Law as Literature?

In March 1617 Marius Muta, a Judge of the Supreme Court of Sicily, sentenced a certain Leonardus to seven years in the galleys. It seems that Leonardus had lured his unfaithful wife outside the city walls, where he killed her, and where her body was later partially eaten by dogs. Over eighty years later, this case was cited twice by Desiderius Spreti in his defence of Guido Franceschini, a Tuscan nobleman on trial in Rome for the murder of his wife. More than two and a half centuries later the case found its way into English literature in Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book (1868-9),4 a poem based on the Franceschini trial as recorded in contemporary legal documents discovered by the poet. Browning's defence lawyer, Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis (in the actual case Spreti had been his junior), cites the case of Leonardus: For pregnant instance, let us contemplate The luck of Leonardus, - see at large Of Sicily's Decisions sixty-first. This Leonard finds his wife is false: what then? He makes her own son snare her, and entice Out of the town-walls to a private walk:, Wherein he slays her with commodity. They tmd her body half-devomed by dogs: Leonard is tried, convicted, punished, sent To labour in the galleys seven years long: Why? For the murder? Nay, but for the mode! (VID. 809-19) Just as Spreti gave Muta's judgment new life by citing it in the context of a new case, so Browning's version brings the case to life again, and gives it new discursive and linguistic vitality by translating it, not just from Latin into English (for Browning did not have the benefit of Gest's translation), but also from legal discourse into poetry. The poem pushes the citation in the general direction of narrative fiction, and in so doing it brings law and literature into mutually illuminating relationship. The two citations, in the Franceschini trial and in Browning's poem, tell the same story in different ways, and to look at them in relation to each other is to observe law and literature grappling and communicating with each other

Making Sense of Deadwood: Seth Bullock and the Indian

This paper probes the relation between narrative energy, mise-en-scène and historical background in the opening sequence of 'Plague' (Deadwood season 1 episode 6), in which Seth Bullock, Deadwood's future sheriff, is attacked by an Indian, whom he kills. The ironic disjunction between the motives of Bullock (personal) and those of his assailant (racial) focuses a micro-history of relations, in the late nineteenth century, between the colonizing power of the United States and its indigenous inhabitants. Through analysis of the visual and aural syntax of this sequence, this paper uses the structural dynamic of the episode to explore the mainsprings of Deadwood's first season. A version of this paper was presented at “Native American Literatures: An Interdisciplinary Colloquium,” held at the University of Sydney on 10th May 2011. I thank the convenor of the Colloquium, Dr. Bruce Gardiner, of the Department of English, for inviting me to speak at this event

Character and Voice in the Poetry of Browning

In a lecture delivered in 1953, "The Three Voices of Poetry", T. S. Eliot said that "dramatic monologue cannot create a character". As his title implies, Eliot distinguishes between three voices of poetry. The first voice is that "of the poet talking to himself-or to nobody". The second voice is that "of the poet addressing an audience", and the third "is the voice of the poet when he attempts to create a dramatic character speaking in verse". Eliot thus denies proper dramatic status to the dramatic monologue, on the grounds that the poet is likely to identify too strongly with his chosen character, whereas in stage drama the poet must invest his sympathies more prudently among a multiplicity of characters. Eliot's lecture is a highly polemical performance, which must be read in the context of his own attempt to write for the stage (an attempt which was beginning to falter in 1953), and it has some of the ironic archness we associate with the dramatic monologue: "It may be, as I have read, that there is a dramatic element in much of my early work." The lecture should also be seen as part of Eliot's systematic attempt to exorcize from his poetry the ghosts of the great Victorians, Tennyson and Browning, to silence their echoes in his own poetic voices. Nevertheless, his distinction between character and voice is worth examining for its bearing on Browning's poetry

'Little Dorrit': Some Visions of Pastoral

The major concern of Little Dorrit is brought into sharp focus by Mrs Merdle when she informs Amy and Fanny Dorrit: "we are not in a natural state. Much to be lamented, no doubt particularly by myself, who am a child of nature if I could but show it-but so it is. Society suppresses and dominates us." The natural is indeed suppressed and dominated by Society in much of the novel, and the opposition of nature and society is fundamental. Mrs Merdle speaks authoritatively for many of the characters, yet as Dickens' ironic humour here actually suggests, nature is by no means wholly suppressed in Little Dorrit

Trampling out the Vintage: Revenge and Resentment in 'High Noon'

Revenge is the mainspring of the plot of High Noon, but resentment is the emotion at the conceptual core of the film. In the words of the song, “The noon-day train will bring Frank Miller” to carry out his sworn revenge against Marshal Kane, who five years previously arrested him, and presumably against Judge Mettrick, who sentenced him to death. This capital sentence, which was elsewhere commuted to life, has now been transmuted to a pardon. The processes and pressures through which the original sentence has been nullified are – like many of the film’s details – unexplained. But the film is much more focused on the threat of violence and disorder that follows from this apparently political decision than it is on revenge. It is this threat that creates and promotes resentment in Hadleyville, both as an emotion that several individual characters feel against Marshal Kane, and as a more subtle and pervasive structure of social feeling

The genus Boccardia (Polychaeta: Spionidae) associated with mollusc shells on the south coast of South Africa

Three species of Boccardia (B. polybranchia, B. pseudonatrix and B. proboscidea) were associated with mollusc shells on the south and south-east coasts of South Africa. Boccardia polybranchia was widely distributed along the coast and falls within the known distribution range of this species. Comparisons with material from other, international, locations showed that some specimens have been misidentified. No characters could be found to characterize distinct species for different regions within the range of B. polybranchia, as currently recognized. Boccardia pseudonatrix was found only at the most eastern site, increasing its known distribution range. Boccardia proboscidea, a non-indigenous species, was found only on abalone farms and was most abundant in the west

Microscale pollen release and dispersal patterns in flowering grass populations

Characterizing pollen release and dispersion processes is fundamental for knowledge advancement in ecological, agricultural and public health disciplines. Understanding pollen dispersion from grass communities is especially relevant due to their high species-specific allergenicity and heterogeneously distributed source areas. Here, we aimed to address questions concerning fine level heterogeneity in grass pollen release and dispersion processes, with a focus on characterizing the taxonomic composition of airborne grass pollen over the grass flowering season using eDNA and molecular ecology methods. High resolution grass pollen concentrations were compared between three microscale sites (<300 m apart) in a rural area in Worcestershire, UK. The grass pollen was modelled with local meteorology in a MANOVA (Multivariate ANOVA) approach to investigate factors relevant to pollen release and dispersion. Simultaneously, airborne pollen was sequenced using Illumina MySeq for metabarcoding, analysed against a reference database with all UK grasses using the R packages DADA2 and phyloseq to calculate Shannon's Diversity Index (α-diversity). The flowering phenology of a local Festuca rubra population was observed. We found that grass pollen concentrations varied on a microscale level, likely attributed to local topography and the dispersion distance of pollen from flowering grasses in local source areas. Six genera (Agrostis, Alopecurus, Arrhenatherum, Holcus, Lolium and Poa) dominated the pollen season, comprising on average 77 % of the relative abundance of grass species reads. Temperature, solar radiation, relative humidity, turbulence and wind speeds were found to be relevant for grass pollen release and dispersion processes. An isolated flowering Festuca rubra population contributed almost 40 % of the relative pollen abundance adjacent to the nearby sampler, but only contributed 1 % to samplers situated 300 m away. This suggests that most emitted grass pollen has limited dispersion distance and our results show substantial variation in airborne grass species composition over short geographical scales

Small molecule inhibitors of RAS-effector protein interactions derived using an intracellular antibody fragment

Intracellular antibodies can inhibit disease-relevant protein interactions, but inefficient cellular uptake limits their utility. Using a RAS-targeting intracellular antibody as a screening tool, the authors here identify small molecules that inhibit RAS-effector interactions and readily penetrate cells

Environmental DNA reveals links between abundance and composition of airborne grass pollen and respiratory health

This is the final version. Available on open access from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordData and Code Availability Statement: Data collected using qPCR is archived and on NERC EIDC [https://doi.org/10.5285/28208be4-0163-45e6-912c-2db205126925]. Standard pollen monitoring ‘count’ data were sourced from the MEDMI database, with the exception of data from Bangor which were produced as part of the present study and are available on request. Prescribing datasets are publicly available, as are weather, air pollution, deprivation (IMD) and rural-urban category data. Hospital episode statistics (HES) datasets are sensitive, individual-level health data, which are subject to strict privacy regulations and are not publicly available. The study did not generate any unique codeGrass (Poaceae) pollen is the most important outdoor aeroallergen, exacerbating a range of respiratory conditions, including allergic asthma and rhinitis (‘hay fever’). Understanding the relationships between respiratory diseases and airborne grass pollen with view to improving forecasting has broad public health and socioeconomic relevance. It is estimated that there are over 400 million people with allergic rhinitis and over 300 million with asthma, globally, often comorbidly . In the UK, allergic asthma has an annual cost of around US$ 2.8 billion (2017). The relative contributions of the >11,000 (worldwide) grass species to respiratory health have been unresolved, as grass pollen cannot be readily discriminated using standard microscopy. Instead, here we used novel environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling and quantitative PCR (qPCR) , to measure the relative abundances of airborne pollen from common grass species, during two grass pollen seasons (2016 and 2017), across the UK. We quantitatively demonstrate discrete spatiotemporal patterns in airborne grass pollen assemblages. Using a series of generalised additive models (GAMs), we explore the relationship between the incidences of airborne pollen and severe asthma exacerbations (sub-weekly) and prescribing rates of drugs for respiratory allergies (monthly). Our results indicate that a subset of grass species may have disproportionate influence on these population-scale respiratory health responses during peak grass pollen concentrations. The work demonstrates the need for sensitive and detailed biomonitoring of harmful aeroallergens in order to investigate and mitigate their impacts on human health.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)Public Health EnglandUniversity of ExeterUniversity College LondonMet Offic

Temperate airborne grass pollen defined by spatio-temporal shifts in community composition

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Research via the DOI in this record.Grass pollen is the world’s most harmful outdoor aeroallergen. However, it is unknown how airborne pollen assemblages change across time and space. Human sensitivity varies between different species of grass that flower at different times, but it is not known whether temporal turnover in species composition match terrestrial flowering or whether species richness steadily accumulates over the grass pollen season. Here, using targeted, high-throughput sequencing, we demonstrate that all grass genera displayed discrete, temporally restricted peaks of incidence, which varied with latitude and longitude throughout Great Britain, revealing that the taxonomic composition of grass pollen exposure changes substantially across the grass pollen season.Natural Environment Research CouncilBiotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC