5,215 research outputs found

    Metaphors of London fog, smoke and mist in Victorian and Edwardian Art and Literature

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    Julian Wolfreys has argued that after 1850 writers employed stock images of the city without allowing them to transform their texts. This thesis argues, on the contrary, that metaphorical uses of London fog were complex and subtle during the Victorian and Edwardian periods, at least until 1914. Fog represented, in particular, formlessness and the dissolution of boundaries. Examining the idea of fog in literature, verse, newspaper accounts and journal articles, as well as in the visual arts, as part of a common discourse about London and the state of its inhabitants, this thesis charts how the metaphorical appropriation of this idea changed over time. Four of Dickens's novels are used to track his use of fog as part of a discourse of the natural and unnatural in individual and society, identifying it with London in progressively more negative terms. Visual representations of fog by Constable, Turner, Whistler, Monet, Markino, O'Connor, Roberts and Wyllie and Coburn showed an increasing readiness to engage with this discourse. Social tensions in the city in the 1880s were articulated in art as well as in fiction. Authors like Hay and Barr showed the destruction of London by its fog because of its inhabitants' supposed degeneracy. As the social threat receded, apocalyptic scenarios gave way to a more optimistic view in the work of Owen and others. Henry James used fog as a metaphorical representation of the boundaries of gendered behaviour in public, and the problems faced by women who crossed them. The dissertation also examines fog and individual transgression, in novels and short stories by Lowndes, Stevenson, Conan Doyle and Joseph Conrad. After 1914, fog was no more than a crude signifier of Victorian London in literature, film and, later, television, deployed as a cliche instead of the subtle metaphorical idea discussed in this thesis

    In search of 'The people of La Manche': A comparative study of funerary practices in the Transmanche region during the late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (250BC-1500BC)

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    This research project sets out to discover whether archaeological evidence dating between 2500 BC - 1500 BC from supposed funerary contexts in Kent, flanders and north-eastern Transmanche France is sufficient to make valid comparisons between social and cultural structures on either side of the short-sea Channel region. Evidence from the beginning of the period primarily comes in the form of the widespread Beaker phenomenon. Chapter 5 shows that this class of data is abundant in Kent but quite sparse in the Continental zones - most probably because it has not survived well. This problem also affects the human depositional evidence catalogued in Chapter 6, particularly in Fanders but also in north-eastern Transmanche France. This constricts comparative analysis, however, the abundant data from Kent means that general trends are still discernible. The quality and volume of data relating to the distribution, location, morphology and use of circular monuments in all three zones is far better - as demonstrated in Chapter 7 -mostly due to extensive aerial surveying over several decades. When the datasets are taken as a whole, it becomes possible to successfully apply various forms of comparative analyses. Most remarkably, this has revealed that some monuments apparently have encoded within them a sophisticated and potentially symbolically charged geometric shape. This, along with other less contentious evidence, demonstrates a level of conformity that strongly suggests a stratum of cultural homogeneity existed throughout the Transmanche region during the period 2500 BC - 1500 BC. The fact that such changes as are apparent seem to have developed simultaneously in each of the zones adds additional weight to the theory that contact throughout the Transmanche region was endemic. Even so, it may not have been continuous; there may actually have been times of relative isolation - the data is simply too course to eliminate such a possibility

    A Cornish palimpsest : Peter Lanyon and the construction of a new landscape, 1938-1964

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    The thesis examines the emergence of Peter Lanyon as one of the few truly innovative British landscape painters this century. In the Introduction I discuss the problematic nature of landscape art and consider the significance of Lanyon's discovery that direct description and linear perspective can be replaced with allusive representational elements by fusing the emotional and imaginative life of the artist with the physical activity of painting. Chapter One concentrates on the period 1936-8 when Lanyon was taught by Borlase Smart, a key figure in the St Ives art colony between the wars. Chapter Two examines the influence of Adrian Stokes and the links between Lanyon's painting and the theories developed in books such as Colour and Form and The Quattro Cento. Chapter Three analyses the period 1940-45 when Lanyon was directly influenced by the constructivism of Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo. I look closely at their approaches to abstraction and assess Lanyon's relative position to them. The importance of Neo-Romanticism and the status of St Ives as a perceived avant-garde community is also addressed. In Chapter Four I discuss how Lanyon resolved to achieve a new orientation in his art on his return from wartime service with the RAF by synthesising constructivism, and traditional landscape. The Generation and Surfacing Series demonstrate his preoccupation with a sense of place, a fascination with the relationships between the human body and landscape and his struggle to find a technique and style that was entirely his own. His sense of existential insideness is discussed in Chapter Five through an examination of the work derived from Portreath, St. Just and Porthleven - key places in Lanyon's psychological attachment to the landscape of West Penwith. In Chapter Six I examine Lanyon's attachment to myths and archetypal forms, tracing the influence of Bergson's vitalist philosophy as well as his use of Celtic and classical motifs. Chapter Seven is a discussion of the malaise evident in Lanyon's work by 1955 and the impact of American Abstract Expressionism at the Tate Gallery a year later. In the summer of 1959 Lanyon joined the Cornish Gliding Club and Chapter Eight looks at how this necessitated a dynamic, expanded conception of the landscape and a re-thinking of relations within the picture field. The ability to dissolve boundaries encouraged him to break down distinctions between painting and construction so that abstract sculptural elements were now assembled into independent works of art. Finally, Chapter Nine assesses Lanyon's overall position in relation to his early influences and to St Ives art as a whole, his response to new directions in art coming out of London and NewYork in the early 1960s and the importance of travel as a stimulus for further realignment in his artistic and topographical horizons. His pictorial inventiveness and vitality remained unabated at the time of his death and would undoubtedly have continued to be enriched by travel abroad and contact with new movements in modem art on both sides of the Atlanti

    Derek Walcott : the development of a rooted vision (poetry and drama)

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    Since his first publications in the late forties, Derek Waleott has made a remarkable achievement as poet and dramatist. This thesis aims to trace his development towards a native vision in the corpus It covers Walcott's published works in poetry and drama from 1949 to 1972. Another Life (New York, 1973), the latest book of poetry which establishes Walcott as a major writer on the world scene, was published too late to be included in this investigation. It was, however, consulted as work in progress, am bears upon our analysis at several important points. Walcott evolves towards a vision of the region as an integral cultural entity whose destiny is in a renascence of the myth-making Imagination. It must start from an elemental self-exploration to fulfil the original purpose of such a role: to arrive at self-awareness in inventing new names for its new angst and aspirations. Roth the need and potential for this renascence derive from history. The dislocations and abnegations of history have left Caribbean man a reduced, isolated figure in the New World. It is a position which returns him to the primal. In dislocating the peoples of the region from their parent myths, however, history has left the vestigial traces of these myths reduced to their essentials. This combines with the closeness to the elemental to make the sense of the archetypal immanent in the New World setting. This means in essence that Wa1cott sees a native rehabilitation solely in terms of a self-dependent effort. It cannot be in terms of the recovery of the spiritual heritage of any parent tradition, such as the AfrIcan. The routes which the myth-making Imagination must traverse preclude any such single orientation. In ''What the Twilight Says", the classic essay which prefaces Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays vi (New York, 1970), he expresses it thus: ". the darkness must be total, and the cave should not contain a single man-made, mnemonic object" (p.5). Placing emphasis on the self-creative effort, Walcott stands mainly for a critical attitude towards the shortcomings of his society, rather than a position of protest. His words in ''What the Twilight Says" show how consistent this approach is with the vision outlined above. It is not merely the debt of history, Walcott explains, which is Caribbean man's claim to the New World, but the spiritual revelation to be attained in his effort to "name" his own modes of experience (p.l7). It is through his own self-exploration that Walcott arrives at these definitions. He starts with a keen sense of the denials of history. As the young colonial artist nurtured on Western tradition, he is confounded in his effort to identify the conflict in the master's terms. Overcoming this, he moves into a period of intense self-exploration to discover the true sources of the predicament in his unique circumstances. Walcott is dependent on the elemental principles of Mind for this effort, and it gives rise to overreaching strains. But he has identified a native image in the process and found his bearings for resolving the residual conflicts of the effort, coming to terms with them, he is able to "name" the destiny of the region, and articulate a native myth. The pattern of this development is parallel in the poetry and the drama, which are complementary to each other in a unified achievement, The two are dealt with separately in this work: Part I deals with the poetry, and Part II, the drama. Thus treated, the complementary pattern between them is focussed more clearly. The emphasis in Walcott is on the individual effort. What emerges in his creative self-exploration in the poetry is authenticated in the original experience of the environment featured in the drama. This pivots on one essential link between the two. Walcott's persona dominates the poetry. In the drama, his main heroes are drawn from the most deprived and representative areas of experience in the region. They represent a pattern of experience which emerges as the direct counterpart to Walcott's own in the poetry - thus showing the rootedness of the vision

    Earthquake hazard and risk analysis for natural and induced seismicity: towards objective assessments in the face of uncertainty.

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    The fundamental objective of earthquake engineering is to protect lives and livelihoods through the reduction of seismic risk. Directly or indirectly, this generally requires quantification of the risk, for which quantification of the seismic hazard is required as a basic input. Over the last several decades, the practice of seismic hazard analysis has evolved enormously, firstly with the introduction of a rational framework for handling the apparent randomness in earthquake processes, which also enabled risk assessments to consider both the severity and likelihood of earthquake effects. The next major evolutionary step was the identification of epistemic uncertainties related to incomplete knowledge, and the formulation of frameworks for both their quantification and their incorporation into hazard assessments. Despite these advances in the practice of seismic hazard analysis, it is not uncommon for the acceptance of seismic hazard estimates to be hindered by invalid comparisons, resistance to new information that challenges prevailing views, and attachment to previous estimates of the hazard. The challenge of achieving impartial acceptance of seismic hazard and risk estimates becomes even more acute in the case of earthquakes attributed to human activities. A more rational evaluation of seismic hazard and risk due to induced earthquakes may be facilitated by adopting, with appropriate adaptations, the advances in risk quantification and risk mitigation developed for natural seismicity. While such practices may provide an impartial starting point for decision making regarding risk mitigation measures, the most promising avenue to achieve broad societal acceptance of the risks associated with induced earthquakes is through effective regulation, which needs to be transparent, independent, and informed by risk considerations based on both sound seismological science and reliable earthquake engineering

    Westgate on Sea 1865-1940 : fashionable watering-place and London satellite, exclusive resort and a place for schools

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    Exclusive coastal watering-places, successors to the inland spas, attracted a similar clientele, fashionable, well-heeled and fickle. Many such places were developed in the nineteenth century; few held the truly fashionable for long, for fashion is always fleeting. Jealously guarding their reputations, they concentrated on survival in a highly volatile market and had no interest in competing for the favours of the short-stay visitor or excursionist. Westgate on Sea, on the north coast of the Isle of Thanet in Kent, was one such watering-place, attracting, in its early years, titled visitors and royalty, the fashionable and the artistic. Now part of Thanet District, Westgate can be passed by unnoticed by the stranger travelling on the A28 to Margate. Yet for seventy years, despite the proximity of that truly plebian resort, Westgate remained independent and exclusive, bolstered by the presence of a uniquely large number of private schools, which became its lifeblood. True child of the railway, created from a virgin site with metropolitan capital, Westgate had features which, when seeking to place it in the context of other exclusive developments, made it necessary to look for parallels beyond similar-sized resorts such as Grange-over Sands, Seaton and Frinton to suburbs such as Edgbaston and Hampstead, for Westgate was, to all intents and purposes, a London satellite. Using evidence from many sources, both public and private, I have sought in this eight-part thesis to prove the uniqueness of Westgate's development and to see how, by determination and manipulation, Westgatonians were able to maintain a high 'social tone' for so long. By examining other such places, I hope to contribute something towards the story of the small 'exclusive' development, part of the rich urban scene and so important in the lifestyle of the Victorians and Edwardians and so far not fully researched

    Master Gardener's manual

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    The Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service periodically issues revisions to its publications. The most current edition is made available. For access to an earlier edition, if available for this title, please contact the Oklahoma State University Library Archives by email at [email protected] or by phone at 405-744-6311

    Perspective: Gastronomy

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    This project is made possible with funding by the Government of Ontario and through eCampusOntario’s support of the Virtual Learning Strategy.https://doi.org/10.22215/fsmmm/bs03pubpu

    Graphs behind data: A network-based approach to model different scenarios

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    openAl giorno d’oggi, i contesti che possono beneficiare di tecniche di estrazione della conoscenza a partire dai dati grezzi sono aumentati drasticamente. Di conseguenza, la definizione di modelli capaci di rappresentare e gestire dati altamente eterogenei è un argomento di ricerca molto dibattuto in letteratura. In questa tesi, proponiamo una soluzione per affrontare tale problema. In particolare, riteniamo che la teoria dei grafi, e più nello specifico le reti complesse, insieme ai suoi concetti ed approcci, possano rappresentare una valida soluzione. Infatti, noi crediamo che le reti complesse possano costituire un modello unico ed unificante per rappresentare e gestire dati altamente eterogenei. Sulla base di questa premessa, mostriamo come gli stessi concetti ed approcci abbiano la potenzialità di affrontare con successo molti problemi aperti in diversi contesti. ​Nowadays, the amount and variety of scenarios that can benefit from techniques for extracting and managing knowledge from raw data have dramatically increased. As a result, the search for models capable of ensuring the representation and management of highly heterogeneous data is a hot topic in the data science literature. In this thesis, we aim to propose a solution to address this issue. In particular, we believe that graphs, and more specifically complex networks, as well as the concepts and approaches associated with them, can represent a solution to the problem mentioned above. In fact, we believe that they can be a unique and unifying model to uniformly represent and handle extremely heterogeneous data. Based on this premise, we show how the same concepts and/or approach has the potential to address different open issues in different contexts. ​INGEGNERIA DELL'INFORMAZIONEopenVirgili, Luc
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