The topic is Prostitution Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The topic is Prostitution - Research Paper Example A mere act of law will possibly not solve all the problems related to this issue. It might be argued by some people that legalizing prostitution will make it easier to control the dark and corrupt side of this trade. It will give some measure of dignity to the sex workers. It will ensure they get regular health check-ups and they are not left to the mercy of unscrupulous pimps or customers. They shall be better paid and ultimately like any other organized sector they shall get some measure of legal protection. (Hayes-Smith and Shekarkhar, 50) Although this is one way of looking at it there is another viewpoint, which considers prostitution to be a threat to the institution of marriage. According to this group legalizing prostitution will result in the break-up of many marriages, as it will make it easier for spouses to cheat on their partners. One might argue that a faithful spouse shall remain so even if prostitution is legalized. So if in the long run legalizing this trade results in some long-term benefits for the women concerned it should be seriously considered. (Hayes-Smith and Shekarkhar, 53) It has been discovered that indoor sex workers are less likely to face violence than prostitutes who work on the streets. Surveys conducted in Vancouver, British Columbia have revealed that about 67% of the indoor sex workers had never faced any violence in their profession. This survey concentrated on massage parlors, escort agencies and women who worked as independent sex workers. This was in stark contrast to the violence faced by women who worked on the streets of Vancouver. Here the rate of violence was as high 98% and it is obvious from this survey that indoor sex work is safer than working on the streets. I n the United Kingdom Jeal and Salisbury reported that 79% of their indoor sex workers had never faced violence. Another survey conducted by Sanders and Campbell found that around 76% to 79% of the indoor sex workers had never experienced violence (O’Doherty, 218). So if the Government legalizes prostitution the women will no longer have to work on the streets. They can operate from their own private set-ups without fear of prosecution. This will give them greater autonomy and more litheness. They will no longer be at the mercy of pimps and middlemen.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  A lack of awareness and education puts most prostitutes at a disadvantage. As a result of this when they face violence of any kind they are unable to fight for their rights. Moreover there is a feeling among certain sections of the public that anybody engaged in this kind of profession deserve what they get .A prostitute who complains of violence by the customer is therefore not likely to receive much sympathy. Legalization of prostitution will enable women to fight for their rights. It will also protect them from corrupt law-enforcement officials. (O’Doherty, 223-224)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The fact that economic problems might lead to an increase in the level of prostitution is borne out by what we see in Russia today. There has be en a rise in the level of prostitution in Russia. Unfortunately little action has been taken by the State to regulate and control this industry. As a result of this venereal diseases and HIV infection has spread rapidly. According to the information of the Ministry of Health of Saratov oblast, in 1996-2003 the number of people infected with AIDS was

Declaration of Independence Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Declaration of Independence - Research Paper Example Onuf noticed that America was undergoing a problem of identity. Jefferson and other parties had worked hard to realize an independent America only to be coupled with a weak articulated national government. Delegates from Virginia came together to draft the declaration. This lead to its confirmation where it was backed by an undisputed voting. As an excellent orator and writer, Jefferson decided to write the declaration in July 4, 1776. Through his commitment, he was elected to serve his people as the governor of Virginia. He managed to serve Americans and his family, where he bore several children (Fox, 1948). Place and time â€Å"The US Declaration for Independence† was presented in July 4, 1776 at â€Å"Virginia. This was possible after there was a unanimous acceptance of the declaration. The article has since received acceptance in both America and the world over. Prior knowledge This journal was written during the American Revolution when Americans felt it was necessary t o resolve their political issues. Through the constitution, members of different states sought to remain united through establishing justice and liberty among the different states. The declaration was meant to synthesis and assist address constitutional issues (Jefferson, 9). These issues had earlier been argued by historians who left them unconcluded. Thus, the scholars took a long interpretive focus to ensure issues of governance and the constitution were addressed. In order to address the pressing issues, it was necessary to eliminate the presence of French persons in North America. The conclusion of this advancement occurred after the inclusion of the British victory after the war that lasted seven years (Onuf, 73). Anglo-Americans failed to distinguish between foreign and domestic relations. They focused a lot on local matters, disregarding other states and their relations with them. For this reason, Americans failed to claim membership in the international community. Audience Onuf (73) targets the Americans as his audience, seeking to enlighten them on the need for pursuing their constitutional rights. He further encourages them to focus on organizational and issues of international politics because of their status as an independent country (Onuf, 72). Reason The main reason for writing this article was to enlighten Americans on the importance of advocating for their constitutional issues, which they could only access through independence (Jefferson, 6). Onuf (75) urges Americans to be watchful and ensure they repossess their membership from the international community. Onuf (75) argues that the country seeks to gain access to great opportunities to explore foreign policy. He refers his audience to the present state of the world and concludes that history contributed greatly to it. He seeks to urge Americans to enhance their issues of nation-state and identity. He cautions that inability to remain vigilant in the issues of state is vital to exercise issu es of sovereignty and capabilities of the state to embrace the international system (Tewell, 82). The Main Idea Jefferson (7) wants his audience to know the importance of declaring independence for a country. He briefly describes the circumstances under which the Americans decided to unite as a single state. He later outlines the pertinent issues outlined in the constitution, which

Estimation of Tramadol Hydrochloride and Diclofenac Sodium

Estimation of Tramadol Hydrochloride and Diclofenac Sodium Derivative Spectrophotometric Method for Estimation of Tramadol Hydrochloride and Diclofenac Sodium in Pharmaceutical Dosage Form Pekamwar S. S., Kalyankar T. M, Lokhande M. V. ABSTRACT Purpose: Tramadol is opioid analgesic and diclofenac is NSAID and are used in severe to moderate pain management. Combination of Tramadol and Diclofenac drugs were approved by FDA to market in India with a dose of 50 mg for TRA and 75 mg DIC respectively. Method: The employed method is based on first order derivative spectrophotometry. Wavelengths 278.7 nm and 281.7 nm were selected for the estimation of the Tramadol and Diclofenac respectively by taking the first order derivative spectra. The concentrations of both drugs were determined by proposed method. The results of analysis have been validated statistically and by recovery studies as per ICH guidelines. Result: Both the drugs obey Beer’s law in the concentration range of 5-30 ÃŽ ¼g mL-1 and 5-45 ÃŽ ¼g mL-1 with regression 0.9997 and 0.9990, intercept- 0.0008 and 0.0062 and slope- 0.004 and 0.0316 for TRA and DIC respectively. The accuracy and reproducibility results are close to 100% with 2% RSD. Conclusion: A simple, a ccurate, precise, sensitive and economical procedures for simultaneous estimation of Tramadol and Diclofenac in tablet dosage form have been developed Key words: Tramadol, Diclofenac, First order derivative spectrophotometry, ICH guidelines, Validation, FDA Introduction Tramadol Hydrochloride (TRA) is a synthetic 4-phenylpiperidine analogue of codeine. Chemically it is cis -2-[(dimethylamino) methyl]-1-(3 methoxyphenyl) cyclohexanol hydrochloride (Figure-1), is a centrally acting opioid analgesic, indicated in the treatment of moderate to severe pain. TRA is used to treat postoperative (dental, cancer etc.) pain, treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, restless legs syndrome, motor neuron disease and fibromyalgia and as an adjuvant to NSAID therapy 1-8. Chemically Diclofenac Sodium (DIC) is 2-{2-[(2, 6- dichlorophenyl) amino] phenyl} acetic acid (Figure -2), is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drug. DIC gives anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, and analgesic action thought the inhibition of prostaglandin synthesis by inhibition of cyclooxygenase (COX). DIC is used in acute to chronic treatment of signs and symptoms of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis 9-19. Tramadol (50 mg) and Diclofenac (75 mg) combination, resulting central and peripheral analgesia a â€Å"balanced analgesia† used in wider spectrum of pain management. In the literature survey it was found that various analytical methods involving spectrophotometry 1-4, HPLC (High-performance liquid chromatography) 5-7, stability-indicating RP-HPLC (Reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography) 8, and GC/MS (Gas chromatography- mass spectrophotometry) 7 have been reported for TRA in single form and in combination with other drugs. Several analytical methods have been reported for DIC in single form and in combination with other drugs including spectrophotometry 9-12, HPLC 13-16, RP-HPLC 17,18, and LC-MS (Liquid chromatography-mass spectrophotometry) 19. Extensive literature survey reveals that derivative spectrophotometric method is yet not reported for simultaneous determination of TRA and DIC in tablet dosage form. In the present work an attempt is being made to develop simple, precise, accurate and reproducible first-order derivative UV- spectrophotometric method for simultaneous estimation of TRA and DIC in combined dosage form. Materials and Methods Apparatus and Instruments The instrument used in the present study was UV- spectrophotometer UV-1800 (Shimadzu, Japan) with spectral bandwidth of 2 nm and 10 mm a matched quartz cell was used. All weighing was done on Digital balance (Anamed). Chemicals and Reagents Analytically pure drug sample of TRA and DIC was kindly provided by Supriya Lifescience Ltd. (Mumbai, India) and J.B. Chemicals Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (Gujarat, India) respectively. The pharmaceutical dosage form used in this study was unavailable in market but has been approved by the FDA to market in India. So this bilayer (Core) tablets manufactured in School of Pharmacy, S.R.T.M. University, Nanded, labeled to contain 50 mg of TRA and 75 mg of DIC. All chemicals (AR grade) were purchased from RANKEM, Delhi, India. Preparation of standard stock solutions Accurately weighed 10 mg of TRA and DIC transferred to two separate 100 mL volumetric flasks. Added sufficient methanol and sonicated for 5 min. and volume was made upto 100 mL with methanol. 1 mL of the stock solution was further diluted to 10 mL with methanol to get a working standard solution of concentration 10 ÃŽ ¼g mL-1 of both TRA and DIC and scanned in the wavelength range of 200-400 nm. First-Order Derivative Spectroscopic Method 20, 21 Working standard solution of concentration 10 ÃŽ ¼g mL-1 of both TRA and DIC were scanned in spectrum mode between 400-200 nm using methanol as a blank. Then zero order spectrums of both the drugs were transformed mathematically into their individual first order derivative spectrum and first derivative overlain of both the drugs were obtained in 400-200 nm which is shown in figure 3, figure 4 and figure 5. It was observed that wavelengths selected for quantification of both the drugs were 281.7 nm for TRA and 271.7 nm for DIC in such a way that at zero crossing of one drug another drug shows substantial absorbance (Zero crossing method). Therefore these two wavelengths were employed for the estimation of TRA and DIC without any interference. The calibration curves were plotted at these two wavelengths. Preparation of Sample Stock Solution Contents of twenty tablets were weighed accurately and powdered. Powder equivalent to 50 mg of TRA and 75 mg of DIC was weighed and dissolved in 50 mL of methanol with the aid of ultrasonication for 5 min. The solution was filtered through Whatman filter paper no. 41 to a 100 mL volumetric flask. Filter paper was washed with methanol, adding washings to the volumetric flask and volume was made up to the mark with methanol to get sample stock solution which was further diluted with methanol to get final concentration of solution (TRA 10 ÃŽ ¼g mL-1 and DIC 15 ÃŽ ¼g mL-1 ) in the linearity range. Results and Discussions Linearity and range A standard stock solution was prepared for both TRA and DIC; they were serially diluted to yield six for TRA and nine for DIC standard solutions. For UV spectrophotometric method, linearity was obtained in concentration range of 5-30 ÃŽ ¼g mL-1 and 5-45 ÃŽ ¼g mL-1; with regression 0.9997 and 0.9990, intercept- 0.0008 and 0.0062 and slope 0.004 and 0.0316 for TRA and DIC respectively. The results are depicted in table1. Accuracy and precision To ascertain the accuracy of the proposed methods, recovery studies were carried out by standard addition method at three different levels (80%, 100% and 120%) as per ICH guidelines. Known amount of pure TRA and DIC were added in preanalyzed powder of tablet formulation and analysis was carried out by proposed method for recovery at each level and % recovery, SD, % RSD was calculated. Results of recovery studies are shown in Table 2. The accuracy and reproducibility is evident from the data as results are close to 100 % and the value of standard deviation and % R.S.D. were found to be Specificity The proposed method was found to be specific as there is no interference from other excipients. Results of analysis of tablet formulation Analysis of formulated tablet was carried out and the amounts recovered were expressed as percentage amount of tablet claim. The percentage recovery for TRA is 100.52 ±1.486 and DIC is 99.57 ±0.555 respectively. The proposed methods was evaluated by the assay (n = 6) of formulated tablets containing TRA and DIC. The results of assay are presented in Table 3. LOD and LOQ LOD was found to be 0.0686  µg mL-1and 0.155  µg mL-1 for TRA and DIC respectively. LOQ was found to be 0.2081  µg mL-1 and 0.4719  µg mL-1 for TRA and DIC respectively. The results of LOD and LOQ are shown in table 4. Conclusion The first-order derivative spectrophotometric method has been developed for simultaneous determination of TRA and DIC in combined dosage form. The developed and validated first order derivative spectrophotometric method is simple, economic, accurate and reproducible. The method was validated as per ICH guidelines in terms of linearity, specificity, accuracy, precision, limits of detection (LOD) and limits of quantification (LOQ). The proposed validated method can be utilized for routine analysis and quality control assay of TRA and DIC in combined dosage form. Acknowledgments The authors are very thankful to Supriya Lifescience Ltd., Mumbai and J.B. Chemicals Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Gujarat, India for providing Tramadol Hydrochloride and Diclofenac sodium respectively as gift samples of pure drugs. Authors are also very thankful to School of Pharmacy, Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University, Nanded, Maharashtra, India for providing all the necessary facilities to complete research work very successfully. Conflict of interest The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Chimpanzees Essay -- essays research papers

Chimpanzees are a genus of the great ape of Africa, with long black hair and log protruding ears. Humans know them for their intelligence and there very similarities. They have developed family ties similar to man. Over the generations they have even had developed tools out of natural materials. Food for chimpanzees is very important to them due to the excessive amount eating. Chimpanzees eat a variety of foods. They will get their food in many different ways. Bananas are one of the most favored foods of chimpanzees. They will eat it with the peal on or they will take the peal off. Researchers in Africa had video camera and had been taping the primates while eating. One day while video tapeing they caught a male chimpanzee stealing a bundle of bananas from the storage tent, and put the bundle of bananas over his shoulder and walked out. The researchers did not try to top the adult male, because they knew that the adult male are very strong and can get violent if they are bothered while eating. These primates also eat variety leaves, twigs and seeds that are found through out the jungle. Chimpanzees are nomadic they will travel up to six miles a day for food. Once food is found they will spend up to seven hours a day eating. Chimpanzee will also eat meat, but it has to be fresh meat. This means that the male’s hunt and kill there own meat in groups; some of the animals they look for are baby baboons, antelope and bush pigs. Chimpanzee’s intelligence is the one that is clos...

James Joyce Essay

In James Joyce’s Ulysses readers encounter Stephen Dedalus’s search for identity – a search which will be present through the entire narrative. At the heart of Ulysses is Stephen’s relationship with his mother. Stephen describes both the real mother who reared him and is now dead and an imagined mother serving as a symbol who is a product of Stephen’s consciousness having fear and anxiety (Hill 329). Mother love is idealized by Stephen in Ulysses: â€Å"Amor matris,† says Stephen, â€Å"subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing in life† (207). The concept of â€Å"amor matris,† or mother love, shows the magic power of the mother’s fertility. Motherhood is the only fact of life about which Stephen is confident. A mother’s love, the dyadic relationship in which the mother and child are inseparable, however, Stephen experiences only nostalgically. He attempts to articulate it, when it is over. Thus Stephen’s fantasy of a selfless love is marked by a sense of loss. Main Body Although Stephen has buried his mother, she subsequently appears as a ghost. With his own mother dead, it is normal for Stephen to direct his attention sooner or later to Molly Bloom, the Magna Mater presiding over Ulysses. But Molly is something more than a mere person which serves in place of real mother. She symbolizes the sinful flesh, the claims of nature, and human love. Stephen’s attraction toward her is symptomatic of his disillusionment with all forms of patriarchal pressure (political authority and the Old Testament). She is like a moral goal towards which he is drawn as a result of his opposition to the church. As Murray explains: â€Å"If a man, who believes somehow in the reality and ultimate worth of some religion of gentleness and unselfishness, looks through the waste of nature to find support for his faith, it is probably in the phenomena of motherhood that he will find it first and most strikingly†(Goldberg 36). For Stephen the pain is very strong by the fact that his mother is dead. She has left him alone. She has taken with her his assurance of being related to the world and to himself. She has left the terrible anxiety about his loss. Moreover, she became the â€Å"ghostwoman† who appears to Stephen in the dream of death that lives in his memory throughout the day, together with memories and reflections about the mother in life. Added to his uneasiness about the psychic separation that is necessary for his growth into manhood is the hopeless realization that there is no physical woman to take the mother’s place: â€Å"She, she, she,† he says repeatedly in â€Å"Proteus,† â€Å"What she? † (426). As Stephen comes intermittently into focus through the text, so does as much again in strength the problem of the loss of his mother and his necessity for a woman to take her place. The Stephen’s persistent idea with his dead mother is lightened at times by tenderness, but gradually is darkened by feeling of distress, anger, and offence over the relationship. Stephen’s memories of his mother start in â€Å"Telemachus† with the recall of his periodic dream of her in her â€Å"loose brown graveclothes† (103-4), which draws from him his initial plea for release – â€Å"let me live. † Stephen’s reflection to the memories of his mother in life and in death vibrates at the beginning between the desire for separation and the desire for continuous dependence, and his plea for release in â€Å"Telemachus† – â€Å"No, mother! Let me be and let me live† (279). In order to become capable of giving immortality to his life, in art, Stephen must first become a man. This requires a rebirth, not through the spirit, as it is in religion, but like the birth from the mother, occurring through the flesh of the loved woman: â€Å"in woman’s womb. † Stephen considers this rebirth seriously. At the end, Stephen is reborn in the text. This rebirth is textually completed at the middle of â€Å"Ithaca,† when Bloom opens the garden gate for Stephen, and a birth image includes meanings of the pun on â€Å"in woman’s womb. † Bloom inserts a â€Å"male key† into â€Å"an unstable female lock,† to reveal â€Å"an aperture for free egress and free ingress† (215-19). This is the â€Å"rebirth into a new dimension† and is also Stephen’s participation in the incarnation of the artist (Goldberg 96). Stephen’s image in â€Å"Telemachus† of his mother’s â€Å"glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. . . . to strike me down† (273-76), brings from him the most dramatic raising of the terrible mother. â€Å"Ghoul! Chewer of corpses! † (278) is a manifestation of rejection which is definitely confirmed in ‘Circe† at the appearance of The Mother. Stephen’s mother shelters and nurtures her son with her body, her blood, her â€Å"wheysour milk,† who saves him from â€Å"being trampled underfoot† by the outside world (141-47). This motif of interchange between the loving and horrible aspects of the mother, presented in the first two episodes of Ulysses, is repeated in moments of memory any time Stephen’s mother becomes present in the text, until in â€Å"Oxen of the Sun,† the birth chapter, Stephen describes his release from the mother’s threat through his proposed appropriation, as an artist, of her sophisticated power: â€Å"In woman’s womb word is made flesh, but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation† (292-94). Haunted through the whole of the day by the memories of his mother in death and in life, Stephen has moved from his loneliness in the morning, coupled with his inner plea to his mother to free him – â€Å"Let me be and let me live† – to this statement of purpose at the maternity hospital. And this statement leads to his claim to a creative power that is greater than that of the mother (Hill 329). In â€Å"Circe,† then, The Mother meets with Stephen directly as the terrible mother, in her â€Å"leper grey,† with her â€Å"bluecircled hollow eyesockets† in her â€Å"noseless† face, â€Å"green with gravemould† (156-60). And here in the brothel, Stephen releases from the mother. This release is necessary for Stephen to become the divine creator of his proclamation. The release is accomplished in the unconscious, which is the ruling principle of â€Å"Circe. † The conversation between mother and son in a fundamental manner repeats Stephen’s encounters with her memory in the daytime, more or less changed, but still with the same odd balance between the loving and the horrible that is associated with the conscious memories. For although The Mother brings with her a message of death – â€Å"All must go through it, Stephen†¦. You too† (182-83) – she contains powerful features of the loving mother. As Stephen frightfully denies responsibility for her death – â€Å"Cancer did it, not I† (U 15:4187) – The Mother claims, â€Å"You sang that song to me. Love’s bitter mystery† ( U 15:4189-90). This line from Yeats’s ‘Who Goes with Fergus? † can be found in â€Å"Telemachus,† as Mulligan leaves the parapet, humming: And no more turn aside and brood Upon love’s bitter mystery For Fergus rules the brazen cars. (239-41). The paradox found in â€Å"love’s bitter mystery† colours The Mother’s answer to Stephen’s plea, â€Å"Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word known to all men† (U 15:4192-93). Twice before Stephen has asked the same question in his thoughts about â€Å"the word known to all men†: in Proteus (435) and in â€Å"Scylla and Charybdis† (429-30). In all the episodes in which the question is asked, in only one is a clear answer given. The answer, actually, had never been in the published text of Ulysses until Hans Walter Gabler’s 1984 Critical and Synoptic Edition interpreted five lines in â€Å"Scylla and Charybdis† (U 9:427-31) – forty-three words, eleven of them in Latin (Deming 129). This text, restored to one of the most scrutinized carefully segments in Ulysses, the source of most liked quotations about art and life, about fathers and sons, about mothers and sons, described love as the â€Å"word known to all men† (Deming 129). Richard Ellmann, in his 1984 presentation address to the Ninth International James Joyce Symposium in Frankfurt, presented the audience with his own identification of the word known to all men as love, claiming that the word was â€Å"perhaps† death (Deming 129). Kenner’s position that it might be death is much more than clear in his 1956 Dublin’s Joyce, where he describes Dublin as ‘the Kingdom of the Dead† and characterizes Molly’s final â€Å"yes† as â€Å"the ‘Yes’ of authority: authority over this animal kingdom of the dead. † The mother thus becomes the image of the â€Å"bitter mystery. † The complete answer to the question Stephen asks about the â€Å"word known to all men† is not ‘love† or â€Å"death† but â€Å"love† and â€Å"death† – for whatever is born of the flesh through love will die at the end (Goldberg 156). In â€Å"Circe,† The Mother answers to Stephen’s plea with a conflicting blending of the loving and the terrible mother. The Mother in â€Å"Circe† is not gentle. True, she gives evidences of her love for her sun – amor matris – in terms that echo Stephen’s own thoughts that his mother â€Å"had saved him from being; trampled underfoot† (146): â€Å"Who saved you†¦? Who had pity for you? † (196). But when she asks for Stephen’s penitence, she becomes for him ‘The ghoul! Hyena! † (198-200). And as the Mother continues to present assurances of her love and concern – â€Å"I pray for you†¦ Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice†¦. Years and years I loved you† (202-3) – her simultaneous threat of â€Å"the fire of hell† brings from Stephen the words of appeal, â€Å"The corpsechewer! Raw head and bloody bones† (212-14), together with the echo in â€Å"Circe† of his rejection in ‘Telemachus†: â€Å"Ghoul! Chewer of corpses! (278). Up to this point in the meeting with The Mother, although mother and son communicate, they do not touch each other. But with Stephen’s frantic denial of The Mother’s final demand for remorse, a crab unexpectedly appears, and mother and son touch through the crab. This â€Å"green crab with malignant red eyes,† although evidently autonomous, is nevertheless mysteriously, ambiguously connected with The Mother, who â€Å"raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards Stephen’s breast with outstretched finger,† uttering, â€Å"Beware God’s hand! † as the crab â€Å"sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen’s heart† (217-21). This crab is real, and at the same time â€Å"Cancer did it, not I† (187) – has all features of a primary creature from the dark depths of Stephen’s unconscious. Stephen’s crab is not visible to others, and his inner creature is not certainly visible even to him. But the terrible ghost with whom both crab and dragon are connected remains – for the reader and for Stephen himself – Stephen’s mother (Hill 329). Even Stephen’s references to Mother Ireland, Cathleen ni Houlihan, are tinged with gender bias. Stephen betrayed his mother as well as Mother Ireland. In the early morning at the Martello tower, he connects the old milk woman with the Shan van Vocht, â€Å"silk of the kine and poor old woman† (403), but doubtfully recognizes that the â€Å"wandering crone’ serves the â€Å"conqueror and her gay betrayer [Mulligan]† (403-5). Unlike the patriots who glorify Mother Ireland, Stephen thinks of â€Å"Gaptoothed Kathleen, her four beautiful green fields, the stranger in her house† (184). Mulligan and Stephen at the Martello connect woman with nature: the â€Å"great sweet mother† (78) of the sea. â€Å"Our mighty mother† (85) is, as in case with the Romantic poets, nature (Rickard 215). Conclusion In Ulysses, there is Stephen’s misogyny. He realizes the significance of â€Å"woman’s place† in a man’s life and in his sense of himself. Ulysses is, without doubt, typically a man’s book. It begins and ends with the mother figures who complete the male artist’s self. The mother, who is the â€Å"first incarnation of the anima archetype† (330), enters Ulysses with young Stephen and stays with him throughout most of Bloomsday. Thus, in Ulysses, though there are not many women, Joyce has presented to readers in symbolic terms the important interdependence and complementarity of the man and the mother. Works Cited Deming, Robert H. James Joyce: The Critical Heritage. Vol. : 2. Routledge: London, 1997. Goldberg, S. L. The Classical Temper: A Study of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Chatto & Windus: London, 1961. Hill, Marylu. â€Å"Amor Matris: Mother and Self in the Telemachiad Episode of Ulysses†. Twentieth Century Literature. Vol. 39, no. 3, 1993. Joyce, James. Ulysses. New York: Vintage, 1986. Rickard, John S. Joyce’s Book of Memory: The Mnemotechnics of Ulysses. Duke University Press: Durham, NC, 1999.

How the Cold War Started Essay

The USA and the USSR were allies during World War Two, however they were not natural allies. The seeds of hostility between the USA and the USSR began after World War Two, the period that followed is known as the Cold War. The reason for it being called a ‘cold’ war is due to the fact that no physical war took place between the two countries. Many factors fuelled the tension between the USA and USSR, all of which can divide into three categories: the arms race, Eastern Europe and ideologies. An arms race is a competition between nations for superiority in the development and accumulation of weapons. Historians believe that the arms race was the most prominent factor causing tensions. The significant turning point of the USA and USSR’s relationship, and trigger event to the arms race, was the bombing of Japan. In August 1945, the USA dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed and thousands of people died. The bombs were the most powerful weapons invented. The fact that the USA had not informed their ally, the USSR, before dropping the bombs created suspicion from the USSR. Russia did not have any bombs and this meant that the USA could potentially attack the Soviet Union and they could not do a thing to prevent it. Adding to the tensions, both the USA and USSR have contradicting views on the reasons behind the bombs. In the USA’s perspective, â€Å"any weapon that would bring an end to war and save a million casualties among American boys was justified†¦ the A-bomb would be successful† says the US secretary of state James Byrne. However, the USSR thought that â€Å"the purpose of the bombings was to intimidate other countries†, in the view of Russian historian Vadim Nekrasov. This opposing view reflects their mutual feelings for each other. The USSR felt the need two surpass the USA on arms and so in August 1949, the USSR have their own A-bomb. The increase in weapons and competition over military might was initially begun by the USA to contain communism. The USSR saw the increase in weapons and competition as a threat and felt the need to match or even surpass it. One nation felt the need that if the other were to have nuclear weapons of mass destruction, they should be able to counteract any possible action with their own stockpiles of weapons. The two countries had contrasting viewpoints and could never see eye to eye. This lack of trust and continuous suspicion created unnecessary tension and further disabled any relationships to be fixed. In April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was created. It was a military alliance of the US, Canada and nations of Western Europe against the threat of communist expansion. The USSR saw this as a threat and so in response, six years later, the USSR created an ‘antidote’ to this, being the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was a mutual defence treaty between eight communist states in Europe. The USSR saw NATO as a threat as Article 5 of the charter mentioned â€Å"The parties agree to an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all†. In response, the USSR’s Warsaw Pact stated â€Å"in the event of an armed attack in Europe, one or several states†¦ render the state(s) immediate assistance by all the means it may consider necessary including the use of armed forces†. Both the nations saw these as threats as they showed that each opposing nation was ready to attack when necessary. This heightened the climate of suspicion between them. Within the cold war, things almost turned hot. In 1950, the Korean War took place. The North Koreans (backed by the Soviets) invaded South Korea (backed by the USA). This event was a war between the Capitalists and Communists but took place between two –almost- puppet nations with the USA and USSR pulling the strings in order to avoid war with each other. The Korean War as a complete breakdown in communication between the two and led to even more tension. The fact that both nations felt the necessity to surpass the other was evident in the Space Race. In October 1957, the USSR launched the Sputnik satellite into orbit around the earth. The USA required reassurance of their power and threat level as they realised if the USSR could send technology into space, it would be easy for them to send technology (possibly nuclear weapons) around the globe. They matched the USSR by putting a satellite into orbit in January 1958. This desire to surpass one another and going to extreme lengths to prove their worth showed the other that they were not willing to give up and were highly persistent to be the best nuclear power in the world. The arms race was a seemingly never ending competition between the USA and the USSR as both nations needed to show off to the other and be the ‘last nation left standing’. As their persistence grew, so did their tensions. Others argue however, the Eastern European factors were the main cause of tension. Some could argue that initial tensions began at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences (1945) with the superpowers discussing and deciding the fates of the defeated nations of World War Two. The conferences themselves increased tensions as the powers disagreed over what should happen to Europe and Germany. The Soviets wanted to move Poland’s borders to the West so that the USSR’s borders could move into Poland. Stalin wanted to create a buffer zone so that Russia would be a satellite state and they could also react if ever attacked. Churchill expressed his views on Stalin’s motives to Roosevelt by saying â€Å"The Soviet Union has become a danger to the free world. A new front must be created†¦ as far east as possible†¦ before the armies of democracy melt.† There were a lot of disagreements at Potsdam over what to do about Germany. Stalin left his troops occupying Eastern European countries. The USA disliked this as they detested communism, but now that â€Å"the war had left them holding lots of land in Europe- much too much land† (Clement Atlee, Britain’s Prime Minister), it would make it difficult for the USA to contain communism with the potential of communist expansion through Europe. The conferences sparked the tensions between the two, however, in June 1948, tensions rapidly increased. The Soviets cut off road and rail routes to West Berlin in hope that the allies would be forced to leave Berlin and that the capitalist toxin in Eastern Europe would be removed. The US saw this as the USSR’s attempt to expand European communism and decrease European confidence in America. The USA counteracted this act by supplying necessities via airlift and moving their nuclear bomber force to England as a threat to Russia. Truman justified his actions in 1949 by saying â€Å"We would act when freedom was threatened†, and therefore undermined the USSR’s actions as picturing it as a form of entrapment. The USSR and the USA both claimed their parts of Germany through dividing it. The Western allies turned their occupied zones into the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviets set up the German Democratic Republic. Germany and Berlin were both divided between the nations. Both the countries wanted to claim their land and used it to show how they were better. The need to show off created tensions as now the two nations were using land and the people in it to prove their worth. In 1961, tensions escalated to a new height. The USSR took their might a step further and built the Berlin Wall to stop communists escaping to the west. The wall was the final straw of tension between the two nations. In an attempt to justify his decisions, Khrushchev stated â€Å"we had no choice to build the wall in order to maintain the freedom of East Berlin. There are more spies in West Berlin than anywhere else in the world†¦causing sabotage and riot.† However, from an outside and unbiased perspective into the Berlin wall, a modern world textbook states â€Å"the Wall was built to prevent the loss of many well educated East Germans. This was bad publicity for the East and Communism.† This shows how far the USSR would go to make sure Capitalism does not interfere with the Communist beliefs. He used his people and ‘entrapped’ them in order to make Communism look good. Kennedy however, did not counteract Khrushchev as much as Truman and Roosevelt as he said â€Å"It’s not a nice solution, but a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war†. Kennedy did not like what happened, but appeased. Contrary to the popular belief, tensions initially ignited as far back as 1917 during the Russian Civil War. Russia’s ruler Tsar was overthrown and so a provisional government was set up, however the Bolshevik party overthrew the government. The Bolshevik party faced oppositions known as the whites and there was a civil war. Foreign states including the USA got involved in order to stamp out the communist Bolsheviks and Russia saw this as an invasion of private affairs. The USA was Capitalist and believed in private ownerships and social mobility. The USSR was Communist and believed in complete equality for everyone and no private ownership. The two nations had highly contrasting ideologies and the difference in beliefs is what started the tensions in the first place. Churchill flagged up the problems with communist Russia through his Iron Curtain Speech in 1946. He stated â€Å"an iron curtain has descended across the continent†¦ Cities and populations lie in†¦ The Soviet sphere and all are subject, not only to Soviet influence, but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow†. Stalin simply said he was â€Å"anxious for its (Soviet Union) future safety†. The Western allies had a fear for the Communist expansion throughout Europe and wanted to contain communism. Truman stated â€Å"it must be the policy of the United States to support free nations against direct and indirect communist aggression† in reference to the Containment Policy. The Truman Doctrine was the USA’s initial attempt of containing communism. Greece and Turkey were each going through a civil war; the policy provided military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey as they were threatened by communist governments. In reference to the Truman Doctrine, Truman says â€Å"Greece must have assistance if it is to become a self-supporting and self-sustaining democracy. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world.† The fact that the Truman Doctrine aided the two countries made it less likely the countries would have communist governments. Russia could not control Turkey and Greece, thus not allowing them to expand their communist empire throughout Europe. In 1948, the Marshall Plan was introduced The state of Europe post World War Two combined with the coldest winter on record reduced Europe to starvation. The USA became Europe’s hero as Marshall promised that Americans would do â€Å"whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world† Marshall Aid took the form of fuel, raw materials, goods, loans, food, machinery and advisors and was only available to those nations willing to cooperate. The Soviets feared that turning down Marshall Aid would cause unrest in their satellite countries and recognised that the USA were somewhat ‘selling’ their ideologies to the nations. The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 however was the most tension-dense event. Cuba was influenced by the USA and was a trading nation with them until Fidel Castro, a communist took over. He set up a communist government which scared the USA into stopping trade with them. Castro increasingly sought help through the Soviet Union. President Kennedy allowed supporters of Batista (Cuba’s previous leader) to attack Cuba but failed to gain support and were defeated by Castro’s men. Shipments of arms were sent to Cuba and the USA saw potential in attacks. Kennedy did not want to use weapons against Cuba, but did not want to appear weak and so he decided to place a naval blockade around Cuba. This significantly heated tensions as the possibility of nuclear attack was at a new level and the nations were close to a war. The Soviet Foreign Minister, Gromyko saw the USA’s attempts as â€Å"an unrestrained anti-Cuban propaganda campaign†. Once again, the two nations lacked the capability of seeing eye to eye and had miscommunication faults. It could be argued that the contrasting ideologies were the underlying cause of tension and kept tensions alive and healthy throughout the 17 year period. The change in presidents and leaders changed the level of tensions. As opposed to Stalin, Khrushchev wanted to improve relations and opposed to Truman and Roosevelt, Kennedy was fairly passive (e.g. Berlin Wall). Without the initial friction created from the differences in ideologies, there would not have been an arms race or competition for control over Eastern Europe. Both countries aimed for peace, but their methods for peace were constantly viewed as threats due to the hatred of the opposing ideologies. Khrushchev believed â€Å"the main thing is to argue without resort to arms† and Kennedy believed â€Å"a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war†, showing that neither wanted to end up going to war and so both nations were in an arms race solely to prove their ideologies’ worth. The knowledge that the opposing nation wanted to expand their ideologies blinded the other and created them ignorant, hiding their ignorance through control over Europe and accumulation of nuclear arms. Overall, the contrast in ideologies was the factor which, throughout the cold war, created the foundation of and was the heart of tensions between the USA and USSR.

Running From Beer Bottles and Rocks essays

Running From Beer Bottles and Rocks essays Americans have several different views on other countries. The people who seem to criticize these other cultures are mostly people who havent been to these countries and have the typical Im better than you attitude. Just because our country is one of the top military and political powers in the world, does not give us the clearance nor justify us thinking we should have special favors or unearned respect from the people in their own lands when we are the intruder. When those disrespectful Americans go to these societies they give our whole country a bad name. Just like Newtons 2nd law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the product of our insolence is our rudeness thrown right back in our face. The only reason the locals in far off places that have been so unlucky to have encountered some of our nations immature residence continue to tolerate our presence is mostly due to our money and all the useless wooden bowls, chincy necklaces, and other over priced ethnic cra fts that we oddly enough find interesting and will pay top dollar for. This attitude can be extremely dangerous shown to the wrong people. It was Christmas day 1999 in Sigonella, Sicily, all the officers and members of the maintenance crew had the day off to celebrate and have a feeling of togetherness since we could not be with our families that year. We drank wine most of the day and told sea stories of places weve been and what weve done. Most of these stories would not be something you would tell to your grandchildren or in some cases even to other sailors. After the sun went down, the crowd started to slowly leave their chicken bones, empty beer cans and wine glasses, and full ashtrays for the comfort of their quarters. Some of us younger sailors who thought we were invincible; Jason, Casey, Cal, and I wanted to experience the nightlife of Sicily. So with the help of the intoxicants we dran...

6 Foreign Expressions You Should Know

6 Foreign Expressions You Should Know 6 Foreign Expressions You Should Know 6 Foreign Expressions You Should Know By Daniel Scocco Whether you like it or not, foreign expressions represent an integral part of the English language (and of many other languages, too). Knowing the meaning and usage of the most used ones is very important. First of all because it will enable you to understand pieces of text that include them. Secondly, because you might also need to use those expressions on particular situations (avoid using them just to sound smart though). Below you will find 6 foreign expressions commonly used in English, enjoy! 1. De Facto De facto is a Latin expression that means â€Å"actual† (if used as an adjective) or â€Å"in practice† (if used as an adverb). In legal terms, de facto is commonly used in contrast to de jure, which means â€Å"by law.† Something, therefore, can emerge either de facto (by practice) or de jure (by law). And what of the plastic red bench, which has served as his de facto home for the last 15 years and must by now be a collectors item? (NY Times) 2. VisVis The literal meaning of this French expression is â€Å"face to face† (used as an adverb). It is used more widely as a preposition though, meaning â€Å"compared with† or â€Å"in relation to.† Its going to be a huge catalyst in moving the whole process forward and it really strengthens the U.S. position vis-a-vis our trading partners (Yahoo! News) 3. Status quo This famous Latin expression means the current or existing state of affairs. If something changes the status quo, it is changing the way things presently are. Bush believes that the status quo the presence in a sovereign country of a militant group with missiles capable of hitting a U.S. ally is unacceptable. (Washington Post) 4. Cul-de-sac This expression was originated in England by French-speaking aristocrats. Literally it means â€Å"bottom of a sack,† but generally it refers to a dead-end street. Cul-de-sac can also be used metaphorically to express an action that leads to nowhere or an impasse. But the code of omerta was in effect for two carloads of fans circling the cul-de-sac to have a look at the house. (Reuters.com) A cul-de-sac of poverty (The Economist) 5. Per se Per se is a Latin expression that means â€Å"by itself† or â€Å"intrinsically.† The mistake it made with the Xbox is that there is no game console market per se; there are PlayStation, GameCube, and Xbox markets. (PCMag.com) 6. Ad hoc Ad hoc, borrowed from the Latin, can be used both as an adjective, where it means â€Å"formed or created with a specific purpose,† and as an adverb, where it means â€Å"for the specific purpose or situation.† The World Banks board on Friday ordered an ad hoc group to discuss the fate of President Paul Wolfowitz (CNN) Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Expressions category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Creative Writing 10150 Diminutive Suffixes (and a Cute Little Prefix)How Many Sentences in a Paragraph?

The 7 Base Units of the Metric System

The 7 Base Units of the Metric System The metric system is a framework of units of measurement that has grown from its 1874 birth in a diplomatic treaty to the more modern General Conference on Weights and Measures, or CGPM (Conferà ©rence Gà ©nà ©rale des Poids et Measures). The modern system is properly called the International System of Units, or SI, an abbreviation from the French Le Systà ¨me International dUnità ©s. Today, most people use the names metric and SI interchangeably. The 7 Base Metric Units The metric system is the main system of measurement units used in science. Each unit is considered to be dimensionally independent of the others. These dimensions are measurements of length, mass, time, electric current, temperature, amount of a substance, and luminous intensity. Here are definitions of the seven base units: Length: Meter (m) The meter is the metric unit of length. Its defined as the length of the path light travels in a vacuum during 1/299,792,458 of a second.Mass: Kilogram (kg) The kilogram is the metric unit of mass. Its the mass of the international prototype of the kilogram: a standard platinum/iridium 1 kg mass housed near Paris at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM).Time: Second (s) The basic unit of time is the second. The second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 oscillations of radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of cesium-133.Electric current: Ampere (A) The basic unit of electric current is the ampere. The ampere is defined as the constant current that, if maintained in two infinitely long straight parallel conductors with a negligible circular cross-section and placed 1 m apart in a vacuum, would produce a force between the conductors equal to 2 x 10-7 newtons per meter of length.Temperature: Kelvin (K) The Kelvin is the unit of thermodynamic temperature. It is the fraction 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water. The Kelvin scale is an absolute scale, so there is no degree.​ Amount of a Substance: Mole (mol) The mole is defined as the amount of a substance that contains as many entities as there are atoms in 0.012 kilograms of carbon-12. When the mole unit is used, the entities must be specified. For example, the entities may be atoms, molecules, ions, electrons, cows, houses, or anything else.Luminous Intensity: candela (cd) The unit of luminous intensity, or light, is the candela. The candela is the luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source emitting monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 x 1012 hertz with radiant intensity in that direction of 1/683 watt per steradian. These definitions are actually methods to realize the unit. Each realization was created with a unique, sound theoretical base to generate reproducible and accurate results. Other Important Metric Units In addition to the seven base units, other metric units are commonly used: Liter (L) While the metric unit of volume is the cubic meter, m3, the most commonly used unit is the liter. A liter is equal in volume to one cubic decimeter, dm 3, which is a cube that is 0.1 m on each side.Angstrom (Ã…) One angstrom equals 10-8 cm or 10-10 m. Named for Anders Jonas Ã…ngstrom, the unit is used to measure the chemical bond length and electromagnetic radiation wavelength.Cubic centimeter (cm3) A cubic centimeter is a common unit  used to measure solid volume. The corresponding unit for liquid volume is the milliliter (mL), which is equal to one cubic centimeter.

Final Project on Defense Contract Management Agency Coursework

Final Project on Defense Contract Management Agency - Coursework Example However, there is need for institutions or firms to have programs that allow resolution of disputes or minimizes issues such as whistle-blowing. Whistle blowing may be detrimental to the image of a firm. Institutions in the US have the role of ensuring that they encourage equal employment opportunities for all individuals and in the events that an individual is discriminated against in one way or the other; they can file a law suit against these organizations or institutions. Firms that thrived in the competitive business climate have been cognizant to the importance of diversification of not only the workforce but also the products. However, they have the obligation of ensuring that the rights of the employees are well catered for since the employees have the rights to join labor movements and unions that are able to fight for them. Besides the need for labor unions, the retention of employees inclusive of gaining employees commitment depends on the compensation that a company offers inclusive of the benefits. Companies that offer reasonable benefits and compensations to the employees tend to be attractive than those whose packages are deemed inadequate. In addition, organizations have incorporated the concept of outsourcing to maximize either their performance or profit. In the process of organizations carrying out their operations, they often encounter opportunities and challenges. Tackling these challenges and taking advantage of the opportunities pr esent the platform for the companies to grow and develop. This paper seeks to examine: Strategic human resource management; Legal and ethical codes; Whistle-blowing; Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO); Diversity Considerations; Labor Unions; privatization and outsourcing; Recruitment and selection methods; Compensation and benefit; performance management and development; and

Strategic Marketing Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Strategic Marketing Management - Essay Example It is irrefutable that the business arena is evolving into a hypercompetitive environment characterised by the continuous by more intense rivalry among industry players associated with the growth of buyer leverage (Kotler 2002). This trend forces business organizations to rethink their strategies in order to compete more efficiently and more profitably. On the other hand, these developments in the market also present opportunities for business organizations especially in the way they market their products and services to their specific target markets. In order to choose the strategic path that a company should take, it should first identify the strategic marketing options available for it (Kotler 2002). The identification of strategic marketing options is aided through the use of different strategic management tools. Strategic management tools are essential instruments for managers and decision makers. The use of these tools does not only provide a diagnosis for the business organization but prescribe solutions and strategic responses as well (Thomson 2002). This report will look at the different strategic management tools used by business organizations in order to identify the feasible and available strategic marketing options. The first section will focus on the Ansoff Matrix and how it can be used to evaluate the strategic directions that the company can take. The second part will look at the other analytical tools and techniques which can be employed to develop marketing alternative marketing strategies. This paper will conclude with its findings. The Ansoff’s Matrixis is a tool in strategic management which is utilised in order to aid managers in deciding the product and market growth strategy of a business organization. After its publication in the Harvard Business Review in 1957 in an article entitled, ‘Strategies for Diversification,’ this strategic management tool has gained wide popularity and recognition in the marketing world.

Comparison-Contrast essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Comparison-Contrast - Essay Example For instance, she says that success is not the only way to make one happy saying that it is better for her children to be moderately successful, but very happy, rather than be high achievers haunted by the misery of being overly controlled. Amy Chua is a Chinese author, but working at the Yale school of law. Her works have served to highlight several aspects that define the Chinese parenting model. From her opinion, Chinese children are more likely to register success in their endeavors compared to the western children. This is because of the different models adopted during parenting. Chua highlights her experience of motherhood and parenting an effort to depict a typical Chinese mother. It emerges that Chinese mothers are very strict and employ different strategies that can propel the children to success. The convictions of these mothers are based on the fact that young children do not have an interest in working hard. The notion of working hard must be inculcated in them as they grow older. This is the reason why Chua highlights that Chinese mothers are more likely to override the passions and preferences of their children. Notably, Chua reveals that Chinese children do not have an opportunity to decide what is best for them, but rather parents make all the critical decisions surrounding the lives of their children. In one of Chua’s article that has caused a controversy about parenting between the western models and the Chinese model, Chua describes the parenting model adopted by the Chinese mothers. The article is titled, ‘Why Chinese Mothers are Superior’. This article highlights that parents have the responsibility of imparting their children with the required skills and competences. Chinese mothers demand that their children should be above average students. Therefore, they spend time and effort molding their children to become remarkable individuals in the society. However, the strategies for achieving this differ from

The Ford Motor company Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The Ford Motor company - Essay Example The company has established manufacturing and distribution units, research and development facilities, warehouses across South and North American, European, Asian along with African regions. The company also undertakes the business of car rental, leasing business, car finance and other activities related to finance (ABR, 2010). Correspondingly, the paper intends to describe the strategic business audit of Ford Motor Company which is very important to study the current situation of the company through a systematic approach. The main purpose for using the strategic audit approach in this paper is to provide an evaluation of the current strategies that have been used by the company to position itself effectively in the competitive market. External and internal factors of analysis have been used in this paper to clearly determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the company that would provide an in-depth understanding of the position of the organization in the glob al domain. Qualitative research method has been used in this paper through the medium of secondary data in order to analyze the company. Ford Motors believes that change in the climate of natural environment poses major opportunities and threats to the company. The company concentrates on stabilizing the effects of greenhouse gas in the environmental atmosphere to a certain extent that would result in a minimal effect on the climate change through producing cars in which the level of carbon emissions is relatively lower.

English Paper on Sunday Morning and Swan and Shadow Essay

English Paper on Sunday Morning and Swan and Shadow - Essay Example The drifting of swam through water gives a pleasant feel to the readers as it takes a person to a place of peace where there is no complexity or fear. The way the writer of the poem has structured this poem reflects his creative skills and thoughts. The poem was written in the early 20th century and it shows that the poets of that time had a good sense of innovation and creativity. An interesting point in the poem is that the reflection of swam has not been shown as the reflection of the poem in the water. Had the writer done that, it would have produced a relatively ordinary feeling to the readers. The writer has continued the poem in the reflection instead of showing the reflection of text of the upper part of the poem. As far as the wording of the poem is concerned, there is not a smooth flow between them. At some points, the words do not seem to be joining with the next coming word but when a reader extracts the meaning of the whole sentence, the construction of words becomes logical. One cannot say that understanding the poem is easy because of the structure of sentences. A reader has to read the poem several times in order to get out of the Hollander’s frustrated and puzzled use of words and sentence construction. The structure of the poem makes it a bit difficult to read in a flow because the poem flows from the head of the swan to the neck and then shifts to the body part, which makes the reading somewhat difficult. A reader can question himself/herself whether he/she is reading the poem in a correct flow or there is some other way to read the poem correctly. Lack of periods and commas also make the reading of the poem more difficult than it actually appears to be. Continuously passing out memories and inadequacy of the memory to store the scenes form the theme of the poem. The writer might have tried to demonstrate that the world is not as simple as it appears to be. One has to go through various experiences of life to

People Environment and Business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

People Environment and Business - Essay Example This confirms that natural resource exploitation has the capacity to cause imbalances in ecosystems as wells other effects, which may not be reversible. This informs this study on possible environmental effects that Iran experiences in the process or because of exploiting oil. General issues that are of concern to Iran have been vehicle gaseous emissions, operations by refineries as well as effluents by industries, which together contribute towards air contamination, water sources pollution as well as general environmental degradation. For instance, the city of Tehran in Iran ranks among the most polluted cities across the globe. Among other major environmental concerns, that are of great importance and which are being analyzed in depth are issues of environmental pollution from exploitation of oil as a natural resource in the country (Narimisa and Basri, 334-337). The world is increasingly in need for oil and associated products, which causes the rate of exploitation of this natural resource to increase as days go by. The ever-increasing uses into which oil is put into raises the demand of this non-renewable resource. It is widely used for industrial purposes, as a source of fuel to both domestic users as well as industries, in production of electricity as well as for locomotives, which accounts to the highest use into which oil is put. In studies on assessment of social impact associated with exploitation of oil in Iran this study projects future affects the environment in continued exploitation of the resources. Iran is however ranked among the great producers of oil and has amassed great economic wealth through the exploitation of oil globally. In concentrated efforts to study the case in Iran, we investigate oil refinery at Tehran, which has major environmental effects on emissions of gasses, solid wastes, industrial effluents, odor, aesthetic and visual complains as well as noise. However, it is worth understanding that the case study of Tehran oil refini ng is a representation of many other industries within the larger Iran. Air pollution within the country as associated with oil exploitation result from firing processes, furnaces, steam boilers, compressors as well as distillation towers among many others. The major air pollutants from oil exploitation and refining include carbon oxides, oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, ammonia as well as hydrocarbons among others. Water pollution emanates from discharging of the industrial effluents into the water sources either directly or indirectly through contaminating underground water, which later contaminates the surface waters. The process of producing sludge, coke, cracking as well as the process of separation of water and oil produces solid wastes which without proper disposition results to degradation of the environment. Over and above all the adverse effects on environment, that exploitation of oil in Iran brings about is the demolition of ecosystems. Evidence shows that the exploitation causes mass marine as well as land environment degradation through excavations, which are associated with destruction of aesthetic value of the country. In conclusion, despite

English Paper on Sunday Morning and Swan and Shadow Essay

English Paper on Sunday Morning and Swan and Shadow - Essay Example The drifting of swam through water gives a pleasant feel to the readers as it takes a person to a place of peace where there is no complexity or fear. The way the writer of the poem has structured this poem reflects his creative skills and thoughts. The poem was written in the early 20th century and it shows that the poets of that time had a good sense of innovation and creativity. An interesting point in the poem is that the reflection of swam has not been shown as the reflection of the poem in the water. Had the writer done that, it would have produced a relatively ordinary feeling to the readers. The writer has continued the poem in the reflection instead of showing the reflection of text of the upper part of the poem. As far as the wording of the poem is concerned, there is not a smooth flow between them. At some points, the words do not seem to be joining with the next coming word but when a reader extracts the meaning of the whole sentence, the construction of words becomes logical. One cannot say that understanding the poem is easy because of the structure of sentences. A reader has to read the poem several times in order to get out of the Hollander’s frustrated and puzzled use of words and sentence construction. The structure of the poem makes it a bit difficult to read in a flow because the poem flows from the head of the swan to the neck and then shifts to the body part, which makes the reading somewhat difficult. A reader can question himself/herself whether he/she is reading the poem in a correct flow or there is some other way to read the poem correctly. Lack of periods and commas also make the reading of the poem more difficult than it actually appears to be. Continuously passing out memories and inadequacy of the memory to store the scenes form the theme of the poem. The writer might have tried to demonstrate that the world is not as simple as it appears to be. One has to go through various experiences of life to

What Is Literature Essay Example for Free

What Is Literature Essay I am grateful for help with this book from many people, especially Julian Wolfreys, Jason Wohlstadter, and Barbara Caldwell, my â€Å"Senior Editor† and invaluable assistant at the University of California, Irvine. I thank Simon Critchley for ? rst suggesting that I might write this book for the series he edits, as well as for his careful reading of the manuscript. I am grateful also to the co-editor of the series, Richard Kearney, for a helpful reading of the manuscript. Muna Khogali and Tony Bruce, of Routledge, have been unfailingly generous and courteous. Tony Bruce read the manuscript with care and made useful suggestions. A preliminary version of some of the ideas in this book, especially those in Chapter 4, was presented as a lecture for the Koehn Endowed Lectureship at the University of California, Irvine, in Febuary 2001. The lecture was called â€Å"On the Authority of Literature. † Subsequently, the talk was given as the ? rst annual Lecture on Modern Literature for the Department of English at Baylor University in April, 2001. The lecture was then printed there as a pamphlet for local circulation. I am grateful to my host and sponsor at Baylor, Professor William Davis, for his many kindnesses. Di?  erent versions of the talk were given at two conferences, in August 2001, in the People’s Republic of China: at a triennial conference of the Chinese Association for Sino-Foreign Literary and xi On Literature Cultural Theory, held in Shenyang, and at an International Symposium on Globalizing Comparative Literature, sponsored by Yale and Tsinghua Universities. I thank Professor Wang Ning for arranging these invitations and for many other courtesies. A German translation will be published as my contribution to a research project on â€Å"representative validity,† sponsored by the Zentrum fur Literaturforschung in Berlin. I especially thank Ingo Berensmeyer, as well as other colleagues in Berlin, for the chance to try out my ideas on them. A Bulgarian translation will be published in a Festschrift for Simeon Hadjikosev, of So? a University. I thank Ognyan Kovachev for inviting me, and for other kindnesses. Altogether, my preliminary ideas for Chapter 4 and for some other germs of this book have had the bene? t of many helpful comments and reactions. Finally, I thank the dedicatee of this book for su? ering once more through my ordeals of composition. She had to endure my faraway look, my dreamy absentmindedness. I was dwelling again in imagination on the other side of Alice’s looking-glass or on the deserted island where the Swiss Family Robinson made such an enchanting home. It has taken me a good many months to ? gure out what to say about that experience. Sedgwick, Maine December 15, 2001 xii Acknowledgements What is Literature? One FAREWELL LITERATURE? The end of literature is at hand. Literature’s time is almost up. It is about time. It is about, that is, the di? erent epochs of di? erent media. Literature, in spite of its approaching end, is nevertheless perennial and universal. It will survive all historical and technological changes. Literature is a feature of any human culture at any time and place. These two contradictory premises must govern all serious re? ection â€Å"on literature† these days. What brings about this paradoxical situation? Literature has a history. I mean â€Å"literature† in the sense we in the West use the word in our various languages: â€Å"literature† (French or English) â€Å"letteratura† (Italian), â€Å"literatura† (Spanish), â€Å"Literatur† (German). As Jacques Derrida observes in Demeure: Fiction and Testimony, the word literature comes from a Latin stem. It cannot be detached from its Roman-ChristianEuropean roots. Literature in our modern sense, however, appeared in the European West and began in the late seventeenth century, at the earliest. Even then the word did not have its modern meaning. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word â€Å"literature† was ? rst used in our current sense only quite recently. Even a de? nition of â€Å"literature† as including memoirs, history, collections of letters, learned treatises, etc. , as well as poems, printed plays, and 1 On Literature  novels, comes after the time of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary (1755). The restricted sense of literature as just poems, plays, and novels is even more recent. The word â€Å"literature† is de? ned by Johnson exclusively in the now obsolescent sense of â€Å"Acqaintance with ‘letters’ or books; polite or humane learning; literary culture. † One example the OED gives is as late as 1880: â€Å"He was a man of very small literature. † Only by the third de? nition in the OED does one get to: Literary production as a whole; the body of writings produced in a particular country or period, or in the world in general. Now also in a more restricted sense, applied to writing which has claim to consideration on the grounds of beauty of form or emotional effect. This de? nition, says the OED, â€Å"is of very recent emergence both in England and France. † Its establishment may be conveniently dated in the mid-eighteenth century and associated, in England at least, with the work of Joseph and Thomas Wharton (1722–1800; 1728–90). They were hailed by Edmund Gosse, in an essay of 1915–16 (â€Å"Two Pioneers of Romanticism: Joseph and Thomas Wharton†), as giving literature its modern de? nition. Literature in that sense is now coming to an end, as new media gradually replace the printed book. WHAT HAS MADE LITERATURE POSSIBLE? 2 On Literature What are the cultural features that are necessary concomitants of literature as we have known it in the West? Western literature belongs to the age of the printed book and of other print forms like newspapers, magazines, and periodicals generally. Literature is associated with the gradual rise of almost universal literacy in the West. No widespread literacy, no literature. Literacy, furthermore, is associated with the gradual appearance from the seventeenth century onward of Western-style democracies. This means regimes with expanded su? rage, government by legislatures, regulated judicial systems, and fundamental human rights or civil liberties. Such democracies slowly developed more or less universal education. They also allowed citizens more or less free access to printed materials and to the means of printing new ones. This freedom, of course, has never been complete. Various forms of censorship, in even the freest democracies today, limit the power of the printing press. Nevertheless, no technology has ever been more e? ective than the printing press in breaking down class hierarchies of power. The printing press made democratic revolutions like the French Revolution or the American Revolution possible. The Internet is performing a similar function today. The printing and circulation of clandestine newspapers, manifestoes, and emancipatory literary works was essential to those earlier revolutions, just as email, the Internet, the cell phone, and the â€Å"hand-held† will be essential to whatever revolutions we may have from now on. Both these communication regimes are also, of course, powerful instruments of repression. The rise of modern democracies has meant the appearance of the modern nation-state, with its encouragement of a sense of ethnic and linguistic uniformity in each state’s citizens. Modern literature is vernacular literature. It began to appear as the use of Latin as a lingua franca gradually disappeared. Along with the nation-state has gone the notion of national literature, that is, literature written in the language and idiom of a particular country. This concept remains strongly codi? ed in school and university study of literature. It is institutionalized 3 What is Literature? in separate departments of French, German, English, Slavic, Italian, and Spanish. Tremendous resistance exists today to the recon? guration of those departments that will be necessary if they are not simply to disappear. The modern Western concept of literature became ? rmly established at the same time as the appearance of the modern research university. The latter is commonly identi? ed with the founding of the University of Berlin around 1810, under the guidance of a plan devised by Wilhelm von Humboldt. The modern research university has a double charge. One is Wissenschaft, ? nding out the truth about everything. The other is Bildung, training citizens (originally almost exclusively male ones) of a given nation-state in the ethos appropriate for that state. It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that the modern concept of literature was created by the research university and by lower-school training in preparation for the university. After all, newspapers, journals, non-university critics and reviewers also contributed, for example Samuel Johnson or Samuel Taylor Coleridge in England. Nevertheless, our sense of literature was strongly shaped by university-trained writers. Examples are the Schlegel brothers in Germany, along with the whole circle of critics and philosophers within German Romanticism. English examples would include William Wordsworth, a Cambridge graduate. His â€Å"Preface to Lyrical Ballads† de? ned poetry and its uses for generations. In the Victorian period Matthew Arnold, trained at Oxford, was a founding force behind English and United States institutionalized study of literature. Arnold’s thinking is still not without force in conservative circles today. Arnold, with some help from the Germans, presided over the transfer from philosophy to literature of the responsibility for Bildung. Literature would shape citizens by giving them 4 On Literature knowledge of what Arnold called â€Å"the best that is known and thought in the world. † This â€Å"best† was, for Arnold, enshrined in canonical Western works from Homer and the Bible to Goethe or Wordsworth. Most people still ? rst hear that there is such a thing as literature from their school teachers. Universities, moreover, have been traditionally charged with the storage, cataloguing, preservation, commentary, and interpretation of literature through the accumulations of books, periodicals, and manuscripts in research libraries and special collections. That was literature’s share in the university’s responsibility for Wissenschaft, as opposed to Bildung. This double responsibility was still very much alive in the literature departments of The Johns Hopkins University when I taught there in the 1950s and 1960s. It has by no means disappeared today. Perhaps the most important feature making literature possible in modern democracies has been freedom of speech. This is the freedom to say, write, or publish more or less anything. Free speech allows everyone to criticize everything, to question everything. It confers the right even to criticize the right to free speech. Literature, in the Western sense, as Jacques Derrida has forcefully argued, depends, moreover, not just on the right to say anything but also on the right not to be held responsible for what one says. How can this be? Since literature belongs to the realm of the imaginary, whatever is said in a literary work can always be claimed to be experimental, hypothetical, cut o? from referential or performative claims. Dostoevsky is not an ax murderer, nor is he advocating ax murder in Crime and Punishment. He is writing a ? ctive work in which he imagines what it might be like to be an ax murderer. A ritual formula is printed at the beginning of many modern detective stories: â€Å"Any 5 What is Literature? resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. †This (often false) claim is not only a safeguard against lawsuits. It also codi? es the freedom from referential responsibility that is an essential feature of literature in the modern sense. A ? nal feature of modern Western literature seemingly contradicts the freedom to say anything. Even though democratic freedom of speech in principle allows anyone to say anything, that freedom has always been severely curtailed, in various ways. Authors during the epoch of printed literature have de facto been held responsible not only for the opinions expressed in literary works but also for such political or social e?ects as those works have had or have been believed to have had. Sir Walter Scott’s novels and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin have in di? erent ways been held responsible for causing the American Civil War, the former by instilling absurdly outmoded ideas of chivalry in Southern gentry, the latter by decisively encouraging support for the abolition of slavery. Nor are these claims nonsensical. Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Chinese translation was one of Mao Tse Tung’s favorite books. Even today, an author would be unlikely to get away before a court of law with a claim that  it is not he or she speaking in a given work but an imaginary character uttering imaginary opinions. Just as important as the development of print culture or the rise of modern democracies in the development of modern Western literature, has been the invention, conventionally associated with Descartes and Locke, of our modern sense of the self. From the Cartesian cogito, followed by the invention of identity, consciousness, and self in Chapter 27, Book II, of Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, to the sovereign. I or Ich of Fichte, to absolute consciousness in Hegel, to the I as 6 On Literature  the agent of the will to power in Nietzsche, to the ego as one element of the self in Freud, to Husserl’s phenomenological ego, to the Dasein of Heidegger, explicitly opposed to the Cartesian ego, but nevertheless a modi? ed form of subjectivity, to the I as the agent of performative utterances such as â€Å"I promise† or â€Å"I bet† in the speech act theory of J. L. Austin and others, to the subject not as something abolished but as a problem to be interrogated within deconstructive or postmodern thinking – the whole period of literature’s heyday has depended on one or another idea of the self as a selfconscious and responsible agent. The modern self can be held liable for what it says, thinks, or does, including what it does in the way of writing works of literature. Literature in our conventional sense has also depended on a new sense of the author and of authorship. This was legalized in modern copyright laws. All the salient forms and techniques of literature have, moreover, exploited the new sense of selfhood. Early ? rst-person novels like Robinson Crusoe adopted the direct presentation of interiority characteristic of seventeenth-century Protestant confessional works. Eighteenth-century novels in letters exploited epistolary presentations of subjectivity. Romantic poetry a? rmed a lyric â€Å"I. † Nineteenth-century novels developed sophisticated forms of third-person narration. These allowed a double simultaneous presentation by way of indirect discourse of two subjectivities, that of the narrator, that of the character. Twentieth-century novels present directly in words the â€Å"stream of consciousness† of ? ctional protagonists. Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the end of Ulysses is the paradigmatic case of the latter. 7 What is Literature? THE END OF THE PRINT AGE Most of these features making modern literature possible are now undergoing rapid transformation or putting in question. People are now not so certain of the unity and perdurance of the self, nor so certain that the work can be explained by the authority of the author. Foucault’s â€Å"What is an Author? † and Roland Barthes’s â€Å"The Death of the Author† signaled the end of the old tie between the literary work and its author considered as a unitary self, the real person William Shakespeare or Virginia Woolf. Literature itself has contributed to the fragmentation of the self. Forces of economic, political, and technological globalization are in many ways bringing about a weakening of the nation-state’s separateness, unity, and integrity. Most countries are now multilingual and multi-ethnic. Nations today are seen to be divided within as well as existing within more permeable borders. American literature now includes works written in Spanish, Chinese, Native American languages, Yiddish, French, and so on, as well as works written in English from within those groups, for example African-American literature. Over sixty minority languages and cultures are recognized in the People’s Republic of China. South Africa after apartheid has eleven o? cial languages, nine African languages along with English and Afrikaans. This recognition of internal division is ending literary study’s institutionalization according to national literatures, each with its presumedly selfenclosed literary history, each written in a single national language. The terrible events of the mid-twentieth century, World War II and the Holocaust, transformed our civilization and Western literature with it. Maurice Blanchot and others have even argued persuasively that literature in the old sense is impossible after the Holocaust. 8 On Literature In addition, technological changes and the concomitant development of new media are bringing about the gradual death of literature in the modern sense of the word. We all know what those new media are: radio, cinema, television, video, and the Internet, soon universal wireless video. A recent workshop I attended in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) brought together American literary scholars and representatives of the Chinese Writers Association. At that meeting it became evident that the most respected and in? uential Chinese writers today are those whose novels or stories are turned into one or another television series. The major monthly journal printing poetry in the PRC has in the last decade declined in circulation from an amazing 700,000 to a â€Å"mere† 30,000, though the proliferation of a dozen or more new in? uential poetry journals mitigates that decline somewhat and is a healthy sign of diversi? cation. Nevertheless, the shift to the new media is decisive. Printed literature used to be a primary way in which citizens of a given nation state were inculcated with the ideals, ideologies, ways of behavior and judgment that made them good citizens. Now that role is being increasingly played, all over the world, for better or for worse, by radio, cinema, television, VCRs, DVDs, and the Internet. This is one explanation for the di? culties literature departments have these days in getting funding. Society no longer needs the university as the primary place where the national ethos is inculcated in citizens. That work used to be done by the humanities departments in colleges and universities, primarily through literary study. Now it is increasingly done by television, radio talk shows, and by cinema. People cannot be reading Charles Dickens or Henry James or Toni Morrison and at the same time watching television or a ? lm on VCR, though some 9 What is Literature? people may claim they can do that. The evidence suggests that people spend more and more time watching television or sur? ng the Internet. More people, by far, probably, have seen the recent ? lms of novels by Austen, Dickens, Trollope, or James than have actually read those works. In some cases (though I wonder how often), people read the book because they have seen the television adaptation. The printed book will retain cultural force for a good while yet, but its reign is clearly ending. The new media are more or less rapidly replacing it. This is not the end of the world, only the dawn of a new one dominated by new media. One of the strongest symptoms of the imminent death of literature is the way younger faculty members, in departments of literature all over the world, are turning in droves from literary study to theory, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, media studies (? lm, television, etc. ), popular culture studies, Women’s studies, African-American studies, and so on. They often write and teach in ways that are closer to the social sciences than to the humanities as traditionally conceived. Their writing and teaching often marginalizes or ignores literature. This is so even though many of them were trained in old-fashioned literary history and the close reading of canonical texts. These young people are not stupid, nor are they ignorant barbarians. They are not bent on destroying literature nor on destroying literary study. They know better than their elders often do, however, which way the wind is blowing. They have a deep and laudable interest in ? lm or popular culture, partly because it has done so much to form them as what they are. They also have a proleptic sense that traditional literary study is on the way to being declared obsolete by society and by university authorities. This will probably happen not in so 10 On Literature many words. University administrators do not work that way. It will happen by the more e? ective device of withdrawing funding in the name of â€Å"necessary economies† or â€Å"downsizing. † Departments of classics and modern languages other than English, in United States universities, will go ?rst. Indeed, they are in many universities already going, initially through amalgamation. Any United States English department, however, will soon join the rest, if it is foolish enough to go on teaching primarily canonical British literature under the illusion that it is exempt from cuts because it teaches texts in the dominant language of the country. Even the traditional function of the university as the place where libraries store literature from all ages and in all languages, along with secondary material, is now being rapidly usurped by digitized databases. Many of the latter are available to anyone with a computer, a modem, and access to the Internet through a server. More and more literary works are freely available online, through various websites. An example is â€Å"The Voice of the Shuttle,† maintained by Alan Liu and his colleagues at the University of California at Santa Barbara (http://vos. ucsb. edu/). The Johns Hopkins â€Å"Project Muse† makes a large number of journals available (http:// muse. jhu. edu/journals/index_text. html). A spectacular example of this making obsolete the research library is the William Blake Archive website (http:// www.blakearchive. org/). This is being developed by Morris Eaves, Robert Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. Anyone anywhere who has a computer with an Internet connection (I for example on the remote island o? the coast of Maine where I live most of the year and am writing this) may access, download, and print out spectacularly accurate reproductions of major versions of Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and some 11 What is Literature? of his other prophetic books. The original versions of these â€Å"illuminated books† are dispersed in many di? erent research libraries in England and the United States. Formerly they were available only to specialists in Blake, to scholars with a lot of money for research travel. Research libraries will still need to take good care of the originals of all those books and manuscripts. They will less and less function, however, as the primary means of access to those materials. Literature on the computer screen is subtly changed by the new medium. It becomes something other to itself. Literature is changed by the ease of new forms of searching and manipulation, and by each work’s juxtaposition with the innumerable swarm of other images on the Web. These are all on the same plane of immediacy and distance. They are instantaneously brought close and yet made alien, strange, seemingly far away. All sites on the Web, including literary works, dwell together as inhabitants of that non-spatial space we call cyberspace. Manipulating a computer is a radically di? erent bodily activity from holding a book in one’s hands and turning the pages one by one. I have earnestly tried to read literary works on the screen, for example Henry James’s The Sacred Fount. I happened at one moment not to have at hand a printed version of that work, but found one on the Web. I found it di? cult to read it in that form. This no doubt identi? es me as someone whose bodily habits have been permanently wired by the age of the printed book. WHAT THEN IS LITERATURE? 12 On Literature If, on the one hand, literature’s time (as I began by saying) is nearly up, if the handwriting is on the wall, or rather if the pixels are on the computer screen, on the other hand, literature or â€Å"the literary† is (as I also began by saying) universal and perennial. It is a certain use of words or other signs that exists in some form or other in any human culture at any time. Literature in the ? rst sense, as a Western cultural institution, is a special, historically conditioned form of literature in the second sense. In the second sense, literature is a universal aptitude for words or other signs to be taken as literature. About the political and social utility, import, e? ectiveness of literature I shall write later, in Chapter 4, â€Å"Why Read Literature? † At this point my goal is to identify what sort of thing literature is. What then is literature? What is that â€Å"certain use of words or other signs† we call literary? What does it mean to take a text â€Å"as literature†? These questions have often been asked. They almost seem like non-questions. Everyone knows what literature is. It is all those novels, poems, and plays that are designated as literature by libraries, by the media, by commercial and university presses, and by teachers and scholars in schools and universities. To say that does not help much, however. It suggests that literature is whatever is designated as literature. There is some truth to that. Literature is whatever bookstores put in the shelves marked â€Å"Literature† or some subset of that: â€Å"Classics,† â€Å"Poetry,† â€Å"Fiction,† â€Å"Mysteries,† and so on. It is nevertheless also the case that certain formal features allow anyone dwelling within Western culture to say with conviction, â€Å"This is a novel,† or â€Å"This is a poem,† or â€Å"This is a play. † Title pages, aspects of print format, for example the printing of poetry in lines with capitals at the beginning of each line, are as important in segregating literature from other print forms as internal features of language that tell the adept reader he or she has a literary work in hand. The co-presence of all these features allows certain collocations of  13 What is Literature? printed words to be taken as literature. Such writings can be used as literature, by those who are adept at doing that. What does it mean to â€Å"use a text as literature†? Readers of Proust will remember the account at the beginning of A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) of the magic lantern his hero, Marcel, had as a child. It projected on Marcel’s walls and even on his doorknob images of the villainous Golo and the unfortunate Genevieve de Brabant, brought into his bedroom from the Merovingian past. My version of that was a box of stereopticon photographs, probably by Matthew Brady, of American Civil War scenes. As a child, I was allowed to look at these at my maternal grandparents’ farm in Virginia. My great-grandfather was a soldier in the Confederate Army. I did not know that then, though I was told that a great-uncle had been killed in the Second Battle of Bull Run. I remember in those awful pictures as much the dead horses as the bodies of dead soldiers. Far more important for me as magic lanterns, however, were the books my mother read to me and that I then  learned to read for myself. When I was a child I did not want to know that The Swiss Family Robinson had an author. To me it seemed a collection of words fallen from the sky and into my hands. Those words allowed me magical access to a pre-existing world of people and their adventures. The words transported me there. The book wielded what Simon During, in Modern Enchantments, calls in his subtitle, â€Å"the cultural power of secular magic. † I am not sure, however, that secular and sacred magics can be all that easily distinguished. This other world I reached through reading The Swiss Family Robinson, it seemed to me, did not depend for its existence on the words of the book, even though those words were my only window on that virtual reality. The 14 On Literature LITERATURE AS A CERTAIN USE OF WORDS Literature exploits a certain potentiality in human beings as sign-using animals. A sign, for example a word, functions in the absence of the thing named to designate that thing, to â€Å"refer to it,† as linguists say. Reference is an inalienable aspect of words. When we say that a word functions in the absence of the thing to name the thing, the natural assumption is that the thing named exists. It is really there, somewhere or other, perhaps not all that far away. We need words or other signs to substitute for things while those things are temporarily absent. If I am out walking, for example, and see a sign with the 15 What is Literature? window, I would now say, no doubt shaped that reality through various rhetorical devices. The window was not entirely colorless and transparent. I was, however, blissfully unaware of that. I saw through the words to what  seemed to me beyond them and not dependent on them, even though I could get there in no other way than by reading those words. I resented being told that the name on the title page was that of the â€Å"author† who had made it all up. Whether many other people have had the same experience, I do not know, but I confess to being curious to ? nd out. It is not too much to say that this whole book has been written to account for this experience. Was it no more than childish naivete, or was I responding, in however childish a way, to something essential about literature? Now I am older and wiser. I know that The Swiss Family Robinson was written in German by a Swiss author, Johann David Wyss (1743 –1818), and that I was reading an English translation. Nevertheless, I believe my childhood experience had validity. It can serve as a clue to answering the question, â€Å"What is literature? † word â€Å"Gate,† I assume that somewhere nearby is an actual gate that I can see with my eyes and grasp with my hands to open or shut it, once I get in sight of it and get my hands on it. This is especially the case if the word â€Å"Gate† on the sign is accompanied by a pointing arrow and the words â€Å"? mile,† or something of the sort. The real, tangible, usable gate is a quarter of a mile away, out of sight in the woods. The sign, however, promises that if I follow the arrow I shall soon be face to face with the gate. The word â€Å"gate† is charged with signifying power by its reference to real gates. Of course, the word’s meaning is also generated by that word’s place in a complex di? erential system of words in a given language. That system distinguishes â€Å"gate† from all other words. The word â€Å"gate,† however, once it is charged with signi? cance by its reference to real gates, retains its signi? cance or signifying function even if the gate is not there at all. The sign has meaning even if it is a lie put up by someone to lead me astray on my walk. The word â€Å"Gate† on the sign then refers to a phantom gate that is not there anywhere in the phenomenal world. Literature exploits this extraordinary power of words to go on signifying in the total absence of any phenomenal referent. In Jean-Paul Sartre’s quaint terminology, literature makes use of a â€Å"non-transcendent† orientation of words. Sartre meant by this that the words of a literary work do not transcend themselves toward the phenomenal things to which they refer. The whole power of literature is there in the simplest word or sentence used in this ? ctitious way. Franz Kafka testi? ed to this power. He said that the entire potentiality of literature to create a world out of words is there in a sentence like, â€Å"He opened the window. † Kafka’s ? rst great masterpiece, â€Å"The Judgment,† uses that power at 16 On Literature the end of its ? rst paragraph. There the protagonist, Georg Bendemann, is shown sitting â€Å"with one elbow propped on his desk . . . looking out the window at the river, the bridge, and the hills on the farther bank with their tender green. † Stephane Mallarme gave witness to the same amazing magic of words, in this case a single word. In a famous formulation, he pronounced: â€Å"I say: a ? ower! and, outside the forgetting to which my voice relegates any contour, in the form of something other than known callices, musically there rises, the suave idea itself, the absence of all bouquets. † Words used as signi? ers without referents generate with amazing ease people with subjectivities, things, places, actions, all the paraphernalia of poems, plays, and novels with which adept readers are familiar.