exhibit the conflicted feelings that early modern slander provoked. My scrutiny of Measure for Measure’s heart and tongue imagery in Chapter Two introduced the prevalence of metaphor when discussing slander’s effects upon individual and social bodies. Chapter Three furthers this analysis by focusing on the popular metaphorical depiction of slander as a poison or plague that distempers the individual and the metaphorical body. The effects of this deadly poison are portrayed in several allegorical episodes of Book II of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen (1596). The House of Alma, a house of temperance shaped as a human figure, is assaulted by an assortment of incorporeal forces including slander, an episode that showcases the body’s vulnerability to outside influence. This event moreover prepares the way for the appearance of the Blatant Beast, slander made flesh, in the second half of the work. I argue that Spenser’s suggestion that patience is the tempered body’s defense against slander resembles the course of action preferred by the court system, which moved notoriously slowly in the hopes of allowing the individuals involved in a slander litigation case time to repair their fractured relationships. Chapter Four develops the notion of slander as poison by investigating what happens when it is the monarch who has become possessed by slander and the resulting harm this causes to familial and social bonds and the nation itself. Focusing on The Winter’s Tale (1610-11), I use the concept that slander is responsible for a triple homicide, murdering the speaker and hearer of the slander as well as the individual slandered, to generate an innovative reading of the play, one that better explains the seemingly arbitrary deaths of Hermione, Mamillius, and Antigonus. I additionally contend that the play’s surprisingly redemptive conclusion shares context with slander suits filed in the ecclesiastical courts. Church courts relied on public penance to repair the damage caused to a slander victim’s reputation. My dissertation thus concludes by focusing on how individuals and the larger community can move beyond slander and begin to heal
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