[Review of] Jennifer S.H. Brown and Robert Brightman. The Orders of the Dreamed :George Nelson on Cree and Northern Ojibwa Religion and Myth, 1823

This text addresses the complex challenge of comprehending religious otherness. Brown and Brightman present a previously unpublished 1823 letter journal of fur trader George Nelson in which he reflects on his struggle to understand the Cree and Ojibwa people he knew at first hand. While he constantly wondered at the strangeness of Algonquian religion, he also expressed his admiration as frequently. The Cree and the Ojibwa were thoroughly religious and, paradoxical as it seemed to Nelson, he did admit that their religion worked

[Review of] James A. Clifton. The Prairie People: Continuity and Change in Potawatomi Indian Culture, 1665-1965

Until very recently, Indian history existed in the doldrums of guilt and ethnocentric misunderstanding. Since Indians were preeminently the great American obstacle to the inexorable process of United States expansion and progress, they have been relegated to the quiet, but nasty, fringes of Euroamerican history. Indians were destroyed or degraded in national chronicles. Sorry remnants of once proud peoples, reservation Indians, the story line goes, remained obstinately and hopelessly beyond the winds of change

Alien Registration- Morrison, Kenneth (Jackman, Somerset County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/6877/thumbnail.jp

Wordsworth\u27s Decline: Self-editing and Editing the Self

In critical discourse surrounding the poetry of William Wordsworth, it has become generally acceptable to describe the course of the poet’s career by means of a theory of “decline.” In its most common form, this theory argues that Wordsworth’s best poetry was written during one “Great Decade” (1798-1807)—an isolated epoch of prolificacy and genius. His subsequent works, it is argued, neither surpass nor equal his initial efforts; the course of his career after 1808 may be best described in terms of declivity, ebb, and decline. Due to its ideological complicity with the very texts it engages, and due to its construction as a “myth” of criticism, the theory of decline ultimately becomes a reductive premise that precludes understanding Wordsworth’s apparent downtrend as a complex but explicable process. This study therefore seeks to provide a critical explanation for the process of decline so often observed in Wordsworth’s poetry. In essence, I contend that the perceptible downtrend in Wordsworth’s verse is the direct consequence of continuous, career-long processes of revision or self-editing. This self-editing took two forms: First, the explicit form, whereby Wordsworth actually emended his poetry; and second, the implicit form, whereby Wordsworth sought, through his poetry, to amend his self-image by constructing an autobiography tailored to fit an idealized poetic identity. This analysis thus reveals and explicates Wordsworth’s possible motives for revision—the fluctuating demands made upon the poet by the poet himself. Because these demands represent the operative (if unstable) principle underlying specific textual changes, one may infer from their character the reasons why Wordsworth’s later poetry suffers in revision. By attending to the process whereby earlier verse was continually revised in order to fit a conceptual or poetic context for which it was not originally intended, I demonstrate how the actual substance of Wordsworth’s poetry was compromised or attenuated through a reductive (re)appropriation of its own materials. Unlike many critics, I do not treat Wordsworth’s revisions as the signifiers of some external change. Instead, my approach keys upon the conflict between Wordsworth’s efforts to realize a stable poetic identity and the representational and rhetorical limitations of poetic form, particularly with regards to autobiography. Drawing on the work of Susan Wolfson, Paul de Man, and Harold Bloom, I argue that Wordsworth’s revisionary practices are motivated by an agonistic process best described as “autobiographical anxiety” or the “‘anxiety of influence’ turned inward.” Ultimately, I conclude that Wordsworth’s decline was the consequence of an overarching ethic of composition which, because it privileged revision as a means of changing not only poetry but the poet himself, allowed self-consciousness to become a self-defeating agent

Sebastien Racle and Norridgewock, 1724: The Eckstorm Conspiracy Thesis Reconsidered

This essay is a critique of the conspiracy thesis regarding the Abanaki Norridgewock tribe and Jesuit Father Sebastien Racle. The essay was the winner the of the Maine Historical Society Prize Essay of 1974

Sebastien Rale vs. New England: A Case Study of Frontier Conflict

Author\u27s original abstract: A study was made of the Jesuit missionary, Sebastien Rale, and his role in New England-New France relations. French and English primary and secondary materials were examined to give the broadest possible view of the man and to place him in historical context. It was found that Sebastien Rale was not an agent of New France. The conflicting opinions surrounding the mission of Norridgewock and the border war of the 1720\u27s were traced to the problems of Massachusetts-Abnaki relations. Rale\u27s frequent and testy letters to the government of the Bay Colony were blunt reactions to what he viewed as religious and territorial threats against his mission. The frontier conflict between 1713 and 1722 was not the result of French Imperial policy. The French insisted that the Abnakis were allies but refused active participation in the Indians\u27 quarrel with New England. Policy was developed in Maine by the Jesuits. The missionaries were only secondarily interested in Quebec\u27s desire to prevent Massachusetts\u27 settlement of the Kennebec. With the declaration of war in July, 1722, however, the Jesuits left the Abnakis in the hands of the governor and the intendant of New France on whom the Indians relied for vital war supplies. Finally, the controversial attack on Norridgewock was appraised. It was found that no secondary account had fully evaluated the sources. Examination led to the discovery of crucial inconsistencies in the primary accounts of New England. The French sources were found to be based on the understandably confused impressions of the fleeing Indians. In large measure the English sources present the more valid picture: the sudden attack, the panicked confusion, and Sebastien Rale dying with gun in hand. After Rale\u27s death the war drew to a close. Without Sebastien Rale\u27s persuasion and determination, the Abnakis were not able to present a united front against colonial expansion

The orthodox church, montenegro, and the ‘serbian world’

While politics is transient, for Serbs in the Western Balkans the church is a constant - a stable entity and an institution that represents historical continuity, national identity and destiny. The church casts itself as the authentic articulator of the soul of the Serbs and throughout the Western Balkans many of them regard it as an institution that is beyond reproach.2 Consequently The SPC is more influential and powerful than any individual political figure or any state institution in Serbia or in the neighboring states where Serbs reside.Accepted manuscrip

Conifold Transitions in M-theory on Calabi-Yau Fourfolds with Background Fluxes

We consider topology changing transitions for M-theory compactifications on Calabi-Yau fourfolds with background G-flux. The local geometry of the transition is generically a genus g curve of conifold singularities, which engineers a 3d gauge theory with four supercharges, near the intersection of Coulomb and Higgs branches. We identify a set of canonical, minimal flux quanta which solve the local quantization condition on G for a given geometry, including new solutions in which the flux is neither of horizontal nor vertical type. A local analysis of the flux superpotential shows that the potential has flat directions for a subset of these fluxes and the topologically different phases can be dynamically connected. For special geometries and background configurations, the local transitions extend to extremal transitions between global fourfold compactifications with flux. By a circle decompactification the M-theory analysis identifies consistent flux configurations in four-dimensional F-theory compactifications and flat directions in the deformation space of branes with bundles.Comment: 93 pages; v2: minor changes and references adde