176 research outputs found

    Author Kay Kermode with Plant

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    Kathryn "Kay" Vassel Kermode with one of her plants. A long time agriculturalist in Manatee County, she is author of the 1995 book: Tomato Ties n Growers: a history of the tomato industry in West Florida

    HIS SENSE OF AN ENDING

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    In this memorial essay on Sir Frank Kermode (1919–2010), the author focuses on his own exchange of views with Kermode during the 1970s. In Kermode's book The Sense of an Ending (1966), he had criticized Frank's essay “Spatial Form in Modern Literature” (1945) as part of a larger critique of what the Romantic-Symbolist tradition of English poetry had become in the twentieth century. Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and other late Symbolists had turned artists into advocates of an irrational wisdom superior to reason and common sense, thus isolating—so Kermode argued—the world of art from that of ordinary human concerns. Rejecting their view of art, he turned instead to a pre-Romantic tradition (including Spenser and Milton) that the Symbolists had rejected. Among modern writers, Kermode turned to Wallace Stevens, who became his foil for Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, as well as the most important influence on his own later thinking. Joseph Frank, in this essay, recalls the combination of acerbic intelligence, social concern, gentility, and finally friendship that characterized his debate over these questions with Kermode. Frank recalls as an indication of his respect and admiration for Kermode that he wrote, in 1977, that, even if his own theory of spatial form were to be shown worthless, it would still have value in having provided some of the stimulus for Kermode to write The Sense of an Ending.</jats:p

    Healthcare worker safety is a pre-requisite for injection safety in developing countries

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    SummaryUnsafe injection practices, including the re-use of unsterile needles and syringes, are commonplace in developing country health settings, and contribute substantially to the global burden of blood-borne viral disease. Unsafe injection practices place at risk not only patients, but also healthcare workers, who practice universal precautions inconsistently and are commonly exposed to blood in the course of their work. Global awareness of the link between unsafe injection practices and the burden of blood-borne viral disease was slow to emerge but has grown in the recent years. In 1999, the World Health Organization (WHO) established the Safe Injection Global Network (SIGN), which advocates a range of interventions for the promotion of injection safety. As well as exhorting healthcare workers to use a new needle and syringe for every injection, they should also be encouraged and supported to protect themselves from exposure to blood. It is argued here that promoting the occupational safety of healthcare workers in developing countries is an essential and currently under-valued component of the response to the problem of unsafe injection practices. Protecting healthcare workers from occupational infection with blood-borne viruses has a range of potential benefits, including safer injection practices for patients and less discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS. There is an urgent need for organisational commitment to the occupational safety of healthcare workers in developing countries, along with the provision of training in injection safety and universal precautions, adequate supplies of personal protective equipment, and hepatitis B vaccination

    Polyphony and the anxiety of influence in the fiction of Henry James

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    James's fiction, especially in the Middle Phase, centres on the figure of the artist and is characterized by, the two interrelated aspects which previous criticism has largely overlooked: the Bakhtinian 'polyphonic' -creation of 'author-thinkers'; and the conflict between ephebes and precursors, for which Harold-Bloom's concept of 'the-anxiety of influence' is the most illuminating model. Polyphony is the narrative mode, and influence is the intra-artistic, theme. These, as the Introduction to the thesis makes clear, are rehearsed in James's inaugural novel, Roderick Hudson. Rowland Mallet is an author-thinker, and his failure is caused by authorial limitations. His monologism -is impaired by his mistaking empathy for the authorial sympathy. Likewise, Hudson's failure does not arise from a mercurial temperament, but from a polyphonic shortcoming: not possessing the power of fiction to contain the fiction of power in, his mentor. And the relationships among the three artists - Gloriani, Hudson and Singleton - perfectly exemplify the Bloomian-theme. It is these two concepts, polyphony and influence, which are the major preoccupation in the Middle Phase; as, the works chosen demonstrate. These are a novella, a novel, and a number of short stories all of which have been unjustifiably neglected. Chapter One, on The Aspern Papers, argues that Tina Bordereau, far from being, the artless victim seen by many critics, actually challenges and defeats the narrator by the very form of her narrative. Her 'realist' discourse undermines his language of 'romance', and shows up its internal unstability. Chapter Two is an extensive study of the critical reception of The Tragic Muse. The most common areas of critical attention have been its contemporary topicality, its relation to previous novels on similar themes, and the possible genealogy of Gabriel Nash. Those have all missed the core of the work. - Chapter Three demonstrates how polyphony and the anxiety of influence make the novel what it really is. Influence arises from the juxtaposition of, and the wrestling between, artistic ephebes and their precursors (Nick and Nash,, Miriam and Madame Carre). The dialogic quality defined by Bakhtin is crucial to the proper, and even-handed, characterization of all, the conflicts in the novel. And since most of James's tales in the eighties and nineties -are about 'masters - and acolytes, the anxiety of influence remains central. Chapter Four is a study of 'The Author of Beltraffiol' and 'The Lesson of the Master'. Again the characters' manipulations are a crucial focus in a way that G6rard Genette's terminology helps to illuminate. The fact that the ephebe is the author-thinker emphasizes the inextricability of the Bakhtinian and the Bloomian in James. Just as polyphony offers a different focus for explicating the poetics of James's fiction; so the ephebal conflict provides the basis for a fresh perception of James's own artistic struggle

    Safer injections, fewer infections : management of needles and sharps and occupational blood exposure in rural north Indian health settings

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    This study investigated injection practices and occupational exposure to blood in rural north Indian health settings. The findings highlighted a range of practices potentially contributing to the transmission of hepatitis and HIV to both patients and staff in these settings. Interventions need to focus on the development of organisational structures to support and facilitate safer practices

    Sekrety literatury i głód wtajemniczenia

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    This article concerns secrets and secrecy in narrative works. The author, following in the footsteps of Auerbach and Kermode, argues that secrets should be understood as discontinuous places, gaps that demand to be filled. Auerbach and Kermode pointed to the biblical origins of the secret narrative. The latter in The Genesis of Secrecy. On the Interpretation of Narrative noted that secrets presuppose a mode of initiation – this was the case in the gospel of St Mark he analysed, addressed to believers. However, this sender’s intention also appears in strictly literary texts that operate the convention of the secret. This article refers to four twentieth-century Polish narrative texts that use elements of secrecy in different ways. Mrożek’s Moniza Clavier conceals the confabulatory character of the first-person statement, Miłosz’s Dolina Issy and Gombrowicz’s Kosmos conceal the deeply autobiographical character of the reflection on individual fate, while the narrative in Lem’s Solaris activates the possibility of ‘vertical reading’, referring to the concept of some absolute. Secrets in literary texts tend to be secularized versions of religious narratives addressed to the initiated, and the promise of an integration of discontinuous places attracts sceptics and believers.This article concerns secrets and secrecy in narrative works. The author, following in the footsteps of Auerbach and Kermode, argues that secrets should be understood as discontinuous places, gaps that demand to be filled. Auerbach and Kermode pointed to the biblical origins of the secret narrative. The latter in The Genesis of Secrecy. On the Interpretation of Narrative noted that secrets presuppose a mode of initiation – this was the case in the gospel of St Mark he analysed, addressed to believers. However, this sender’s intention also appears in strictly literary texts that operate the convention of the secret. This article refers to four twentieth-century Polish narrative texts that use elements of secrecy in different ways. Mrożek’s Moniza Clavier conceals the confabulatory character of the first-person statement, Miłosz’s Dolina Issy and Gombrowicz’s Kosmos conceal the deeply autobiographical character of the reflection on individual fate, while the narrative in Lem’s Solaris activates the possibility of ‘vertical reading’, referring to the concept of some absolute. Secrets in literary texts tend to be secularized versions of religious narratives addressed to the initiated, and the promise of an integration of discontinuous places attracts sceptics and believers

    Safer management of needles and sharps in hospitals and community health projects in rural northern India

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    $AUD 73,074.00NHMRC Postgraduate ScholarshipsPublic Health Postgraduate Scholarshi

    Laughter and madness in post-war American fiction

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    Two philosophical positions seem evident in post-war American fiction: one realist, one anti-realist. Using the terms 'revelation' and 'apocalypse' to reflect the former, and 'entropy' the latter, this thesis proposes that distinctions between the two can be made by analysis of a text's treatment of the nexus between laughter and madness. After an Overview that identifies and defines key terms, the Introduction considers various theoretical treatments of laughter from which its function can be ascertained as being both to reinforce stability within social groups and to explore new alternatives to existing modes of thought. Madness being defined as an inability to balance the opposing forces of system and anti-system, laughter is therefore vital to maintain sanity. The Fool emerges as a crucial figure in this process. Chapter One explores, with reference to Heller's Catch-22, Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Kerouac's On The Road, the Laughter of Revelation: a laughing relationship between a Protagonist who is trapped within the system of an Institution and a Fool who communicates to the Protagonist (through laughter) a means of escape. Chapter Two then discusses, with reference to Blatty's The Exorcist, King's It, Morrison's Sula, and Nabokov's Lolita, the Laughter of Apocalypse: a laughing relationship in which the Fool's laughter (as mockery) is potentially destructive of both the Protagonist's sanity and the stability of the Institution. Chapter Three explores, with reference to Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-5, Ellis's American Psycho, and Heller's Closing Time, the Laughter of Entropy: the failure of the laughing relationship that obtains when the dialectic between Institution (as system) and Fool (as anti-system) collapses. The concluding remarks reflect the metafictional implications of the foregoing analyses. It is suggested that, with the collapse of this dialectic (expressed by the Laughter of Entropy), the traditional relationship between Author and Reader becomes problematic

    The voice of Jesus in six parables and their interpreters

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    'Figures of speech' provide a suggestive key for approaching the question of Jesus' individual tone of voice. Apprehending a figure implies insight into an intention, and beyond intention to discern unconscious influences upon the speaker. This is the conceptual framework for a study of the 'voice of Jesus' in six parables peculiar to Luke (10:25-37; 15:11-32; 16:1-9; 16:19-31; 18:1-8; 18:9-14) and in commentaries upon them. In the premodern era commentators approached the parables with an immediacy of insight, seeking the divine intention behind the texts. Nevertheless we may hear the voice of Jesus echoing in their commentaries in morally specific tones. In the work of Jülicher 'insight', though repudiated, is still important, as he seeks the intention of Jesus through the figure of simile. Jülicher offers insight into Jesus as a passionate communicator, but goes beyond Jesus' intention in making him a propounder of generalities. More recently a concern with the intention of Jesus is replaced by a concern with how his voice was heard. The necessity of insight remains apparent in B.B. Scott's use of metaphor as an interpretative key. An impression is given of Jesus as a provocative subversive. In their context in Luke-Acts, the parables function as metonymies of the gospel, and yield an impression of the voice of Jesus as suggestively concerned with the life of this world. In the ministry of Jesus the parables function as synecdoches, offering hearers a realistic and hopeful 'part' of the world from which they must fashion a 'whole’. Against the background of Scripture the parables display a deep continuity with older forms of discourse, but also important tokens of newness. A stream of influence can be traced from the Old Testament, through Jesus and Luke, and on through their interpreters, though recently its course has been somewhat diverted
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