Private Reader, Public Redactor: Narrative Strategies of the Nineteenth-Century Female Revisionist

This dissertation investigates the vital role of the private female reading experience in the creation of the mid-Victorian British woman writer\u27s authorial persona. In particular, I examine the role of the female redactor, a woman writer who revises a particular text, genre, or convention within a patriarchal literary tradition. The public and private contexts of the female redactor become imperative to the text that she creates, for the final narrative product is not only a public revision but also a series of private, gendered negotiations that define the woman writer and determine her contribution to female authorship. With a specific focus on Geraldine Jewsbury, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, I closely examine the ways in which these female redactors invoke and challenge male-authored texts within an established patriarchal literary tradition in order to create for themselves a distinctly female literary identity. Chapter One centers on Geraldine Jewsbury\u27s feminist revision of Thomas Carlyle\u27s gospel of work in her novel The Half Sisters (1848), in which Jewsbury emphasizes the importance of women\u27s work in Victorian England. Chapter Two explores the manner in which Elizabeth Barrett Browning--inspired by John Donne\u27s Songs and Sonets (1633) in her own Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)--engages in a gendered revision of the Petrarchan sonnet, both in content and form, in order to represent realistically the complex poetic place of woman as desiring subject, desired object, and empowered female poet. Chapter Three examines Mary Elizabeth Braddon\u27s The Doctor\u27s Wife (1864), in which Braddon aims to subvert critical understandings of high and low literary culture that dismiss the value of both the female consumer and the sensation genre. I conclude with a brief epilogue, which focuses on two contemporary revisions of nineteenth-century female-authored texts: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Jane Slayre. These co-authored revisions of classic nineteenth-century texts, which simultaneously lampoon and pay homage to nineteenth-century female authorship, highlight the importance not only of revision as a narrative strategy for constructing authorial identity but also of a nineteenth-century female literary tradition that mid-Victorian female redactors aimed to establish

Interpreting siliciclastic sedimentation in the upper Paleozoic Mulargia-Escalaplano Basin (Sardinia, Italy): influence of tectonics on provenance

Late to post-Variscan molassic basins of Late Pennsylvanian-Permian age are exposed in Sardinia (Italy). Here, the compositional and stratigraphic evolution of the Mulargia-Escalaplano sedimentary basin (central Sardinia) has been investigated to highlight how the tectono-magmatic processes have influenced the sedimentation. Ruditic and arenitic samples were collected along well-characterized stratigraphic sections to provide a new insight into the impact of the tectono-magmatic processes on siliciclastic sedimentation. As a result, the conglomerates are mainly clast-supported, petromictic, and thus immature, with no defined maturity trend upwards. Nevertheless, pebble composition changes in times from Variscan basement pebble-rich to volcanic rock-rich, as a consequence of the basin widening and the dismantling and reworking of the coeval volcanic activity. The sandstone composition clearly changes from quartzolithic to feldspatholithic upwards, as a response to the same change of feeding and reworking of the volcanic rocks. Occasionally, interbedded quartzolithic arenites suggest exceptional floods carrying debris from the far borders of the basin. Also, the immature sandstone composition has been interpreted as being controlled by a continuous supply of fresh debris and to a rapid burial rate. In addition, the disappearance of metaradiolarite (lydite AA) Paleozoic grains in the sandstone mineral suite could represent a distinctive marker of a progressive unroofing of the Variscan chain and a clastic supply from deeper tectonic units

New constraints for the western Paleotethys paleogeography-paleotectonics derived from detrital signatures: Malaguide Carboniferous Culm Cycle (Betic Cordillera, S Spain)

Carboniferous sandstone within the Paleo-Mesomediterranean Domain (Malaguide Subdomain), in southern Spain, represents a key detrital mode within the sedimentary budget of convergent plate boundaries during the Variscan s.s. to Paleotethysian orogenic time span (≈ 420–300 Ma). This Carboniferous detritus corresponds with Culm lithostratigraphic depositional unit, and it covers an important gap of information (paleogeographic, paleotectonic, source areas) to the area located between the Iberian-French massifs and the African Paleo-Atlas, in the western Paleotethys. Sandstone composition is quartzolithic and records an important high-to-medium-low grade metamorphic content. The source area was a lithic and transitional recycled orogen with a signature of volcanic and ophiolitic detritus (≈ 330 Ma and/or older). These supplies seem to be derived from a mid-crustal deformed and thrusted Cambrian to lower Carboniferous terrane, involved in the plate convergence (the southern Europe Iberian-French massifs overriding the north African area) of the Variscan s.s. orogenic system, rapidly exhumed and uplifted. Consequently, in the overriding hinterland (southern Europe: Iberian-French massifs), a Pre-middle Carboniferous metamorphic basement should be already structured during middle Carboniferous when thrusting took place, suggesting Proterozoic-Early Carboniferous (most probably, ≈ 420 to 330 Ma) metamorphic highlands. The presence of serpentinite-like detritus (≈ 330 Ma and/or older) seems to indicate a metamorphosed oceanic crust being dismantled at that time, thus, ophiolitic sutures (most probably developed at ≈ 420–330 Ma) zones are tentatively proposed at the northern Gondwana. The occurrence of a synsedimentary volcanic activity (andesitic) should be related to a lost magmatic arc (most probably developed at ≈ 360–330 Ma), reinforcing the idea of a nearby subduction area. Therefore, the thick terrigenous Culm deposits (≈ 330–300 Ma) from the Malaguide Subdomain could be deposited in a complex foreland system basin connected northward with carbonate platforms and with a crystalline highland uplifted domain from the southern Europe Iberian-French massifs and southward with the African Paleo-Atlas Domain. The studied middle-late Carboniferous sandstone petrofacies deeply contributes to paleogeographic reconstructions since blocks fragmentation and spreading, during the Paleotethysian and Alpine orogenies, rearranged the Paleozoic paleogeography now part of the Cenozoic Perimediterranean Chains. After the correlation with the Carboniferous from other western Paleotethys domains, new paleogeographic-paleotectonic constraints are proposed for the transitional area between the Iberian-French massifs and the African Paleo-Atlas Domain.Research Project PID2020-114381GB-I00 to M. Martín-Martín, Spanish Ministry of Education and Science; Research Groups and Projects of the Generalitat Valenciana, Alicante University (CTMA-IGA) are acknowledged. Support from Ministero Italiano dell'Università e della Ricerca Scientifica to S. Criniti, is also acknowledged

Sandstone Petrology and Provenance in Fold Thrust Belt and Foreland Basin System

The sandstone composition of foreland basin has a wide range of provenance signatures, reflecting the interplay between flexed underplate region and abrupt growth of the accreted upper plate region. The combination of contrasting detrital signatures reflects these dual plate interactions; indeed, several cases figure out that the earliest history of older foreland basin infilling is marked by quartz-rich sandstones, with cratonal or continental-block provenance of the flexed underplate flanks. As upper plate margin grows over the underplate, the nascent fold-and-thrust belt starts to be the main producer of grain particles, reflecting the space/time dependent progressive unroofing of the subjacent orogenic source terranes. The latter geodynamic processes are mainly reflected in the nature of sandstone compositions that become more lithic fragment-rich and feldspar-rich as the fold-thrust belt involves the progressive deepest portions of upper plate crustal terranes. In this context sandstone signatures reflect quartzolithic to quartzofeldspathic compositions

X-linked heterochromatin distribution in the holocentric chromosomes of the green apple aphid Aphis pomi

Chromatin organization in the holocentric chromosomes of the green apple aphid Aphis pomi has been investigated at a cytological level after C-banding, NOR, Giemsa, fluorochrome staining and fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH). C-banding technique showed that heterochromatic bands are exclusively located on X chromosomes. This data represents a peculiar feature that clearly contradicts the equilocal distribution of heterochromatin typical of monocentric chromosomes. Moreover, silver staining and FISH carried out with a 28S rDNA probe localized rDNA genes on one telomere of each X chromosome; CMA(3) staining reveals that these silver positive telomeres are, the only GC-rich regions among A. pomi heterochromatin, whereas all other C-positive bands are DAPI positive thus containing AT-rich DNA

Distribution of heterochromatin and rDNA on the holocentric chromosomes of the aphids Dysaphis plantaginea and Melanaphis pyraria (Hemiptera: Aphididae)

The structure of the holocentric chromosomes of the rosy apple aphid, Dysaphis plantaginea (2n = 12), and pear-grassaphid, Melanaphis pyraria (2n = 8), was studied using C-banding, NOR, Giemsa and fluorochrome staining, and fluorescent in situhybridization (FISH). Contrary to the equilocal distribution of heterochromatin typical of monocentric chromosomes, in both species C-banding evidenced a tendency of highly repetitive DNAs to be restricted to the X chromosomes. Silver staining and FISH, using a 28S rDNA probe, located rDNA genes on one telomere of each X chromosome, the only brightly fluorescent C-positive sites revealed by CMA3 staining, whereas all other heterochromatic C-bands were DAPI positive. Both species showed a noticeable amount of rDNA heteromorphism. Mitotic recombination is proposed as a possible mechanism responsible for the variation in size of rDNA