Uncouth Shapes and sublime human forms of Wordsworth\u27s The Prelude in the ligh of Berdyaev\u27s personalistic philosophy of freedom

In complementary response to socio-historisists who discuss the concept of freedom in William Wordsworth\u27s poetry as determined from without — be it by socio-historical conditions, gender, or imposed ideology — I draw from the theory of Nicholas Berdyaev, one of the prominent continental existentialists of the twentieth century, tracing the development of Wordsworth\u27s understanding of freedom towards genuine liberty as progressively determined from within. Thus focusing on existentia rather than essentia, I pay particular attention to shaping inner efforts and developing visions of the growing and conscious personality as they are described in The Prelude. Wordsworth hinges his ability to perceive — and make perceivable — the external man upon his own evolving understanding of inner freedom, claiming that his theme is no other than the very heart of man. In The Prelude, especially of 1850, I find a direct link between the degree of personal freedom gained by the poet and the perfection of the human gestalten he depicts, the connection detailed by this dissertation. The dissertation offers the following chapters: (1) Introduction. \u27To be young was very heaven:\u27 Two Thinkers Bred by Two Revolutions: Wordsworth and Berdyaev; (2) The Human Form and Human Independence in Wordsworth: A Link; (3) \u27Man Ennobled Outwardly Before My Sight;\u27 (4) “‘Uncouth Shapes\u27 and Their Progress from Transgression to Transcendence; (5) Wordsworth\u27s Trans-Figuration on Mount Snowdon and \u27Genuine Liberty.\u27 My conclusion suggests that increasing degree of growing personal independence, gained by the developing poet and, possibly, by his reader, is manifested, on the level of imagery, by way of the perfecting of the human gestalten, from one Spot of Time to another, until the poet himself gets into a position to be seen as an index of delight. Also, agreeing with Herbert Read (p. 210 of The True Voice of Feeling), I see Wordsworth among the first existentialist poets, a position which my comparison with Berdyaev supports. Visually, in The Prelude, the perfect, sublime, human form signals a shift to and back from transcendence, which equals genuine liberty

Apparent optical properties of the sea illuminated by Sun and sky: case of the optically deep sea. Appl Opt

The influence of illumination by direct sunlight and the diffuse light of the sky on the apparent optical properties of seawater are studied. This study is based on the earlier self-consistent approach for solution of the radiative transfer equation. The resulting set of equations couples diffuse reflectance and diffuse attenuation coefficients and other apparent optical properties of the sea with inherent optical properties of seawater and parameters of illumination by the Sun and the sky. The resulting equations in their general form are valid for any possible values of absorption and backscattering coefficients

Empirical relationship between aerosol scattering phase function and optical thickness of atmosphere above the ocean

ABSTRACT This paper presents a statistical analysis of aerosol phase functions measured under marine conditions with the total atmospheric optical thickness. The result of the analysis is an empirical equation that expresses the aerosol phase function of scattering in the visible region through two tabulated empirical functions and a total aerosol optical thickness at 745 nm. The extrapolation of the atmospheric optical thickness to the visible spectrum is accomplished via an Ångsrom-type empirical equation that includes the wavelength of light and the aerosol optical thickness at 745 nm

The Allegorical House of Temperance: on the Semantics of Space in Spenser’s Faerie Queene

The article focuses on the semantics of space within Spenser’s chivalric allegory The Faerie Queene (1590/1596). Special attention is paid to the spatial model of allegorical castle from the second book of the poem. Spenser’s artistic manner is considered; in particular, his partaking of the mannerist style. There is offered an analysis of one of the most puzzling passages of the poem, the House of Temperance. The castle’s keep (the residence of the fair soul called Alma) is shaped as a healthy human body, housing several allegorical rooms. The keep of this allegorical castle was extensively discussed in criticism, as it seems, to the detriment of its fortifications and surroundings, without which the whole allegorical picture remains rather incomplete. This article considers the castle of Temperance in its wholeness, including the allegorical topography of its landscape. The keep/body is surrounded by a system of bulwarks, forming a structure similar to a pentangle: each bastion stands for one of the five senses. On the one side of the castle, there are wild woods where monsters (sins and seductions) live; on the other side, there is a lake holding the waters of baptism. The eclectic castle of Temperance is studied against the cultural and scholarly background of Spenser’s epoch. This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 27 th Shakespeare Readings (Moscow, 2018)

The Natural Sublime Leading to the Human Sublime (on Book 8 of Wordsworth’s The Prelude)

This article seeks to trace the connection between two kinds of the Romantic sublime envisaged in Book 8 of Wordsworth’s great autobiographical poem The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind (1805, 1850). Our focus is primarily on the 1850 text. I read Book 8 against passages from Wordsworth’s fragmentary essay “The Sublime and the Beautiful” (c. 1811/1812), attempting to grasp how the components of the natural sublime, highlighted by Wordsworth, — power, duration, individual form — got modified in Book 8 to produce the sensation of the human sublime. My interpretation posits a new pattern of emphasis on aesthetical issues encapsulated in the title of the Book 8 “Love of Nature Leading to Love of Man”: unlike the Burkean sublime, arousing fear and awe, the Wordsworthian sublime is capable of inspiring heartfelt adoration akin to love, when, in the course of The Prelude, an ordinary human being appears “ennobled outwardly before sight”

MERIS Retrieval of Water Quality Components in the Turbid Albemarle-Pamlico Sound Estuary, USA

Two remote-sensing optical algorithms for the retrieval of the water quality components (WQCs) in the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System (APES) were developed and validated for chlorophyll a (Chl). Both algorithms were semi-empirical because they incorporated some elements of optical processes in the atmosphere, water, and air/water interface. One incorporated a very simple atmospheric correction and modified quasi-single-scattering approximation (QSSA) for estimating the spectral Gordon’s parameter, and the second estimated WQCs directly from the top of atmosphere satellite radiance without atmospheric corrections. A modified version of the Global Meteorological Database for Solar Energy and Applied Meteorology (METEONORM) was used to estimate directional atmospheric transmittances. The study incorporated in situ Chl data from the Ferry-Based Monitoring (FerryMon) program collected in the Neuse River Estuary (n = 633) and Pamlico Sound (n = 362), along with Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) satellite imagery collected (2006–2009) across the APES; providing quasi-coinciding samples for Chl algorithm development and validation. Results indicated a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.70 and mean-normalized root-mean-squares errors (NRMSE) of 52% in the Neuse River Estuary and R2 = 0.44 (NRMSE = 75 %) in the Pamlico Sound—without atmospheric corrections. The simple atmospheric correction tested provided on performance improvements. Algorithm performance demonstrated the potential for supporting long-term operational WQCs satellite monitoring in the APES

VARIABILITY IN THE BACKSCATTERING TO SCATTERING AND F/Q RATIOS OBSERVED IN NATURAL WATERS

, examine the spectral variability of the ratio and examine the variability in different water types related to the changes in the Volume Scattering Function (VSF). In addition, we estimate the T*f/Q (Mobley 9 ) term from above-water measurements of remote sensing reflectance (Rrs) coupled with direct measurements of absorption (a) and backscattering (b b ) coefficients. We will examine the spectral dependence of the T*f/Q term and its relationship to the b b /b ratio, which we use as a substitute for the changing VSF. Finally, we will show how the estimated T*f/Q values vary from the commonly used value of 0.051 used for satellite processing