The Making of the Early Modern British Fairy Tradition

ABSTRACTThis review is intended to examine the development of representations of elves and fairies in British culture between the twelfth and the seventeenth centuries. It will argue that a very clear two-stage evolution in those representations can be found in literary sources, from an inchoate range found in different kinds of text, with no apparent collective identity, to a coherent sense of a kingdom, to which the common word ‘fairy’ could be applied, to an intense interest in, and discussion of, the nature of fairies. The first development occurred in the late middle ages, and the second after the Reformation, and both were pan-British phenomena. These literary changes were, moreover, paralleled at each stage, and perhaps responsible for, changes in perception in culture at large. The alterations in representations of these non-human beings, with no clear status in Christian theology, may have wider implications for an understanding of late medieval and early modern cultural history.</jats:p

The Capricious Cushion: The Implications of the Directors and Insurance Liability Crisis on Canadian Corporate Governance

One of the clearest legacies of the growing concern expressed over the international competitiveness of Canadian and American businesses has been the urgency it has lent to a very old debate respecting the efficacy of the apparatus used to govern the business and affairs of large, public corporations. For instance, Michael Porter, one of the most articulate - if not the most prolific - of the new competitiveness scholars, has suggested that American economic performance could be improved by enhancing the performance of the traditional corporate governance apparatus. In this respect, his suggestions closely track the thrust of recent reform initiatives proposed by investors and regulators who seek to increase the performance of the board by making it more responsive, indeed responsible, to shareholder interests. Although some of the current critics of the corporate board have placed exclusive faith in the ability of market mechanisms to ensure heightened board effectiveness, most initiatives rely to some extent on strengthened legal duties and responsibilities to achieve this task. And, as measured by the growing willingness of both courts and securities regulators to impose liability on directors for failing to review diligently various corporate transactions (i.e., self-interested transactions, public financings, etc.), it is clear that the reformist calls made by these critics are slowly but surely being heeded. Paralleling the trend to increased legal liability of boards for actions that are inimical to shareholder interests has been an equally clear trend towards enhanced legal responsibility for corporate conduct deemed contrary to broader stakeholder or community interests

Witches and Cunning Folk in British Literature 1800-1940

ABSTRACT Relatively little attention has been paid to representations of witches and cunning folk (popular magicians) in British literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There have been a few pioneering works, but they have adopted different definitions of witches, concentrated on different spans of time, and reached different conclusions (and half of them are still contained in unpublished theses). This study covers the whole period between 1800 and 1940 and operates a consistent and rigorous set of definitions of the figures under consideration. It considers images of the witch as villain, victim, and heroine along with parallel images of cunning folk, and it demonstrates what remains constant in them and what changes over this long span of time. In doing so, it is intended to make a contribution to a better understanding of the place of witchcraft and magic in the modern British imagination.</jats:p

Surface materials of the Viking landing sites

Martian surface materials viewed by the two Viking landers (VL-1 and VL-2) range from fine-grained nearly cohesionless soils to rocks. Footpad 2 of VL-1, which landed at 2.30 m/s, penetrated 16.5 cm into very fine grained dunelike drift material; footpad 3 rests on a rocky soil which it penetrated ≈3.6 cm. Further penetration by footpad 2 may have been arrested by a hard substrate. Penetration by footpad 3 is less than would be expected for a typical lunar regolith. During landing, retroengine exhausts eroded the surface and propelled grains and rocks which produced craters on impact with the surface. Trenches excavated in drift material by the sampler have steep walls with up to 6 cm of relief. Incipient failure of the walls and failures at the end of the trenches are compatible with a cohesion near 10–10^2 N/m^2. Trenching in rocky soil excavated clods and possibly rocks. In two of five samples, commanded sampler extensions were not achieved, a situation indicating that buried rocks or local areas with large cohesions (≥10 kN/m^2) or both are present. Footpad 2 of VL-2, which landed at a velocity between 1.95 and 2.34 m/s, is partly on a rock, and footpad 3 appears to have struck one; penetration and leg strokes are small. Retroengine exhausts produced more erosion than occurred for VL-1 owing to increased thrust levels just before touchdown. Deformations of the soil by sampler extensions range from doming of the surface without visible fracturing to doming accompanied by fracturing and the production of angular clods. Although rocks larger than 3.0 cm are abundant at VL-1 and VL-2, repeated attempts to collect rocks 0.2–1.2 cm across imbedded in soil indicate that rocks in this size range are scarce. There is no evidence that the surface sampler of VL-2, while it was pushing and nudging rocks ≈25 cm across, spalled, chipped, or fractured the rocks. Preliminary analyses of surface sampler motor currents (≈25 N force resolution) during normal sampling are consistent with cohesionless frictional soils (ϕ ≈ 36°) or weakly cohesive frictionless soils (C < 2 kN/m^2). The soil of Mars has both cohesion and friction