A Changing View: Jane Austen's Landscape

Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil? Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle. 'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense, And splendour borrows all her rays from sense. His father's acres who enjoys in peace, Or makes his neighbours glad, if he increase: Whose cheerful tenants bless their yearly toil, Yet to their lord owe more than to the soil; Whose ample lawns are not ashamed to feed The milky heifer and deserving steed; Whose rising forests, not for pride or show, But future buildings, future navies grow: Let his plantations stretch from down to down, First shade a country, and then raise a town. Alexander Pope in 1731 defined an ideal relationship between a gentleman and the land in his possession, a relationship which subordinated the idea of 'improvement' to that of productivity. That ideal, in its turn, has a humane basis: the 'use of riches' is not a matter of gain for gain's sake, but rather of care and stewardship, which ensures that all people associated with the land, from the lowliest labourers to pensioned dependents, from tenant farmers to the members of the 'great house: are kept in health and comfort. Jane Austen, writing nearly a century later, does not depart from this ideal, though as an intelligent conservative, and a woman (not a landowner), she views its workings in reality with a critical eye

The Romanticism of 'Persuasion'

Most readers will define the difference between Persuasion and Jane Austen's other novels as arising from a new concentration on "feelings", on the emotional rather than the moral life of the heroine. As Reginald Farrer strikingly phrased it in a centenary essay, "Though Persuasion moves very quietly, without sobs or screams, in drawing-rooms and country lanes, it is yet among the most emotional novels in our literature." Recently, A. Walton Litz, in a collection of studies to mark the bicentenary of Jane Austen's birth, defined more precisely the peculiarly "modern" appeal of Persuasion. Locating it at first in the "almost obsessive" metaphor of "the loss and return of [Anne's] bloom", he speaks of "the deeply physical impact of Persuasion", and quotes passages from Volume One in which Jane Austen makes a "poetic use of nature as a structure of feeling, which not only offers metaphors for our emotions but controls them with its unchanging rhythms and changing moods." Here, where Anne is the receptive consciousness to the phenomena of nature, whether at Kellynch, Uppercross, or Lyme, Jane Austen displays a subtle Romanticism more integral to her work than the passing half-satirical comments about contemporary taste in poetry (both Anne's and Captain Benwick's). But it is necessary to go further

‘A Romantic Musical Comedy’ for the Fin-de-Siecle: Branagh’s ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’

Kenneth Branagh is seen as the maker and star of such popular and relatively straightforward period-set Shakespeare films as Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, and Hamlet. But the general public did not flock to see Love’s Labour’s Lost, a Shakespeare play that many had never heard of (and that also sounded somewhat eccentric), so the DVD languishes on the art-house shelves. Nonetheless, after ten years it may be time to reconsider Branagh’s film and the work it does towards his oft-stated aim of making Shakespeare’s plays available to general audiences, and its manner of achieving this through embracing a postmodern aesthetic. If it was to please neither Shakespearean nor postmodern purists, this paper argues that Love’s Labour’s Lost has much to offer not only to a less censorious audience, but also to a critical understanding of the genre of romance

Pictures of Perfection? Filming Jane Austen

At first glance, the glut of films and television adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels in the 1990s looks like nothing more than a massive indulgence in the chocolate-box of the Heritage Industry as we hurtle mercilessly towards the millennium and the uncertainties of the cyber-world. But there is more to it than that: each of the recent successful films is markedly different in what it takes from and what it adds to Jane Austen; each adapts the novel in order to fulfil a specific artistic agenda which meets the cultural needs of the community it envisages as audience

Emilia Speaks Her Mind: Othello, IV.iii, 82-99

Othello is a play about a black man who marries a white woman, and then murders her out of unfounded jealousy. It is also the story of another dysfunctional marriage, that of Iago and Emilia—which also ends in the murder of the wife by her husband. And whereas Desdemona is a pathetic victim of circumstances, it is arguable that Emilia is the truly tragic female figure in this story: a more complex woman, whose death is brought about as much by her own inner conflicts of loyalty as by her psychopathic husband. Carol Thomas Neely suggested in 1985 that ‘Within Othello it is Emilia who most explicitly speaks to this theme [of marital love], recognizes this central conflict [between men and women], and inherits from the heroines of comedy the role of potential mediator of it.’ I will suggest in this commentary on Emilia’s speech ‘But I do think it is their husbands’ faults’ that her potentially comic role in the play fails because of an inability on the part of the onstage listener—Desdemona—to hear an argument that subverts the conventions by which she conducts her life

Mg isotopic ratios in giant stars of the globular cluster NGC 6752

Mg isotopic abundance ratios are measured in 20 bright red giants in globular cluster NGC 6752 based on very high-resolution, high signal-to-noise spectra obtained with UVES on the VLT. There is a considerable spread in the ratio 24Mg:25Mg:26Mg with values ranging from 53:9:39 to 83:10:7. We measured the abundances of O, Na, Mg, Al, and Fe combining our sample with 21 RGB bump stars (Grundahl et al. 2002). The abundances of the samples are consistent and exhibit the usual anticorrelations between O-Na and Mg-Al. A positive correlation is found between 26Mg and Al, a mild anticorrelation is found between 24Mg and Al, while no correlation is found between 25Mg and Al. None of the elemental or isotopic abundances show a dependence on evolutionary status and, as shown by Gratton et al. (2001), the abundance variations exist even in main sequence stars. This strongly suggests that the star-to-star abundance variations are a result of varying degrees of pollution with intermediate mass AGB stars being likely polluters. Even for the least polluted stars, the abundances of 25Mg and 26Mg relative to 24Mg are considerably higher than predicted for ejecta from Z=0 supernovae. Zero metallicity AGB stars may be responsible for these higher abundances. Our measured Mg isotopic ratios reveal another layer to the globular cluster star-to-star abundance variations that demands extensions of our present theoretical knowledge of stellar nucleosynthesis by giant stars.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin

Iron and zinc nutrition in the economically-developed world : a review

This review compares iron and zinc food sources, dietary intakes, dietary recommendations, nutritional status, bioavailability and interactions, with a focus on adults in economically-developed countries. The main sources of iron and zinc are cereals and meat, with fortificant iron and zinc potentially making an important contribution. Current fortification practices are concerning as there is little regulation or monitoring of intakes. In the countries included in this review, the proportion of individuals with iron intakes below recommendations was similar to the proportion of individuals with suboptimal iron status. Due to a lack of population zinc status information, similar comparisons cannot be made for zinc intakes and status. Significant data indicate that inhibitors of iron absorption include phytate, polyphenols, soy protein and calcium, and enhancers include animal tissue and ascorbic acid. It appears that of these, only phytate and soy protein also inhibit zinc absorption. Most data are derived from single-meal studies, which tend to amplify impacts on iron absorption in contrast to studies that utilize a realistic food matrix. These interactions need to be substantiated by studies that account for whole diets, however in the interim, it may be prudent for those at risk of iron deficiency to maximize absorption by reducing consumption of inhibitors and including enhancers at mealtimes.<br /