1,721,119 research outputs found
‘It’s as Semper as Oxhousehumper!’ James Joyce’s Animalization of the Human
No full textFew animals can be met through the works of James Joyce. An unnamed cat and threatening dog in Ulysses, a deceitful feline in the short story The Cat and the Devil, some insects (earwigs, ants and grasshoppers) and an inquisitive hen in Finnegans Wake. But animality plays a crucial symbolic role in the late joycean poetics. Starting from The Oxen of the Sun, generally known as one of the most complex episodes of Ulysses, in which human evolution is described through the disgregation of language, the symbol of the ox is taken as a synthesis of the human ability to think and communicate. And the analysis of the message found by the hen Biddy Doran on a pile of dung in Finnegans Wake brings to an experience of the wholeness of meaning: referring to the cabalistic triad of the ox, the house and the camel (alpha, beta and gamma), its interpretation could develop through eternity, but the final wisdom is «as semper as oxhousehumper» (FW, 116): it’s already known from the beginning. My contribution will propose a close analysis of these and of some other passages in Finnegans Wake (e.g. the two tales called «The Mookse and the Gripes», FW, 152-155, and «The Ondt and the Gracehoper», FW, 414-418, satirical adaptations of the well-known Aesopian fables), stressing the importance given to physiological functions (the most basic, which associate man to animals) in the acts of communication and interpretation. The theoretical ground will be cast through the philosophy of Giambattista Vico (explicitly quoted, but freely used by Joyce) and of the late Ludwig Wittgenstein, who suggested the power of communication “beyond words”
Muscle reinnervation—III. Motoneuron sprouting capacity, enhancement by exogenous gangliosides
No full textRat soleus muscle was partially denervated by resecting the L5 mixed nerve. Musclereinnervation was monitored 10, 30 and 50 days after surgery. The extent of recovery was found to be dependent on the number of axons remaining in the muscle and appeared not to be influenced by the time allowed. If animals were treated daily with 5 mg/kg of gangliosides the enlargement of the motor units was further enforced. The index of sprouting (expressed as the ratio between the percentage of musclereinnervation due to a certain number of motor neurons in reinnervation and in normal conditions) was increased in a significant way by gangliosides treatment, i.e. one motor unit can expand up to about 4.5-fold, but if the animal was treated with gangliosides the motor unit can expand up to about 6.3-fold. These results showed that motoneuronsproutingcapacity is increased by treatment animals with gangliosides
Neuritogenesis and regeneration in the nervous system: an overview of the problem and on the promoting action of gangliosides.
No full text
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
Humans as Zoo Antelopes and White Swans: Animal Imagery in Henry James's 'Julia Bride'
No full textIn the influential ‘Why Look at Animals?’ (1980), John Berger laments the disappearance of real animals in capitalistic societies insofar as animals have been subjected to a progressive cultural marginalisation: in our world, either they are ‘co-opted’ into the family as pets or they are turned into spectacles, as is the case with zoo animals. The process of marginalisation began in the nineteenth century in Western Europe and North America, whose faces were then being transformed by the combined shaping forces of urbanisation and industrialisation, to the point that, today, what inhabits a heavily anthropised world is the commodified animal. Interestingly, Henry James offers a fictional representation of the irremediable loss of real animals in an urbanised environment in his 1908 tale ‘Julia Bride’. The animals which populate the New York depicted in ‘Julia Bride’ are zoo animals, performing bears, or swans which beautify the Central Park Lake with their elegance. Since she has grown up in a capital-driven society, the tale’s protagonist likewise cannot allude in her reflections but to animals culturally consumed in order to make a profit – like dancing bears, which constituted a major attraction at local fairs at the turn of the twentieth century. Yet, the logic of financial capitalism does afflict animals and women in equal measure in James’s New York of the 1900s. Through a complex animal imagery, James comes to articulate the proximity between marginalised women and animals turned into spectacle, by juxtaposing the female body with the animal’s and by drawing a parallel between the constraints imposed on performing animals – made unable to fulfil their potential capabilities – and the social norms to which women are subjected. Images of animals become metaphor of the protagonist’s life and of women’s lot at the beginning of the twentieth century
Humans as Zoo Antelopes and White Swans: Animal Imagery in Henry James's 'Julia Bride'
No full textIn the influential ‘Why Look at Animals?’ (1980), John Berger laments the disappearance of real animals in capitalistic societies insofar as animals have been subjected to a progressive cultural marginalisation: in our world, either they are ‘co-opted’ into the family as pets or they are turned into spectacles, as is the case with zoo animals. The process of marginalisation began in the nineteenth century in Western Europe and North America, whose faces were then being transformed by the combined shaping forces of urbanisation and industrialisation, to the point that, today, what inhabits a heavily anthropised world is the commodified animal. Interestingly, Henry James offers a fictional representation of the irremediable loss of real animals in an urbanised environment in his 1908 tale ‘Julia Bride’. The animals which populate the New York depicted in ‘Julia Bride’ are zoo animals, performing bears, or swans which beautify the Central Park Lake with their elegance. Since she has grown up in a capital-driven society, the tale’s protagonist likewise cannot allude in her reflections but to animals culturally consumed in order to make a profit – like dancing bears, which constituted a major attraction at local fairs at the turn of the twentieth century. Yet, the logic of financial capitalism does afflict animals and women in equal measure in James’s New York of the 1900s. Through a complex animal imagery, James comes to articulate the proximity between marginalised women and animals turned into spectacle, by juxtaposing the female body with the animal’s and by drawing a parallel between the constraints imposed on performing animals – made unable to fulfil their potential capabilities – and the social norms to which women are subjected. Images of animals become metaphor of the protagonist’s life and of women’s lot at the beginning of the twentieth century
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