653 research outputs found
A sojourn in Paris 1824-25: sex and sociability in the manuscript writings of Anne Lister (1791-1840)
Get PDFThis thesis examines the day to day practices that constituted Anne Lister's (1791-1840) sexuality and sociability within the range of her writings, as well as her society. Anne's writings were a detailed account, spanning her lifetime, of her own love and relationships with the 'fairer sex' (Whitbread 1988, 145). Anne's sociality, seen in her correspondence and plain handwritten journal entries, has been explored by Muriel Green in Miss Lister of Shibden Hall and Jill Liddington in Female Fortune and Nature's Domain (Green 1992; Liddington 1998; 2003). As a gentlewoman of adequate means, Anne has garnered some attention from women's historians interested in her agency within an early nineteenth century social and historical context. Anne's sexual identity has been extensively analysed over the past nearly twenty years by lesbian feminists, queer theorists, women's historians and historians of sexuality concerned with the history and development of modern Western female homosexuality and gender. The source for theorising Anne's sexuality has been the edited selections of the crypted journal entries, published by Helena Whitbread in I Know My Own Heart and No Priest but Love (Whitbread 1988; 1992). However, many analyses deal either with the theorisation of Anne's sexuality or her sociality; the theoretical difficulty with reconciling these categories has troubled the analysis of her complex subjectivity. Drawing upon the archival materials, I have used an interdisciplinary feminist approach to analyse the sexual and social processes of Anne's everyday interactions in her writings. Taking the seven month period of the sojourn to Paris in 1824-25, I have focused upon Anne's textual practices within her journal volume and letters during her residence in Paris, her social practices with the other guests at the guesthouse 24 Place Vendome and her sexual practices with her lover, the widow Mrs. Maria Barlow. The journal volumes and correspondence are a valuable historical record of one gentlewoman's engagement with early nineteenth century British culture
Modelling and analysis of memristor-based electrical networks for neuromorphic computing hardware
Get PDFRecent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) have stimulated the design of software programs that use AI techniques, also called AI applications. These new applications are very convenient for their users. However, a big drawback is that they consume a lot of energy. This motivates the development of new computing technology that makes AI applications more energy-efficient. The field of neuromorphic computing aims to develop this technology by taking inspiration from the brain. To do so, new analogue computing hardware is required. The new nanoscale materials used in this computing hardware are developed in specialised labs. Due to the small scale of these materials, it is difficult to grasp the behaviour of these materials. However, it is predicted that these materials behave like electrical networks constructed of electrical components such as resistors, memristors (i.e., resistors with memory), and capacitors. Motivated by this, in this thesis, we use mathematical modelling and analysis techniques to study the behaviour of electrical networks comprising resistors, memristors, and capacitors. The objective of this study is, first, to obtain more insight into the behaviour of networks constructed of these electrical components, and, second, to understand if and how these networks can be used to mimic the behaviour of neurons and synapses in the brain
Depression and Gender: The Expression and Experience of Melancholy in the Eighteenth Century
No full textThis thesis investigates the life and work of six eighteenth-century writers, two male and four female. It explores their experience of depression through their letters and other autobiographical material, and examines the ways in which they represent melancholy in their poetry and prose. The subject of Chapter Two is Thomas Gray, whose real life persona as the lonely intellectual is also identifiable in his poetry. The Scottish poet Robert Fergusson is studied in Chapter Three. Fergusson’s lively and vigorous mind was shattered in the months leading up to his death, during which time some of his writing became darkly nihilistic. Chapter Four looks at Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, a lifelong depressive who often wrote about her feelings of despair in her poetry. Chapter Five explores Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She was a courageous and controversial figure, but despite her resilience, on occasion in her letters she reveals her vulnerability and susceptibility to low spirits, a mood which is sometimes expressed in her creative writing. Sarah Scott, whose life and work have not yet been considered in relation to the subject of melancholy, is examined in Chapter Six. Her novel includes several low-spirited and depressed female characters who are continually seeking asylum from a hostile world. Chapter Seven analyses Charlotte Smith, a mother of twelve children whose unhappy marriage ended in separation. Smith wrote extensively about her depression in her letters, prefaces, poetry and novels.
This study shows that the women in particular use their writing on melancholy and depression to express their discontent with the confined way in which they are often expected to live out their lives
The death of William Golding: authorship and creativity in darkness visible and the paper men
Get PDFIn the seventies and eighties William Golding was deeply responsive to the critical, anti-authorial ethos that followed the publication of Roland Barthes's "La mort de I'auteur" (1968). In Darkness Visible (1979) and The Paper Men (1984) he investigates means by which to reaffirm authorial presence. Working through paradox, he performs the authorial death in these novels, and establishes language’s inadequacy as a means of conveying absolute meaning, authorial "vision," truth or revelation. Having done so he nonetheless gestures towards the divine, towards the possibility of a vatic communication. In this manner the novels work upon principles of contradiction and collapse. What remains is a discourse of hope, promise, desire, without means of substantiating such optimism. Thus Golding might be said to have practiced a form of negative theology, and to have anticipated in this respect some recent trends in literary theory
Families as Care-Providers versus Care-Managers? Gender and Type of Care in a Sample of Employed Canadians
Get PDFThis article extends previous research by examining care management as a distinct type of informal care. Using data drawn from a large Canadian study of work and family, the research is based on a study of a sub-sample of women (1068) and men (805) who were employed full-time and who had provided help to an elderly relative during the six month period preceding the interview. Results indicate that managerial care is a meaningful construct that denotes a distinct type of care. Most commonly, individuals combine managerial care with other types of assistance. Managerial care is a very common activity among caregivers and usually involves aspects of care other than arranging for formal services. Managerial care has an adverse impact on job costs and personal costs, and, among women, is associated with greater stress.elderly; caregiving
Families as Care-Providers versus Care-Managers? Gender and Type of Care in a Sample of Employed Canadians
Get PDFThis article extends previous research by examining care management as a distinct type of informal care. Using data drawn from a large Canadian study of work and family, the research is based on a study of a sub-sample of women (1068) and men (805) who were employed full-time and who had provided help to an elderly relative during the six month period preceding the interview. Results indicate that managerial care is a meaningful construct that denotes a distinct type of care. Most commonly, individuals combine managerial care with other types of assistance. Managerial care is a very common activity among caregivers and usually involves aspects of care other than arranging for formal services. Managerial care has an adverse impact on job costs and personal costs, and, among women, is associated with greater stress.elderly; caregiving
(The) man, his body, and his society: masculinity and the male experience in English and Scottish medicine c.1640-c.1780.
Get PDFThis thesis examines the relationship(s) between medicine, the body and societal codes of masculinity in England and Scotland between c.1640 and c.1780. It responds to the way in which the men in histories of post-1660 masculinity are often disembodied, and to the comparative absence of men’s gendered experiences from the history of medicine. Its findings show that in both centuries the experience of being a man with a body that was the site of health and sickness was an open, candid, and often communal, one, inside and outside of the formal medical encounter. Thus, and on both sides of 1700, ill men had full freedom in the pursuit and acceptance of medical, familial and social assistance, while their physical suffering, and associated emotional distress, was met with sympathy. With their sick bodies the sites of honest self-examination and open discussion, it was in part this very public nature of their sicknesses that allowed men, as a gender and as individuals, independence and agency in their non-commercial health care. Indeed, later-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century men suffered no constraints in their ability to respond to the vulnerabilities of their bodies, even where this involved behaviours or attributes allegedly associated with women and femininity, or inconsistent with ideals of active, independent, masculinity.
These findings indicate, therefore, great continuity across the period 1640-1780, and not only in masculine ideals of and involving the male corporeality. There seems to have been significant consistency across time in men’s social and medical experiences of both sickness and their pre-emptive preparation for it, and in an apparent collective self-confidence concerning their corporeal masculinity, their sex, and, possibly, even their sexual potential. Indeed, these sources suggest that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century men had a resilient sense of self-identity (and personal masculinity), conceptually separable from the corporeal body and its known fragilities
Translating men : humanism and masculinity in Renaissance renditions of patristic texts
No full textPhDThis doctoral thesis focusses upon the translation of patristic works into English in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Considering the pragmatic usage of texts in humanist
culture, this research project explores the mobilisation of vernacular versions of the Church
Fathers in response to historical crises. Regarding Renaissance humanism as a gendered
intellectual methodology,I have investigated the way in which these texts particularly aim to
address the needs of men, offering them exemplars to 'cope' with their social circumstances.
The first chapter involves the analysis of Thomas Drant's rendition of Gregory of
Nazianzus' Epigrams (1568) as part of the struggles of the early Elizabethan era. I suggest
that this verse translation may possibly have played a supportive role for Protestant clerics
facing a loss of humanist confidence due to educational deficiencies and the conflict of
learning with the Catholic Louvainist scholars.
The second chapter examines John Healey's version of Augustine's City of God
(1610) in the context of the colonisation of Virginia. I propose that the Augustinian text - and
the included commentary by Vives - may have represented a 'handbook' for the
predominantly male community of planters confronted by (among other problems) the severe
difficulty of establishing a household and fathering the next generation.
The third chapter looks at Tobie Matthew's translation of Augustine's Confessions
(1620) as an aid for Catholic Englishmen in an age of religious persecution. I contend that
this text advertises and advances a passive / feminine form of manhood - which had been
initially propagated by late sixteenth-century recusant ideology - in order to offer succour to
its socially debilitated male readers.
By undertaking an examination of these previously neglected texts, this thesis has
attempted to expand the understanding of Renaissance humanist translation, as well as to
offer a unique insight into the history of gender
Moving between worlds : gender, class, politics, sexuality and women's networks in the diaries of Anne Lister of Shibden Hall, Halifax, Yorkshire, 1830-1840.
Get PDFSIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DXN003174 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo
The Trinity of a new Age: Three struggling Women in Anne Devlin's "Ourselves Alone" (1986) and "After Easter" (1994)
No full textThroughout her plays, Anne Devlin gives us an insight into the forgotten world of women in Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, if the author was said to give a feminist viewpoint on the conflict, she personally asserted that when she writes "more is called up" (Foley 74). Indeed, if Anne Devlin first points out the little room women are offered in her male-dominated Province and the little power they have, she also rages against it. She devotes more energy to showing that the Troubles are about women fighting against men rather than Catholics against Protestants, Republicans against Loyalists, Nationalists struggling against Unionists and, above all, the IRA against the British army. Her conflict becomes one about genders mainly
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