‘Large complaints in little papers’ : negotiating Ovidian genealogies of complaint in Drayton's Englands Heroicall Epistles

Taking as its starting point Michael Drayton's reworking of a key Heroidean topos, the heroine's self-conscious reflection on letter-writing as an activity fraught with anxiety, this essay examines the cultural and literary factors that conspire to inhibit or facilitate the emergence of a distinctive feminine epistolary voice in Englands Heroicall Epistles. In particular it seeks to explain how Drayton's female letter-writers manage to negotiate the impediments to self-expression they initially encounter and thus go on to articulate morally and politically incisive forms of complaint. It argues that the participation of Drayton's fictional writers in the authorial business of revising Ovid for an altered historical context plays a crucial role in supporting that process. This allows Drayton's heroines to recover a degree of textual authority through an independent critical engagement, by turns resistant and identificatory, with his Ovidian sources, including the Metamorphoses as well as the Heroides. A comparative analysis of the ways in which intertextual allusions to these sources are deployed by his male and female writers reveals them to be governed by a different dynamic and used for different ends. It is primarily by means of their complex, intersecting dialogues with their male correspondents and with the Ovidian models upon which they draw that Drayton's heroines are able to formulate a compelling counter-perspective on the politics of love and history

Metamorphosis and identity : psychoanalytical notes to Miyazaki’s Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle

Far greater liberties can be taken by animation than by live-action films The possibilities of the narratives are enriched by unrestricted visual images that offer unique means of exploring and portraying states of desire, conscious and unconscious realities, as well as different layers of relationships and experiences. This leads to a fusion of the traditional and modern roles of representation. Anime from acclaimed Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, particularly the Academy Award winner Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, 2003) and Oscar-nominated Howl’s Moving Castle (Hauru no Ugoku Shiro, 2004), which in recent years have acquired a global cult status, offer new perspectives on human subjectivity. Through their playful use of the motif of transformation, striking similarities in the development of the plots and ambiguous dénouements, the movies problematize the fundamental question of identity, representing a close illustration of some of the core psychoanalytical concepts found in Lacanian theory

Nonlinear dynamics and chaos: Their relevance to safe engineering design

As many engineering systems are neither linear nor nearly linear, they are normally modelled by nonlinear equations for which closed-form analytical solutions are unobtainable. However with the advent of powerful computers, equations can be readily integrated numerically, so that the response from a given set of starting conditions is easily established. Unlike linear systems where all initial conditions lead to one type of motion, be it to an equilibrium point or to a harmonic oscillation, nonlinear systems can exhibit chaotic transients which can setlle down to a rich and complex variety of competing steady state solutions. Associated with each steady state solution is its basin of attraction. Under the variation of a control parameter, as the attractors move and bifurcate, the basins also undergo corresponding changes and metamorphoses. Associated with the homoclinic tangling of the invariant manifolds of the saddle solution, basin boundaries can change in nature from smooth to fractal, resulting in regions of chaotic transients. The aim of the thesis is to investigate how the size and nature of the basin of attraction changes with a control parameter. We show that there can exist a rapid loss of engineering integrity accompanying the rapid erosion and stratification of the basin. We explore the engineering significance of the basin erosions that occur under increased forcing. Various measures of engineering integrity are introduced: a global measure assesses the overall basin area; a local measure assesses the distance from the attractor to the basin boundary; a velocity measure is related to the size of impulse that could be sustained without failure; and a stochastic integrity measure assesses the stability of an attractor subjected to an external noise excitation. Since engineering systems may be subjected to pulse loads of finite duration, attention is given to both the absolute and transient basins of attraction. The significant erosion of these at homoclinic tangencies is particularly highlighted in the present study, the fractal basins having a severely reduced integrity under all four criteria. We also apply the basin erosion phenomena to the problem of ship capsize. We make a numerical analysis of the steady state and transient motions of the semi-empirical nonlinear differential equations, which have been used to model the resonant rolling motions of real ships. Examinadon of the safe basin in the space of the starting conditions shows that transient capsizes can occur at a wave height that is a small fraction of that at which the final steady state motions lose their stability. It is seen that the basin is eroded quite suddenly throughout its central region by gross striations, implying that transient capsize might be a reasonably repeatable phenomenon, offering a new approach to the quantification of ship stability in waves. We conclude from this thesis that the stability of nonlinear engineering systems may, in the future, be based on the basin erosion phenomenon relating to chaotic transients and incursive fractals

The Evolution Concept: The Concept Evolution

This is an epistemologically-driven history of the concept of evolution. Starting from its inception, this work will follow the development of this pregnant concept. However, in contradistinction to previous attempts, the objective will not be the identification of the different meanings it adopted through history, but conversely, it will let the concept to be unfolded, to be explicated and to express its own inner potentialities. The underlying thesis of the present work is, therefore, that the path that leads to the development of the concept of evolution is the path that studies the possibilities of the evolution of concepts, and that the historical reconstruction of its conceptual trajectory will shed light into potential and unexploited possibilities. This methodology will provide useful tools and resources for future developments of the concept. For example, it will define the concept of transmutation as a different conceptual trajectory deviating from the one corresponding to evolution, at the onset of the 19th century. Moreover, epigenesis will not be the opposing concept to evolution, but only to simultaneous and instantaneous generation. It will demonstrate that every important system of epigenesis drew upon some kind of formative power to explain development. More importantly, it will show that the problem of preformation cannot be overlooked, and that some kind of virtual preformation must be considered in order to address the problems of generation and development

Great War, White Goddess, and Translation as Catharsis: A Study of Robert Graves and Ted Hughes

The First World War played a critical role in shaping the poetic consciousness of both Robert Graves and Ted Hughes. The combat trauma from which Graves suffered following his front line service confronted him with ‘baffling emotional problems’ on which the ‘pathology of poetic composition relied’, a mental conflict that–following the advice of W. H. R. Rivers–he repeatedly attempted to ‘write out’. For Hughes, whose father returned from Gallipoli profoundly shell shocked, the war was Britain’s ‘number one national ghost’, a phantom that he tried desperately to exorcise through his poetry. Yet although critics including D. N. G. Carter and Keith Sagar have utilised trauma theory to produce psychological readings of Graves’s and Hughes’s poetry that locate them as sites of catharsis, the field of modern literary studies has yet to scrutinise the theoretical relationships articulated in the poets’ interpretations of classical texts, such as Graves’s rendering of Homer’s Iliad and Hughes’s translation of Seneca’s Oedipus. Does the medium of classical translation offer, in any unique way, an opportunity for catharsis? How do the poets’ experiences of combat-related trauma affect the transmission of these classical texts? Profoundly interdisciplinary, this project attempts to answer these questions while remaining centrally cognisant of Graves’s mythopoetical influence on Hughes’s oeuvre. Throughout this thesis, I examine the extent to which the mythopoetical framework proposed by Graves in The White Goddess, a text shaped by the freight of Graves’s war experience, was embraced by Hughes, whose own formative years were dominated by the narrative of the First World War. The relationship between traumatic experience and the poets’ shamanic approach to translation is delineated and tested within this discourse: their idolatrous adherence to–and in Hughes’s case, fear of–the primacy of an archetypal matriarchal force, and their attempts to access the primitive nature of myth by stripping it of its patriarchal palimpsests of scholarship, are revealed as literary manifestations of a struggle to apprehend the meaning of their respective combat-related traumas, both direct and secondary, which remain ineluctably disrupted

Dominance of grain size impacts on seasonal snow albedo at deforested sites in New Hampshire

Snow cover serves as a major control on the surface energy budget in temperate regions due to its high reflectivity compared to underlying surfaces. Winter in the northeastern United States has changed over the last several decades, resulting in shallower snowpacks, fewer days of snow cover, and increasing precipitation falling as rain in the winter. As these climatic changes occur, it is imperative that we understand current controls on the evolution of seasonal snow albedo in the region. Over three winter seasons between 2013 and 2015, snow characterization measurements were made at three open sites across New Hampshire. These near-daily measurements include spectral albedo, snow optical grain size determined through contact spectroscopy, snow depth, snow density, black carbon content, local meteorological parameters, and analysis of storm trajectories using the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory model. Using analysis of variance, we determine that land-based winter storms result in marginally higher albedo than coastal storms or storms from the Atlantic Ocean. Through multiple regression analysis, we determine that snow grain size is significantly more important in albedo reduction than black carbon content or snow density. And finally, we present a parameterization of albedo based on days since snowfall and temperature that accounts for 52% of variance in albedo over all three sites and years. Our improved understanding of current controls on snow albedo in the region will allow for better assessment of potential response of seasonal snow albedo and snow cover to changing climate

Bifurcation diagrams for spacetime singularities and black holes

We reexamine the focusing effect crucial to the theorems that predict the emergence of spacetime singularities and various results in the general theory of black holes in general relativity. Our investigation incorporates the fully nonlinear and dispersive nature of the underlying equations. We introduce and thoroughly explore the concept of versal unfolding (topological normal form) within the framework of the Newman-Penrose-Raychaudhuri system, the convergence-vorticity equations (notably the first and third Sachs optical equations), and the Oppenheimer-Snyder equation governing exactly spherical collapse. The findings lead to a novel dynamical depiction of spacetime singularities and black holes, exposing their continuous transformations into new topological configurations guided by the bifurcation diagrams associated with these problems.Comment: 100 pages, published versio

Dominance of grain size impacts on seasonal snow albedo at deforested sites in New Hampshire

Snow cover serves as a major control on the surface energy budget in temperate regions due to its high reflectivity compared to underlying surfaces. Winter in the northeastern United States has changed over the last several decades, resulting in shallower snowpacks, fewer days of snow cover, and increasing precipitation falling as rain in the winter. As these climatic changes occur, it is imperative that we understand current controls on the evolution of seasonal snow albedo in the region. Over three winter seasons between 2013 and 2015, snow characterization measurements were made at three open sites across New Hampshire. These near-daily measurements include spectral albedo, snow optical grain size determined through contact spectroscopy, snow depth, snow density, black carbon content, local meteorological parameters, and analysis of storm trajectories using the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory model. Using analysis of variance, we determine that land-based winter storms result in marginally higher albedo than coastal storms or storms from the Atlantic Ocean. Through multiple regression analysis, we determine that snow grain size is significantly more important in albedo reduction than black carbon content or snow density. And finally, we present a parameterization of albedo based on days since snowfall and temperature that accounts for 52% of variance in albedo over all three sites and years. Our improved understanding of current controls on snow albedo in the region will allow for better assessment of potential response of seasonal snow albedo and snow cover to changing climate

Moralizing the Rape of Philomela in Late Medieval Commentary

This dissertation examines the reception of the Philomela narrative from Ovid’s Metamorphoses 6.424-674 by medieval commentators and authors, and how European academics during the 12th-14th centuries interpreted its central theme of rape. Through their engagement with the story of Philomela’s rape and her ingenuity in expressing her experience, medieval commentators and writers constructed a space in which they could propose diverse approaches to sexual violence, justice, and victimhood and survival. The commentaries, translations, and adaptions of Philomela’s narrative produced by medieval writers found their precedent in the episode from Ovid’s text, in which he dismantled the erotic structures of sexual violence and at the same time used the narrative to critique the rise of Augustus’ authoritarian regime on the Roman political stage. Medieval moralizations and retellings of Philomela’s story echo Ovid’s use of legal terminology, and they highlight the communal, institutional difficulties faced by survivors of rape in the cultures of late medieval Europe. Raped women during this period had little recourse to justice through their own testimony, and rape cases were usually brought forward on their behalf by male relatives. Victims of rape would be subjected to shame imposed on them by their communities and by themselves, reinforced by popular narratives that often made the lines between love and rape ambiguous and that questioned the reliability of the rape victim’s experience. Philomela’s persistence in communicating her experience and her rage, joined with that of her sister Procne, provide a counter-narrative to the typical silencing that occurs in classical and medieval stories of rape, albeit one that ends in violence and destruction. The medieval reception and reiteration of Philomela’s story utilized the narrative of survival and revenge as a space in which to express and discuss new perceptions of the complex relationships between marriage, consent, victimization, and political agency. The result of these new understandings was an increasingly nuanced approach to the representation of women who survived sexual assault and the necessity of addressing the resulting trauma