Monsters, myths, and masculinities in Boscán's Respuesta a Don Diego de Mendoza

Renowned for its portrayal of conjugal love, Juan Boscán’s Respuesta a Don Diego de Mendoza also makes use of lesser-studied mythological references to the androgyne, harpies, and King Phineus. Through a consideration of these references in context, namely the poetic voice’s description of the couple’s union and the rewrite of Petrarch’s “Passer mai solitario in alcun tetto”, I expose hitherto unexplored tensions resulting from the complex and often contradictory strands of contemporary masculinity that fed into the radical reshaping of gender constructs among the nobility due to the rise of the courtier. In particular, I show how Boscán’s social commentary and originality in advocating for a conjugal model also had the potential to spark masculinity-related anxieties, which take the form of monstrosities, among his noble readership during this period of transition.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Figuring Vittoria Colonna’s Desirous Widow in Francisco de Aldana’s ‘Pues cabe tanto en vos del bien del cielo’

The sonnet ‘Pues cabe tanto en vos del bien del cielo’ by Spanish-Neapolitan poet Francisco de Aldana (1537-78) challenges interpretation through its genre-defying mix of consolatory, philosophic, and amatory elements; in particular, its inclusion of an enigmatic statement by a ventriloquized female figure alien to contemporary Hispanic courtly poetry. In this study, I offer an interpretation through a comparative study with the Rime amorose (1538) of Vittoria Colonna (1490-1547), in which she popularized the Petrarchan voice of the desiring widow in Italian poetry. After establishing a link between the Aldana and Colonna families by virtue of the fragment ‘Aunque a la alta región del alegría’, which addresses the death of Colonna’s niece, I explain how the yearning contained within Colonna’s lyric, noted to possess an erotic potential, may have led Aldana to incorporate this voice in his own poetic exploration of a combinatory spiritual and physical philosophy of love. Additionally, given the absence of the Colonnaesque tradition in Spain, I consider how expressions of desire by female voices in the arte menor and pastoral traditions potentially could have led to a similar interpretation for Hispanic readers.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

A Comparative Study of Chisel for FPGA Design

This paper presents the results of a comparative study conducted into designing with the Chisel hardware construction language against the Verilog hardware description language across a range of standard-library and bespoke FPGA design components including an N-bit FIFO, a round-robin arbiter and a complex, scalable arbiter. Comparison metrics such as maximum operating frequency, silicon area, design flow run-time, source-code density and maintainability, simulation run-time and speed of coding are employed to evaluate the merits of designing with Chisel. Each component is implemented with a deep low-level hardware understanding with an aim to evaluate the merits of designing with Chisel from a hardware designers\u27 perspective. The authors discover Chisel\u27s merits for realising synthesizable repetitive designs such as in SoC development, experiencing the benefits of Chisel\u27s object-oriented background in enhancing code maintainability and scalability, and implementation efficiency. However, the authors foresee that Chisel will compliment rather than replace traditional HDLs for RTL design applications due to its limitations in terms of behavioural modelling

Hydrogen partitioning as a function of time-on-stream for an unpromoted iron-based Fischer-Tropsch synthesis catalyst applied to CO hydrogenation

Sasol Ltd., the EPSRC (award reference EP/P505534/1), and the University of Glasgow are thanked for the provision of a postgraduate studentship (ALD). The STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is thanked for access to neutron beam facilities. The Royal Society is thanked for the provision of an Industry Fellowship (PBW).Inelastic neutron scattering (INS) is employed to examine the evolution of a promoter-free iron-based Fischer-Tropsch synthesis catalyst (∼10 g catalyst charge) that is exposed to ambient pressure CO hydrogenation at 623 K for up to 10 days time-on-stream (T-o-S). The longer reaction time is selected to better understand how the formation of a previously described hydrocarbonaceous overlayer corresponds to the catalyst conditioning process. Although the onset of pseudo steady-state reactor performance is observed at approximately 9 h T-o-S, INS establishes that the intensity of the C-H stretching mode of the sp3-hybridized component of the hydrocarbonaceous overlayer saturates at about 24 h T-o-S, while the corresponding intensity of the C-H stretching mode of the sp2-hybridized component requires 100-200 h T-o-S to achieve saturation. This novel series of measurements reveal different aspects of the complex catalyst evolutionary process to be indirectly connected with catalytic turnover.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

"The Changeling" and the Carnivalesque

Produced in 2009 as a Plan B paper for an MA in English at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.One of the features of Jacobean Drama generally, and the play The Changeling specifically, is its polysemous nature. There are multiple and complex strands in the composition of the play, which can render multiple interpretations. Critics, though, in making their arguments, sometimes ignore those elements which are not conducive to their position. The Changeling has been the genesis of such criticism in which obvious elements of the drama are omitted, for they don't support the argument being made. The very complexity of this play, which richly absorbs the issues of the times in which it was written, can make it simultaneously fecund and unwieldy for critical interpretations

Sources, Syncretism, and Significance in Calderón’s El divino Orfeo (c. 1634)

Calderón de la Barca’s El divino Orfeo (c.1634), first published by Pablo Cabañas in 1948, makes use of a mytho-allegorical narrative to tell the story of the creation, fall, and redemption of humankind. This study offers fresh insights into Calderón’s handling of the mythological sources used in the creation of his Christian allegorical play beyond the eponymous Orpheus and Eurydice. Specifically, I focus upon Calderón’s interaction with four additional mythological episodes: creation from Book 1 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Orpheus in the Garden of the Hesperides, the abduction of Proserpina, and the entry of Aeneas and the Sibyl of Cumae into the Underworld in Book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid. These myths are shown to form part of a syncretic a lo divino allegorical drama that recognises the importance of select pagan texts as valuable contributors to our comprehension of key issues in Christianity, such as the immortal soul, the culpability of humankind for Original Sin, and Christ’s dual nature as mortal and divine. Within this syncretic narrative, I explore Calderón’s use of symbols common to both traditions as a means to engineer challenging new perspectives from which an educated courtly audience could explore the mysteries at the heart of this religious drama.This is the author accepted manuscript. It is currently under an indefinite embargo pending publication by Comediantes

An inelastic neutron scattering investigation of the temporal behaviour of the hydrocarbonaceous overlayer of a prototype Fischer-Tropsch to olefins catalyst

Sasol Ltd., the University of Glasgow and the EPSRC [award reference EP/P505534/1] are thanked for the provision of a postgraduate studentship (ALD). The Royal Society is thanked for the provision of an Industry Fellowship (PBW).A dual sodium and sulfur promoted haematite, representative of a candidate Fischer-Tropsch to olefins (FTO) catalyst, is prepared and contrasted with the performance of an unpromoted hematite sample in the ambient pressure CO hydrogenation reaction at 623 K as a function of time-on-stream (0–24 h). In-situ post-reaction temperature-programmed oxidation measurements show the carbon evolutionary phase of the catalyst conditioning process to be retarded for the FTO catalyst. Ex-situ inelastic neutron scattering measurements show the promoters perturb the formation of a previously described hydrocarbonaceous overlayer. Specifically, whilst the sp3 hybridised C–H modes of the hydrocarbonaceous overlayer are almost unaffected by the additives, the formation of the overlayer’s sp2 hybridised C–H modes are noticeably impeded. The results are discussed in terms of the Na/S promoters disturbing the formation of an ordered hydrocarbonaceous overlayer that is thought to constrain the supply of adsorbed hydrogen atoms, which favours the formation of unsaturated hydrocarbons associated with the FTO process.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

A CNO Dichotomy among O2 Giant Spectra in the Magellanic Clouds

From a survey of the 3400 Å region in the earliest O-type spectra, we have found that two of the four O2 giants observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud have O IV lines there that are stronger than the N IV lines, while the other two have the opposite. A Small Magellanic Cloud counterpart also has N IV stronger than O IV. Inspection of the blue spectra of these stars shows that the former pair have weaker N lines in all ionization states (III, IV, and V) present as well as lines of C IV λ4658, while the latter three have stronger N lines and greater He/H. Space ultraviolet observations of two of the N-strong stars show N V wind profiles substantially stronger than those of C IV, while in the N-weak stars the C IV features are equal to or stronger than the N V. The N-strong stars are now reclassified as ON2 III(f*), newly defining that category. These characteristics strongly suggest a larger fraction of processed material in the atmospheres of the ON2 stars, which we confirm by modeling the optical spectra. In the context of current models, it is in turn implied that the ON2 stars are in a more advanced evolutionary state than the others, and/or that they had higher initial rotational velocities. The recent formulation of the effects of rotation on massive stellar evolution introduces an additional fundamental parameter, which the CNO abundances are in principle able to constrain. We present some illustrative comparisons with current Geneva evolutionary models for rotating massive stars. It is possible that these very hot, nitrogen-rich objects are products of homogeneous evolution. Our results will provide motivation for further physical modeling of the atmospheres and evolutionary histories of the most massive hot stars.Fil: Walborn, Nolan Revere. Space Telescope Science Institute; Estados UnidosFil: Morrell, Nidia Irene. Las campanas observatory; ChileFil: Howarth, Ian D.. University College London; Estados UnidosFil: Crowther, Paul A.. University of Sheffield; Reino UnidoFil: Lennon, Daniel J.. Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes; EspañaFil: Massey, Philip. Lowell Observatory; Estados UnidosFil: Arias, Julia Ines. Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísicas; Argentin