1,720,952 research outputs found
Tristram Shandy : the triumph of imagination, wit, and feeling over rationalism
Get PDFLaurence Sterne thought that Tristram Shandy was "more read than understood." Certainly any comprehensive understanding of Tristram Shandy has never come easily. Explications of Sterne's novel have all too often been distorted by commentators lacking a sense of the age in which Sterne wrote. Even the most perceptive critics have tended either to generalize about all nine books of Tristram Shandy or to write shorter articles on single facets of Sterne's many-sided novel. The interrelation of the varied eighteenth century themes, one with another and each one with Sterne's central structural device, has never been satisfactorily demonstrated. This in the largest measure is the purpose of my paper.
I have approached Tristram Shandy from the viewpoint only of a literary critic, but also of an analytic philosopher. This new approach is warranted because of Sterne's obvious amusement with philosophical topics and because previous commentary has suffered from a lack of philosophical rigour.
My overall thesis is this: through a superb union of form and content, Sterne satirizes all philosophical systems based purely upon reason, or claiming to be based upon reason. Tristram Shandy humorously dramatizes the insufficiency of human reason and proposes instead man's imaginative faculties (wit, sympathy, fellow-feeling, and creativity) as the communicative path to understanding.
Since Sterne's central structural device (Tristram-as-author) is absolutely essential to any understanding of Tristram Shandy, my study begins by considering (1.) Sterne's deployment of his author-persona, and (2.) the personal characteristics which Tristram reveals through 'his' self-dramatization. These characteristics - including his characteristic unreliability and his habit of engaging the reader in mock-dialogue - maneuver the reader into the very form of the novel by demanding unusual imaginative cooperation.
My second chapter concerns the content of Tristram Shandy. Through his author-persona, Sterne satirizes philosophical systems and philosophical problems, while extolling man's imaginative and sympathetic faculties. Repeatedly, Sterne questions man's ability to communicate with absolute certainty. Building humorous scenes from communication failures, Sterne points to the question: What can we know and what is impossible for us to know? This question, developed through the Shandean themes, accords perfectly with Sterne's structural device of the unreliable narrator. Hence, both the form and the content of Tristram Shandy aim to tie the reader in perplexing epistemological knots.
The Shandean spirit further involves the reader in the same problems of certitude and incertitude. Drawing on the tradition of Erasmus, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and especially Rabelais, Laurence Sterne created a narrator who demands imaginative, festive reciprocity from his reader. The spirit of festive merriment accords with Tristram's unreliability and with the Shandean satire of solemn rationalism.
In my fourth chapter I use the techniques of linguistic analysis to explore Tristram's unreliability. My exploration points to the difference between the language of philosophy and the language of literature. The former aims to communicate rationally and with certainty; the latter aims to communicate imaginatively. Sterne cast Tristram not as the "historian" he claims to be, but as a psychologically realistic author, dramatizing his process of creativity.
Sterne's dramatization of the creative process lays bare the limits of language and shows the creative writer's quest for new ways to communicate. My fifth chapter treats this dimension of Sterne's author-persona. Sterne's rendering of the creative process forces us to read Tristram Shandy creatively. It forces us to participate in an imaginative process, rather than a completely rational one.
My final chapter views A Sentimental Journey as the consequence of Tristram Shandy. In Tristram Shandy Sterne's iii main concern had been with man's creative imagination. Yet even in that first novel Sterne suggested that intuitive, imaginative sympathy can transcend philosophical scepticism and lead to communication through "feeling". In A Sentimental Journey Sterne repeatedly dramatizes the possibilities of sympathetic communication. Hence, Sterne's second novel reflects the message of his first: men can communicate imaginatively, even though logic, philosophy, and pure rationality preclude absolutely certain communication.
There is, perhaps, nothing startling in my conclusion that Tristram Shandy denigrates rationalism, the better to extol man's imaginative potential. Yet, the detailed analysis that leads to my conclusion gives a new, philosophical exactitude to the epistemological puzzles that most readers "see" at the heart of Tristram Shandy, but do not pause to analyse. In the course of this paper I also throw new light upon such well-worn Shandean issues as "the association of ideas" and "time in the novel", while showing, too, that Sterne's humour and his sentiment both emanate from the faculty of imagination.
Since Sterne himself jettisoned the linear plot-line, I have often followed the tactic of quoting from different volumes of Tristram Shandy to substantiate the particular point I am arguing at the time. Likewise, I sometimes use the same incident in several places to illustrate diverse points. At any given time I may not be saying the single, most important thing which can be said about the Shandean passage under discussion. Yet, if commentary upon Tristram Shandy is to be orderly, this approach (though it occasions some repetition) seems unavoidable. I have, therefore, abstracted the form for my paper from Sterne's artful confusion in order to provide a pattern for critical exposition
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
Author Under Sail The Imagination of Jack London, 1893-1902
No full textIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Spirit Truth -- 2. From Absorption to Theatricality and Back Again -- 3. "I Will Build a New Present" -- 4. Sons as Authors -- 5. Fathers as Publishers -- 6. The Daughter as Author -- 7. Lovers as Authors -- 8. At Sea with the Family -- 9. Yellow News, Yellow Stories -- 10. The Return Home -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About Jay WilliamsIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries
- …
