Commentaries and post-beginners' language teaching

This paper suggests an approach to, and some of the potential benefits of, introducing work with commentaries into a post-beginners' language course and considers the ways in which working with commentaries can usefully enrich students' study across a classical studies curriculum

Transposing Aristophanes: the theory and practice of translating Aristophanic lyric

The reception of Aristophanes has gained extraordinary momentum as a topic of academic interest in the last few years. Contributions range from Gonda Van Steen's ground-breaking Venom in Verse. Aristophanes in Modern Greece to Hall and Wrigley's Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC–AD 2007, which contains contributions from a wide range of scholars and writers, a number of whom have had experience of staging Aristophanes' plays as live theatre. In Found in Translation, J. Michael Walton has also made strides towards marrying the theory of translation to the practice of translating Aristophanes (something I have myself also sought to do in print). And with the history of Aristophanic translation, adaptation, and staging being rapidly pieced together (in the English-speaking world at least, where Hall, Steggle, Halliwell, Sowerby, Walsh, and Walton, for example, have all made their own contributions), much of the groundwork has been laid for a study such as is attempted in this article. Here I aim to take a broad look across a range of translations in order to see how one particular text type within Aristophanic drama has been approached by translators, namely Aristophanes' lyric passages. The aim of this study will be to give both an insight into the numerous considerations that translators take into account when translating Aristophanic lyric and an impression of the range of end products that have emerged over the last two hundred years

Resilience of Hierarchical Critical Infrastructure Networks

Concern over the resilience of critical infrastructure networks has increased dramatically over the last decade due to a number of well documented failures and the significant disruption associated with these. This has led to a large body of research that has adopted graph-theoretic based analysis in order to try and improve our understanding of infrastructure network resilience. Many studies have asserted that infrastructure networks possess a scale-free topology which is robust to random failures but sensitive to targeted attacks at highly connected hubs. However, many studies have ignored that many networks in addition to their topological connectivity may be organised either logically or spatially in a hierarchical system which may significantly change their response to perturbations. In this paper we explore if hierarchical network models exhibit significantly different higher-order topological characteristics compared to other network structures and how this impacts on their resilience to a number of different failure types. This is achieved by investigating a suite of synthetic networks as well as a suite of ‘real world’ spatial infrastructure networks

Brushes with Some “Dirty Truths”: Handwritten Manuscripts and Religion in China

East Asian Languages and Civilization

Signs of Power: Talismanic Writing in Chinese Buddhism

East Asian Languages and Civilization

Beauty and sex appeal in Aristophanes

This article undertakes a survey of the plays of Aristophanes in order to reveal what they tell us about concepts of attractiveness and body image. Old Comedy presents us with a view of beauty from a largely male perspective, and, instructively, the vast majority of comments that male characters make concern the appearance of females rather than boys or youths. Women are regularly discussed in comedy in terms of their body parts, e.g. and especially their breasts, and the ideal woman is, perhaps predictably, youthful. Further characteristics in women such as pale, smooth skin and well-tended pubic hair also attract positive comments. Male beauty is perhaps more complex. One ideal is certainly that of the broad-shouldered, tanned youth with gleaming skin and a small penis who exercises in the gymnasium. But there is also evidence of pale-skinned, effeminate youths being viewed in a positive light. In addition to looks, clothing and scent can add to women’s erotic appeal, and actions such as playing with phallic-shaped food are seen as flirtatious in both sexes. This article explores overlaps in the ways in which male and female beauty is described and suggests that these correspondences are partly explicable through the similar ages at which boys and girls are considered to be at their peak. The discussion also reveals the almost complete lack of attention paid to facial features – both in Aristophanes and classical Greek literature as a whole

Whoring, Gaping and Hiding Meat: The Humour of Male-on-Male Sexual Insults in Aristophanes' <i>Knights</i>

This article looks at the obscene and scurrilous humour of Knights with a view to examining how its main protagonists are characterized sexually. Through an examination of how the Sausage-Seller and Paphlagon are presented in terms of both sexual insertiveness and receptiveness – both anal and oral – I seek to challenge views of the play which cast Paphlagon as the more sexually aggressive of the two. Rather, the contention of the article is that the Sausage-Seller’s aggression is expressed both through the direct nature of his sexual threats and the shameless ways in which he flaunts his whorishness and oral and anal receptiveness. In contrast, Paphlagon-Cleon’s sexual character largely emerges through metaphors, allegations, innuendos and jokes made at his expense

Fluid retention in patients with chronic liver disease: a critical evaluation of the factors responsible for the development of fluid retention in patients suffering from Laennec's cirrhosis of the liver, with reference to the inadequacies of commonly accepted theories, and including in particular the proposal of a new hypothesis with evidence in its support

(1). The orthodox theories of the causes of fluid retention in patients with cirrhosis of the liver are discussed. (2). Observations on the plasma level of albumin and globulin, and the colloid osmotic pressure exerted by them, in patients with cirrhosis of the liver with and without ascites are reported. (3). Following treatment reaccumulation of ascitic fluid ceased in six patients with cirrhosis of the liver. Determinations of the level of plasma proteins and the colloid osmotic pressure thereby exerted performed at monthly intervals prior to the cessation of accumulation and for a period up to six months after it had occurred, do not support the contention that the level of plasma proteins is an important determinant in the development of ascites. (4). The plasma colloid osmotic pressure is shown to be as low in patients without ascites as in those with it. (5). The importance of considering the factors which modify renal excretion in a discussion of fluid retention is stressed. (6). The presence of an antidiuretic substance in the urine of patients with liver disease and ascites is reported. The fact that its concentration varies with the extent of fluid retention is noted. (7). The nature of the antidiuretic substance in the urine of patients with cirrhosis of the liver is discussed. Evidence is put forward to support the suggestion that it is the antidiuretic hormone of the posterior pituitary gland and criticisms that a similar substance reported in the urine of patients with eclampsia is not this hormone, are invalidated. (8). Evidence is put forward to support the hypothesis that the antidiuretic substance present in the urine of patients with cirrhosis of the liver and water retention causes the delay in diuresis in hydrated rats by a specific kidney action. (9). The chloruretic and antidiuretic properties of commercial pitressin are confirmed. It is shown that the latter is not affected when the pitressin is dialyzed. There is a considerable loss in chloruretic power with this procedure

Modelling the transient strain behaviour of concrete exposed to elevated temperatures

PhD ThesisThe available transient strain models for concrete are investigated and, where appropriate, modified through a multi-level analysis procedure in which the models are explored in general, in terms of qualitative behaviour in FE simulations of generic experimental conditions, and in terms of FE simulations of specific experimental conditions. The previously ignored issue of the nature of the transient strain response to states of tension is explored through simulation of the resultant axial strain behaviour of three mathematical models for tensile transient strain, defined a priori. An original analytical tool and a novel calibration technique are developed to allow this work to be performed. The method of ‘Gauss point mean variables’ plotting allows the values of any model parameters to be explicitly examined throughout a simulation, while the ‘iterative feedback technique’ allows for rapid parametric calibration while maintaining the accuracy of the FE method. Using these techniques, it is found that the Nielsen model and the Terro model allow the reproduction of experimental results, with the remaining models, including the commonly applied Anderberg model, shown to be a relatively poor approximation. Application of these models to three realistic examples of concrete technology shows that transient strain is extremely important in conditions of heating, consistently increasing structural resilience. In particular, simulation of concrete beams subjected to restrained expansion shows convincingly that the Anderberg model is fundamentally unable to reproduce experimental behaviour. Results suggest that no transient strain develops due to conditions of tension. However, due to the relatively small specimen size of the experimental conditions, this conclusion may be considered to be tentative. A continuation of this research using experimental data obtained using larger specimens is recommended. The response of transient strain to states of tension is shown to have a profound effect on the development of damage in columns subjected to fire conditions. Further, a brief investigation into the load-dependence of transient strain implied by the experimental data reveals that a small deviation from linearity may be suitable. A further exploration of this deviation, including into the effects on overall results in experimental conditions, may be useful for transient strain modelling.Halcrow, CASE Award