‘Large complaints in little papers’ : negotiating Ovidian genealogies of complaint in Drayton's Englands Heroicall Epistles

Taking as its starting point Michael Drayton's reworking of a key Heroidean topos, the heroine's self-conscious reflection on letter-writing as an activity fraught with anxiety, this essay examines the cultural and literary factors that conspire to inhibit or facilitate the emergence of a distinctive feminine epistolary voice in Englands Heroicall Epistles. In particular it seeks to explain how Drayton's female letter-writers manage to negotiate the impediments to self-expression they initially encounter and thus go on to articulate morally and politically incisive forms of complaint. It argues that the participation of Drayton's fictional writers in the authorial business of revising Ovid for an altered historical context plays a crucial role in supporting that process. This allows Drayton's heroines to recover a degree of textual authority through an independent critical engagement, by turns resistant and identificatory, with his Ovidian sources, including the Metamorphoses as well as the Heroides. A comparative analysis of the ways in which intertextual allusions to these sources are deployed by his male and female writers reveals them to be governed by a different dynamic and used for different ends. It is primarily by means of their complex, intersecting dialogues with their male correspondents and with the Ovidian models upon which they draw that Drayton's heroines are able to formulate a compelling counter-perspective on the politics of love and history

Absolute Timing of the Crab Pulsar with RXTE

We have monitored the phase of the main X-ray pulse of the Crab pulsar with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) for almost eight years, since the start of the mission in January 1996. The absolute time of RXTE's clock is sufficiently accurate to allow this phase to be compared directly with the radio profile. Our monitoring observations of the pulsar took place bi-weekly (during the periods when it was at least 30 degrees from the Sun) and we correlated the data with radio timing ephemerides derived from observations made at Jodrell Bank. We have determined the phase of the X-ray main pulse for each observation with a typical error in the individual data points of 50 us. The total ensemble is consistent with a phase that is constant over the monitoring period, with the X-ray pulse leading the radio pulse by 0.0102+/-0.0012 period in phase, or 344+/-40 us in time. The error estimate is dominated by a systematic error of 40 us in the radio data, arising from uncertainties in the variable amount of pulse delay due to interstellar scattering and instrumental calibration. The statistical error is 0.00015 period, or 5 us. The separation of the main pulse and interpulse appears to be unchanging at time scales of a year or less, with an average value of 0.4001+/-0.0002 period. There is no apparent variation in these values with energy over the 2-30 keV range. The lag between the radio and X-ray pulses may be constant in phase (rotational) or constant in time (linear pathlength). We are not (yet) able to distinguish between these two interpretations.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

The Binary Nature of PSR J2032+4127

PSR J2032+4127 is a gamma-ray and radio-emitting pulsar which has been regarded as a young luminous isolated neutron star. However, its recent spin-down rate has extraordinarily increased by a factor of two. We present evidence that this is due to its motion as a member of a highly-eccentric binary system with a 15-solar-mass Be star, MT91~213. Timing observations show that, not only are the positions of the two stars coincident within 0.4 arcsec, but timing models of binary motion of the pulsar fit the data much better than a model of a young isolated pulsar. MT91~213, and hence the pulsar, lie in the Cyg~OB2 stellar association, which is at a distance of only 1.4-1.7 kpc. The pulsar is currently on the near side of, and accelerating towards, the Be star, with an orbital period of 20-30 years. The next periastron is well-constrained to occur in early 2018, providing an opportunity to observe enhanced high-energy emission as seen in other Be-star binary systems.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Simultaneous X-ray and Radio Observations of Rotating Radio Transient J1819-1458

We present the results of simultaneous radio and X-ray observations of PSR J1819-1458. Our 94-ks XMM-Newton observation of the high magnetic field 5*10^13 G pulsar reveals a blackbody spectrum (kT~130 eV) with a broad absorption feature, possibly composed of two lines at ~1.0 and ~1.3 keV. We performed a correlation analysis of the X-ray photons with radio pulses detected in 16.2 hours of simultaneous observations at 1-2 GHz with the Green Bank, Effelsberg, and Parkes telescopes, respectively. Both the detected X-ray photons and radio pulses appear to be randomly distributed in time. We find tentative evidence for a correlation between the detected radio pulses and X-ray photons on timescales of less than 10 pulsar spin periods, with the probability of this occurring by chance being 0.46%. This suggests that the physical process producing the radio pulses may also heat the polar-cap.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, Accepted to Ap

Correlated emission and spin-down variability in radio pulsars

The recent revelation that there are correlated period derivative and pulse shape changes in pulsars has dramatically changed our understanding of timing noise as well as the relationship between the radio emission and the properties of the magnetosphere as a whole. Using Gaussian processes we are able to model timing and emission variability using a regression technique that imposes no functional form on the data. We revisit the pulsars first studied by Lyne et al. (2010). We not only confirm the emission and rotational transitions revealed therein, but reveal further transitions and periodicities in 8 years of extended monitoring. We also show that in many of these objects the pulse profile transitions between two well-defined shapes, coincident with changes to the period derivative. With a view to the SKA and other telescopes capable of higher cadence we also study the detection limitations of period derivative changes.Comment: 4 pages, 2 Figures, Proceedings of IAU Symposium 337 "Pulsar Astrophysics - The Next 50 Years" held at Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK Sept. 4-8 201