Books

Progress in Medical Virology. Vol. 39. Ed. by J. L. Melnick. Pp. x + 270. Illustrated. £115,70. Basel: S Karger. 1992.Assisted reproduction Micromanipulation of Human Gametes and Embryos. By J. Cohen, H. E. Malter, Beth E. Talansky and J. Grifo. pp. ix + 325. Illustrated. $111,50. New York: Raven Press. 1992.Congenital rubella syndrome EpideIDio1ogy and Infection. Vo!. 107 No. 1. Ed. by J. R. Partison, D. Baxby, J. G. Cruickshank, C. R. Madeley and W. C. Noble. Pp. viii + 239. Illustrated. £25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991.Rural and urban hospitals The Hospital in Rural and Urban Districts: Report of a WHO Study Group on the Function of Hospitals at the First Referral Level. pp. vii + 74. SFr.120. Geneva: World Health Organisation. 1992.Perinatology Perinato1ogy: Nestle Nutrition Workshop Series. Vol. 26. Ed. by Erich Saling. pp. xiii + 194. illustrated.$69. New York: Raven Press. 1992.Anaesthetists Five Decades: The South African Society· of Anaesthetists 1943 - 1993. By Nagin Parbhoo. 330 pages and 70 phoros and illustrations. Published by the South African Society of Anaesthetists. Printed by National Book Printers.

Becoming a Knight: The Social Transformation of Common Mounted Soldiers into Noble Warriors

Between the years of 1066 and 1119 CE, knights and their families in Western Europe rose from the highest stratification of the common folk to be included as the lowest incarnation of the nobility. This occurred primarily due to an emerging collective warrior identity among the nobility, the Catholic Church’s attempts to contain and sanction violence, and the implementation of the Three Estates political philosophy. This timeline challenges the dominant historical narrative on when knighthood transformed from a military rank into a social rank of nobility, which is usually placed sometime around the end of the 13th Century. To justify this re-periodization, this study analyzes the accuracy of commonly-accepted translations of words used to describe knights and knighthood, arguing that historians have anachronistically applied modern ideas of noble knighthood to common warriors of the past. Utilizing primary sources such as histories of the First Crusade by contemporary chronicler’s Robert the Monk, and Guibert of Nogent, and other documents including the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Carolingian Chronicles, and papal bulls, this study places knights and knighthood into a more accurate historical framework. This study is limited to where knighthood originated and flourished, primarily Western France and England and the surrounding areas. Overall, this project puts the social transformation of knights and their families from commoners to nobles in its proper context. This thesis traces that change from the origins of knighthood, around the year 1,000, to its importation to England in 1066, and its important impact on the First Crusade, primarily in the form of the foundation of the military orders of the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar, which ultimately resulted in the elevation of knights from common soldiers to noble warriors

CopyrightX [Course Review]

Review of the free online course CopyrightX

Crafted Things in the Old English Phoenix

Crafted things abound in The Phoenix, from the ornamented trees in the phoenix’s paradise, to the gem-like bird itself: in the world of the poem, beauty is synonymous with the skilful design of material things. In spite of this emphasis on construction and creation, the poem also foreshadows the necessary destruction of all the ornaments of this world. This paper reconsiders the crafted things in the poem, including not only the famous description of the phoenix itself, but also the phoenix’s nest, and the mysterious ball it fashions out of its own bones and ashes, reading these crafted things alongside analogues from both Old and Middle English literature. This new reading reveals that the crafted things of the poem are central to the poem’s message about the certainty of the resurrection and the cessation of all cycles of creation and destruction. Although, in the end, the poem reveals that all the crafted things of this world must eventually be exchanged for the lasting home and gleaming ornaments of heaven, the treasures of The Phoenix have an enduring vibrancy which remains even in the face of the destroying Judgement Day fires

Construction of Arbitrary Order Finite Element Degree-of-Freedom Maps on Polygonal and Polyhedral Cell Meshes

We develop a method for generating degree-of-freedom maps for arbitrary order finite element spaces for any cell shape. The approach is based on the composition of permutations and transformations by cell sub-entity. Current approaches to generating degree-of-freedom maps for arbitrary order problems typically rely on a consistent orientation of cell entities that permits the definition of a common local coordinate system on shared edges and faces. However, while orientation of a mesh is straightforward for simplex cells and is a local operation, it is not a strictly local operation for quadrilateral cells and in the case of hexahedral cells not all meshes are orientable. The permutation and transformation approach is developed for a range of element types, including Lagrange, and divergence- and curl-conforming elements, and for a range of cell shapes. The approach is local and can be applied to cells of any shape, including general polytopes and meshes with mixed cell types. A number of examples are presented and the developed approach has been implemented in an open-source finite element library

A Lifeʼs Worth: Reexamining \u3cem\u3eWergild\u3c/em\u3e in the Anglo-Saxon Royal Law Codes (c. 600-1035)

In the wide and growing world of Anglo-Saxon scholarship, wergild has an at once ubiquitous and spectral presence.1 While compensation, blood-money, and the place of the body in “barbarian” law more generally continue to be subjects of much scholarly interest, it is harder to find even a single piece of scholarship dedicated to the topic, let alone specifically as it appears in the Old English material.2 What follows is meant to offer a survey of wergild as it appears in the surviving legislation of England’s Anglo-Saxon kings, as well as an attempt to deconstruct the logical underpinning of wergild, with the goal finally of tying these various aspects together in order to reach a more nuanced definition for this concept as it exists within these texts and the legislative imaginations of their compilers. Rather than seeing wergild as representing a number of different forms of payment linked together only by the name and sums involved, it is intuitively more likely that the compound represents a more limited and exact concept which could be used, rationally, as we find it in these law codes. This search has so far yielded three major points about the inner workings of wergild: that it is an essentially unchanging part of Old English legal vocabulary and so probably a true reflection of Anglo-Saxon customary law, that it functions as an alternative to loss in a highly general sense, and, more tenuously, that it is calculated based on an individual’s role in preserving the public peace (frið)

Sacral Kingship and Resistance to Authority in the Middle English Life of Edward the Confessor

In medieval England, the life of St. Edward the Confessor functioned as ideological myth; Henry III used it to show that the Plantagenet dynasty had reconciled two ‘nations’ within England after the Norman Conquest. Edward’s post-Conquest hagiography generally supports a sacralized monarchy and its prerogatives. However, a lesser-known, anonymous version of Edward’s life exists in Middle English verse and resists royalist mythmaking from a more populist perspective. In the South English Legendary and in several Middle English chronicles, a counter-tradition of writing about Edward continues to sacralize the saint-king but simultaneously positions him as a symbol of resistance to Plantagenet rule. In this tradition, the rhetoric of sacral kingship works unexpectedly: rather than sanctifying the authority of the ruling house, it reminds readers of a previous, dead monarch, whose claim to sanctity (the fulfillment of Edward’s famous prophecy of the green tree) should act as a check on the abuse of power by the presently-reigning dynasty. From this point of view, resistance to the Crown can be seen, not as discouraged and limited by the idea of sacral monarchy, but instead as partly motivated by it

Pulmonary tuberculosis in infants: radiographic and CT findings

OBJECTIVE: As complications of tuberculosis are frequent in infancy, correct diagnosis of tuberculosis in infants is important. The purposes of this study are to summarize radiographic and CT findings of pulmonary tuberculosis in infants and to determine the radiologic features frequently seen in infants with this disease. CONCLUSION: Frequent radiologic findings of pulmonary tuberculosis in infants are mediastinal or hilar lymphadenopathy with central necrosis and air-space consolidations, especially masslike consolidations with low-attenuation areas or cavities within the consolidation. Disseminated pulmonary nodules and airway complications are also frequently detected in this age group. CT is a useful diagnostic technique in infants with tuberculosis because it can show parenchymal lesions and tuberculous lymphadenopathy better than chest radiography. CT scans can also be helpful when chest radiographs are inconclusive or complications of tuberculosis are suspected

Riflessioni su alcune scelte traduttive in lingua inglese (Morris, Tinker, Tolkien, Heaney e Porter)

This essay takes into account some English translations of the Old English poem Beowulf. Matter of specific investigation is the passage of the coming of Grendel to the Danes' court Heorot. As the translations of Beowulf are countless, only specific and emblematic cases – both in prose and verse – are analysed. Then, the translations by William Morris, Chancey Brewster Tinker, J.R.R. Tolkien, Seamus Heaney and John Porter are compared trying to ascertain the approach of those translators to the Old English text and furthermore the intentions they had in rendering the poem into Modern English. The big problem that all the translators consciously tackled was the chronological and linguistic distance of Beowulf that had to be solved in some way. Choices and strategies differ from one version to another, but every solution demonstrates a specific attention to the musicalness of the original together with a deep awareness for the tradition that the Old English poem embodies