Prayers from Underground: The Psalmic Voice in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground

Criticism concerning Fyodor Dostoevsky\u27s Notes from Underground has primarily focused on the social and historical context in which the novel was situated. Scholars have traditionally resisted a religious reading and therefore have usually found their grounding in the political, psychological, and philosophical systems of thought in mid-19th century Russian society. Though many of these readings of Dostoevsky\u27s short novel are valid, they have missed the deeply theological concerns of Notes from Underground, and have focused, if at all theologically, on the possibilities of the novel as a forerunner of 20th century existentialism. However, my research demonstrates that Notes from Underground serves as a narrative which illustrates the theological relationship between the human being and the divine in prayer. The novel expresses this by exploring the relationship between the reader and the author in their interaction through literature. This paper utilizes close readings of Notes from Underground and the Psalms, while also utilizing the literary criticism of Mikhail Bakhtin and the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to explore the author-reader relationship. Both of these latter thinkers contemplate the problems of approaching a veiled author (or Author) from a reader\u27s isolated position. Dostoevsky\u27s novel too meditates on the isolation and alienation of its protagonist in his quest for meaning. However, the novel also situates all of its future readers in a similar position of isolation, later enabling an ongoing and communal interpretation of literature, through literature, that is itself a prayer

Electronic Books in the USA - their numbers and development and a comparison to Germany.

This article will provide data to specify the problem of low e-book-supply. First the total number of commercially available English-speaking e-books in the US-market is stated. Then the growth of the title supply over the last twenty years is reviewed. Third the growth of the publishing-activities in the e-book-market is set in relation to the developments in the hardcover-market. Finally these numbers of the English-speaking market are compared to the numbers for the German-speaking market

On the Collective Motion in Globally Coupled Chaotic Systems

A mean-field formulation is used to investigate the bifurcation diagram for globally coupled tent maps by means of an analytical approach. It is shown that the period doubling sequence of the single site map induces a continuous family of periodic states in the coupled system. This type of collective motion breaks the ergodicity of the coupled map lattice. The stability analysis suggests that these states are stable for weak coupling strength but opens the possibility for more complicated types of motion in the regime of moderate coupling.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, 3 eps figures included also available "at http://athene.fkp.physik.th-darmstadt.de/public/wolfram.html" or "at ftp://athene.fkp.physik.th-darmstadt.de/pub/publications/wolfram/" Phys. Rep. in pres

Experimental studies on the reaction kinetics of 1,1-dimethylhydrazine and oxygen

Measurements behind shock waves in highly diluted 1,1 dimethylhydrazine-O2-Ar mixtures clearly showed a two-stage reaction. In the first stage, UDMH decomposes via a unimolecular step; in the second stage, clearly separated from the first one, the decay products react further with O2. Values for the rate constant of unimolecular decomposition were obtained

Analyzing the effects of U.S. macroeconomic policy on U.S. agriculture using the USAGMKTS model

This report describes the results of simulating effects of U.S. macroeconomic policy on U.S. agriculture using the USAGMKTS model. The primary purpose for which the USAGMKTS model was developed is to determine the effects of potential changes in U.S. policy on the border prices of corn, sorghum, and soybeans. The USAGMKTS model is a member of a set of interlinked models at macroeconomic and sectoral levels of Mexico and the U.S. (with enough specification of the rest of the world to close the system). The effects of macroeconomic policy variables on macroeconomic variables affecting the agricultural sector are derived from the FAIRMODEL of the U.S. macroeconomy. These results will be used later to determine the effects of U.S. agricultural and macroeconomic policies on Mexican agriculture using the MEXAGMKTS model.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Livestock&Animal Husbandry,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access