17 research outputs found
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The non-Ovidian Elizabethan epyllion: Thomas Watson, Christopher Marlowe, Richard Barnfield
This chapter proposes a different approach to the so-called âOvidian epyllionâ, an amatory mythological narrative genre that emerged as a vibrant focus of creativity in late Elizabethan England. It demonstrates that alongside the pervasive influence of Ovid, this tradition owed much to the interaction between pastoral poetics and the precedent of certain late Greek short epics which enjoyed widespread visibility throughout Europe in the early modern period. Focussing especially on Colluthusâs Abduction of Helen and Musaeusâs Hero and Leander, the author argues that these works, and the modes of reading they invite and presuppose as a genre, shaped the English poetic tradition in ways that have not been properly appraised. The discussion recovers some of the varied early modern contexts of reading these works, and explores their invocation, translation, and imitation in England by Thomas Watson, popular avant garde versifier and exceptional Hellenist. Watsonâs Ćuvre occupies an important but overlooked place in 1590s narrative poetics and the development of the Elizabethan epyllion. His engagement with Colluthusâs Abduction of Helen significantly reconfigures, this chapter argues, the literary landscape that inspired Marloweâs Hero and Leander and affords not only a different way of reading Marloweâs poem, but also external evidence that it is finished
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How Gabriel Harvey read tragedy
Abstract: In 1579, Gabriel Harvey bound together in a composite collection a surprising group of texts: an Italian grammar, an Italian translation of Terenceâs comedies, Lodovico Dolceâs Italian rifacimenti of Euripidesâ Medea and Senecaâs Thyestes, and Euripidesâ Hecuba and Iphigenia in Erasmusâ Latin. The volume is now dispersed, but all its parts survive. This essay explores the story of this hitherto unknown artefact and what it reveals about Harveyâs reading practices and his engagement with drama, especially Greek tragedy. Parsing the elaborate system of signs with which Harvey multifariously annotated these works, it argues that he read tragedies with an emphasis on situation and utterance rather than extractable sententiae, as has been suggested. Harvey probed local detail in the tragedies with attentiveness, and with an eye to recurring observations that revealed the âthoughtâ of these works. He was drawn especially to the political dimension of this âthoughtâ. Reading tragedies in juxtaposition, he became interested in their different exploration of rulersâ obligation to rule by their peopleâs consent. And he found Euripidesâ plays particularly endowed with political wisdom, no doubt partly because he believed that they had been coâauthored by Euripidesâ mentor and Harveyâs own icon of pragmatic wisdom, Socrates
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Effect of Hydrocortisone on Mortality and Organ Support in Patients With Severe COVID-19: The REMAP-CAP COVID-19 Corticosteroid Domain Randomized Clinical Trial.
Importance: Evidence regarding corticosteroid use for severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is limited. Objective: To determine whether hydrocortisone improves outcome for patients with severe COVID-19. Design, Setting, and Participants: An ongoing adaptive platform trial testing multiple interventions within multiple therapeutic domains, for example, antiviral agents, corticosteroids, or immunoglobulin. Between March 9 and June 17, 2020, 614 adult patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 were enrolled and randomized within at least 1 domain following admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) for respiratory or cardiovascular organ support at 121 sites in 8 countries. Of these, 403 were randomized to open-label interventions within the corticosteroid domain. The domain was halted after results from another trial were released. Follow-up ended August 12, 2020. Interventions: The corticosteroid domain randomized participants to a fixed 7-day course of intravenous hydrocortisone (50 mg or 100 mg every 6 hours) (nâ=â143), a shock-dependent course (50 mg every 6 hours when shock was clinically evident) (nâ=â152), or no hydrocortisone (nâ=â108). Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary end point was organ support-free days (days alive and free of ICU-based respiratory or cardiovascular support) within 21 days, where patients who died were assigned -1 day. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model that included all patients enrolled with severe COVID-19, adjusting for age, sex, site, region, time, assignment to interventions within other domains, and domain and intervention eligibility. Superiority was defined as the posterior probability of an odds ratio greater than 1 (threshold for trial conclusion of superiority >99%). Results: After excluding 19 participants who withdrew consent, there were 384 patients (mean age, 60 years; 29% female) randomized to the fixed-dose (nâ=â137), shock-dependent (nâ=â146), and no (nâ=â101) hydrocortisone groups; 379 (99%) completed the study and were included in the analysis. The mean age for the 3 groups ranged between 59.5 and 60.4 years; most patients were male (range, 70.6%-71.5%); mean body mass index ranged between 29.7 and 30.9; and patients receiving mechanical ventilation ranged between 50.0% and 63.5%. For the fixed-dose, shock-dependent, and no hydrocortisone groups, respectively, the median organ support-free days were 0 (IQR, -1 to 15), 0 (IQR, -1 to 13), and 0 (-1 to 11) days (composed of 30%, 26%, and 33% mortality rates and 11.5, 9.5, and 6 median organ support-free days among survivors). The median adjusted odds ratio and bayesian probability of superiority were 1.43 (95% credible interval, 0.91-2.27) and 93% for fixed-dose hydrocortisone, respectively, and were 1.22 (95% credible interval, 0.76-1.94) and 80% for shock-dependent hydrocortisone compared with no hydrocortisone. Serious adverse events were reported in 4 (3%), 5 (3%), and 1 (1%) patients in the fixed-dose, shock-dependent, and no hydrocortisone groups, respectively. Conclusions and Relevance: Among patients with severe COVID-19, treatment with a 7-day fixed-dose course of hydrocortisone or shock-dependent dosing of hydrocortisone, compared with no hydrocortisone, resulted in 93% and 80% probabilities of superiority with regard to the odds of improvement in organ support-free days within 21 days. However, the trial was stopped early and no treatment strategy met prespecified criteria for statistical superiority, precluding definitive conclusions. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02735707
Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries
Abstract
Background
Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres.
Methods
This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and lowâmiddle-income countries.
Results
In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of âsingle-useâ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for lowâmiddle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia.
Conclusion
This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both highâ and lowâmiddleâincome countries
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Much Ado about Greek tragedy? Shakespeare, Euripides, and the histoire tragique
This article approaches the relation between Shakespeare and Greek tragedy by looking at one of the main known sources for the Claudio-Hero plot of Much Ado about Nothing, Matteo Bandelloâs novella of âTimbreo and Feniciaâ, and its French rewriting by François de Belleforest. It considers the generic implications of the transition from novella to histoire tragique, in light of the French rewritingsâ key role in the reception of âBandelloâ in England. After exploring certain intersections between the early modern reception of Greek tragedy and the project of the histoires tragiques, it looks closely at the notable presence of Euripides in âTimbrĂ©e et FĂ©nicieâ. It concludes by arguing that, out of all the proposed sources of Much Ado, Belleforestâs rewriting of this tale is the one most likely to have led Shakespeare to Euripidesâ Alcestis, which it re-proposes as an intertext in the ending of Much Ado. This layering of texts seems to have resonated with the playwright for over a decade, since, in The Winterâs Tale, he is thought to have returned not only to the same moment from Alcestis, but also to the same story in âBandelloâ
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'Strange appearance' : the reception of Homer in Renaissance England
This thesis is not available on this repository until the author agrees to make it public. If you are the author of this thesis and would like to make your work openly available, please contact us: [email protected] Library can supply a digital copy for private research purposes; interested parties should submit the request form here: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/digital-content-unit/ordering-imagesPlease note that print copies of theses may be available for consultation in the Cambridge University Library's Manuscript reading room. Admission details are at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/manuscripts-university-archivesThis thesis investigates the presence of Homer in the literary culture of Renaissance England. It seeks to identify how the Iliad and the Oqyssry, virtually unread by anyone in early 16th_century England, went on to become well-known texts by the mid-17th century. The thesis focuses on literary texts in which I believe Homer's influence begins to make itself extensively felt. I explore the nature and reasons behind such imitation in the cases of three authors-Spenser, Shakespeare and Chapman -identifying what the 'discovery' of Homer's texts involved in the very different practice of each. I argue that Spenser's reading and use of Homer was motivated and shaped by Homer's connection to other authors that were of key importance to Spenser, like Virgil. Spenser consistently makes literary capital out of the Homeric ancestry of his various sources. I then assess the impact on Shakespeare of a culture where Homer is becoming increasingly visible, particularly when his dramatist-colleague Chapman publishes a successful partial translation of Homer in 1598. I examine Shakespeare's possible interaction with this culture by looking at moments when Homer makes a surprising difference to his reading and transformation of other literary sources. I focus on Troilus and Cressida, which, I believe, engages closely with Chapman's 1598 Homer, refracted through Ovid's imitation of Homer. Finally, I turn to Chapman's translations of Homer over the years 1598-1614. These show Chapman developing a very eccentrically conceived methodological rigour, by which he attempts to understand the Homeric texts almost on their own terms alone. He privileges interpretations derived using only the texts' internal evidence, after reading this evidence in ways that presuppose peculiarly strict coherences in the Homeric texts. The results he arrives at are often startling. This is both a process of intellectual self-fashioning on Chapman's part and connected to Homer's place in the cultural moment in which he lived Each of these authors' imitation is read through and against contemporary reading and interpretative practices relevant to Homer. These trace the outlines of the broader cultural trend that was the 16th_century reception of Homer, a literary and intellectual 'discovery' taking place on the continent just before England. Central to the thesis is how the Homeric texts became accommodated within established bodies of what we now consider competing material: alternative versions to the stories in Homer, other sources for them and better-known imitations of Homer's literary idiom. How and when such antagonism between the received and the new, or the 'secondary' and the 'authentic', became conceptualised are crucial to how 'discovery' is understood. I believe that Homer's presence in Renaissance England has only been noticed after it becomes joined to some such notion of antagonism: i.e. in the case of Chapman, who articulates the antagonism (and the personal and cultural particularity of this articulation has never been appreciated), and of authors after him. But this stage postdates and is the outcome of a period in which Homer is discovered, that is, approached and put to original use alongside 'competing' material, in a fruitful contaminatio that can only be understood on its own terms. The recognition of an earlier awareness of Homer, in a form different from that we have been looking for, is important because it changes our understanding of the literature, but also because it speaks of lingering critical preconceptions which are preventing us from recognising the shapes of renaissance classicism in such periods of 'discovery' until after they have passed