Journal articles on the topic 'Pathemic effect'

<p>By placing ourselves in the theoretical paradigm which takes into account the sociological dimension of a translation which undermines the myth of an objective translation and a transparent translator, we sought to study the translator’s subjective, ideological, emotional interventions. The analysis of the translator's traces, revealing a conscious manipulation which seeks to produce a persuasive effect or a more or less unconscious interpretation imbued with the translator's own emotions will allow us to show the transformations that the pathemic expressions of the discourse (the emotional charge of the discourse, the ethos or the image that the author projects of himself, etc.) go through as well as the consequences got on the level of the identity construction of the conflict’s protagonists.</p><p> </p><p> </p>

In this article, I address the critical reception of Nanni Balestrini's narrative work, focusing in particular on the novel Vogliamo tutto (1971). I compare the interpretative model, which sees this text as overcoming the novelistic form and moving toward the epic, with a similar model in György Lukács' foundational text The Theory of the Novel (1916), which sets up an opposition between the novel, understood as an expression of the irrelevance of private existence in our society, and the idea of a “rebirth” of the epic as a redemptive collective dimension. In order to investigate the textual mechanisms that generate a reading experience that has been defined resorting to the cliché of the epic, I draw on Lukács' later Aesthetics (1962). In this work, he offers a response to the impasses of his earlier thought by using the concept of catharsis, which explains the effects of a work of art on the reader/viewer through the pathetic energy generated by the dissolution of the subjective perspective. Through a close reading of key passages from Vogliamo tutto, I show how the rhetorical structure of the text is grounded in a repeated dissolution of the narrative point of view (the narrator's voice) in the collective voice of the workers. I argue that the “pathetic intensity” produced by this loss of subjectivity inscribes the communal existence of the political struggles of the time in the immediacy of the reading experience.

Herbert F. Tucker, “Verse Visa: Dickens Adapts Poetry in The Old Curiosity Shop” (pp. 433–451) In Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Dick Swiveller’s hilariously eclectic misquotation of popular verse coexists with Dickens’s own grave proclivity to fall into unlineated yet incantatory blank verse when orchestrating the death of Little Nell. These complementary prose effects freshly showcase the novelist’s joint commitments to humorous and pathetic renditions of the modern condition. They also underscore the coalescence of the novel as such, circa 1840, out of a miscellany of barely compatible ingredients, as the still-burgeoning genre sought to displace, whether by sidelining or by incorporation, poetry’s millennial prestige.

Chronic inflammation is commonly accompanied by the stimulation of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) production and the degradation of the extracellular matrix. The overexpression of MMP-9 (Gelatinase B) highly participates in the progression of pathetic cardiac remodeling and liver cancer metastasis. Panax notoginseng (Burkill) F. H. Chen (Sanqi), a widely used traditional Chinese medicinal herb, shows myocardial protective and anti-tumor effects. In this study, we examined the inhibitory effect of different PNG extracts on tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α-induced MMP-9 expression in cardiac myoblast H9c2 cells. Using a bioassay-guided fractionation scheme, the most active extract was fractionated by silica gel column chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography until an active compound was obtained. The compound was identified as Ginsenoside Rb1 by nuclear magnetic resonance. Ginsenoside Rb1 inhibited TNF-α-induced MMP-9 production in both H9c2 and liver carcinoma HepG-2 cells. Interestingly, it did not affect the MMP-2 (Gelatinase A) level and the cell proliferation of the two cell lines. The inhibitory effects of Ginsenoside Rb1 may be due to its modulation of double-strand RNA-dependent protein kinase and nuclear factor kappa B signaling pathways. The results reveal the potential use of Ginsenoside Rb1 for the treatment of inflammatory and MMP-9-related cardiac remodeling and metastasis of hepatocellular carcinomas.

This article aims at analyzing how the redefinition of the subjects of the narrative staging, channel, and semiological codes determines the renewal of the literary contract of the short story "Conto de Escola" in its 2002 reprint by Cosac Naify publishers, taking into account the Semiolinguistic Discourse Analysis Theory and, in a subsidiary way, the studies of editorial paratexts and visual forms. The Machadian short story, originally published in 1884, was reprinted, in a book of the same name, as a verbal-visual hybrid text by the publisher's initiative and the work of Nelson Cruz, who authored the illustrations and the editorial project. The most relevant implications of this process of renewal of the literary contract are the amplification of the effects of meaning and, more particularly, the intensification of the pathemic effects as a result of the word-image interaction, which is inserted in a material and discursive mise-en-scène, organized by the editorial paratexts. This results in inscribing children as target readers, unlike previous contracts, which now allows for the book under analysis to be identified as potential literature for children.---Original in English.

As successive studies have shown that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are ineffective in treating COVID-19, this article investigates how the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, disputes the truth around science to convince the population that these drugs can save lives, preserve jobs and restore economic growth. Using Charaudeau's theory [Charaudeau, 2007, 2010} as a methodological framework, as well as understanding that right-wing populism has embodied post-truth communication as a distinctive feature of contemporary politics, we observed Bolsonaro's weekly Facebook live streams — known as ‘lives’ — for 14 weeks, identifying them as a communicative device that offers Bolsonaro the material conditions to interact directly with his public. Finally, we structured our analysis according to the three most common themes — questioning delays due to an insistence on scientific methodology, overvaluation of personal experiences and emphasis on individuals' freedom of choice — to observe the emotional images and discursive scenarios the Brazilian president stages to produce the intended pathemic effects of his discourse: hope and urgency; trust and distrust; freedom and polarization.

Purpose: This paper investigates the collaboration of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adopted and macroeconomic variables interaction with information asymmetry, analysts following and managerial opportunism affecting the cost of equity capital, and also influence investor’s decision taking on companies in South Africa. Design/Approach: A sample of 49 listed Johannesburg mining and manufacturing firms was extracted from archival database of INET BFA/IRESS SA, Morningstar, and Anupedia. A leverage fixed effects panel data set of firms from 2001 to 2014 was examined, which shows that Breusch-Lagrange Multiplier tests and the test of over-identifying restrictions used, form the basis of the content analysis of the most recent IFRS effect after mandatory adoption. We used a hand-collected dataset between 2000 and 2015. Findings: Our findings suggest that a significant association is found between IFRS and its interactions with managerial opportunism and integrity but with a reasonable statistical effect. However, the IFRS adoption effect on the cost of equity capital of South African firms’ has no significant effect. Practical implications: This study reveals that most firms report more, the credibility of annual financial statements which may not be sufficient because of the qualitative data for an assessment of managerial opportunism, information asymmetry and analysts following. Of such myopia of company managers, their reputation causes agency problems and as a result, shareholders interest is mainly focused on improving reporting standards Originality: The research considers dual harmonizing facets: first, that the interaction with IFRS adoption and economic factors impact on the cost of equity capital may be so pathetic and obvious; and second, that IFRS moderation impacts on the cost of equity capital in Sub- Saharan African. This finding should be meaningful to managers, analysts, policymakers, and supervisory bodies in nations with similar capital structure decisions and socioeconomic systems.

The present work aims to establish the relationship between text, discourse and rhet-oric, identifying and discussing the strategic marks of the use of repetition, in the construction of manipulative meanings in the self-help text, from a sociocognitive-discursive perspective. Thus, we present the resource of repetition, which we associate with the mobilization of pathos in self-help To this end, we theoretically rely on Koch (2004) and Koch and Elias (2016) to address the functions of repetition in the text; Cavalcante et alii (2020) and Amossy (2008) to substantiate the relationship between text and argumentation in discourse; Breton (1999) and Charaudeau (2009; 2010) to ad-dress the manipulation of affects and repetition. Methodologically, this research presents a qualita-tive, descriptive and documentary approach, with an analysis of self-help works. As a result, several paraphrased ideas were found to be combined simultaneously with other repetition strategies in the sequencing of the chapters of the works, such as syntactic parallels and lexical and sound reitera-tions, added to other linguistic-discursive resources which we relate to pathemic meaning effects. and with the possibilities of manipulation of the subject-reader of self-help

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is an annual rate of 7 million deaths because of tobacco use, and this rate is expected to step up to 8 million deaths in 2030 by virtue of smoking-related health complications. Furthermore, it is pathetic to know that almost more than 23% of high school students use tobacco, which if continued at the current rate; about 5.6 million teenagers would be vulnerable to death as mentioned by the World Health Organization. On the other hand, smokers do not only harm themselves but also increase the incidence of pneumonia, asthma, and bronchitis for passive smokers, which by the way contribute to the development of lung cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Moreover, infant death syndrome and slow-growing lung cancer are prevalent in children with continuous exposure to second-hand smoke. These adverse effects emerge from the complex mixture of chemicals present in submicron-sized particles suspended in cigarette smoke like carbon monoxide, benzene, nitrogen oxides, and other gases. Thus, it seems that tobacco smoking has been spreading worldwide as an epidemic with devastating lethal disorders represented in diverse pulmonary, neurological, and cardiovascular-related diseases. Wherefore, this paper discusses the harmful effects of tobacco smoke on human health in accordance with the modern advanced genetic technologies used in exploratory investigations for the relation between smoking and the emergence of human diseases.

As living conditions in societies get harder on a daily basis with no hope in sight as to the remedies, people in different parts of societies indulge in forms of immoral acts for survival. Young people, against their wishes, are trafficked for the purpose of prostitution and other ignominious reasons. The depravity that societies are thrown into seriously affects their economic and moral development negatively. It is pathetic that mainly, prominent politicians elected into strategic positions abet the immoralities for their selfish reasons. The kingpins of the shady deals see themselves as the owners of the society; hence, they give impetus to their stooges who operate without fear. Concerned creative writers and other artists decry this ugly trend by mirroring the ill activities in their works in a way that the effects on societies are made obvious. This paper thus aims to x-ray the various forms of depravity as mirrored by Ifeanyi Ajaegbo in Sarah House, expose those involved in the nefarious acts and, as well, explore the consequent effects on societies.

Pyoderma gangrenosum (PG) is a rare inflammatory dermatosis that is most often associated with inflammatory bowel disease, but which can occur as a pathergic reaction around surgical incisions. The authors report the case of a patient who developed postoperative PG over the course of several months after undergoing extensive spinal instrumentation between the T4 and iliac levels. This is only the second such case occurring after spine surgery to be reported. The authors additionally review the literature to characterize treatment approaches and outcomes for this condition. The case highlights a potentially severe adverse effect of surgery that can be difficult to recognize and causes delays in effective treatment. It also demonstrates the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration in the effective care of patients.

This paper investigates the psychological trauma precipitated by war in Death of a Hero, a semi-autobiographical novel by Richard Aldington, the veteran who served as a soldier in World War I. So, the writer himself witnessed the appalling horrors of war and turned them into a novel. This reveals how the war horrors shatter the sensitive artist psychologically and drive him to commit suicide. Although this novel departs from historical details in the protagonist’s tragic end, it offers a pathetic description of the writer’s agonies which transgresses its setting; i.e., England World War I, and presents a Mankind’s dilemma everywhere. As a narrative, this novel pauses upon the hero’s psychological sufferings in the midst of a fragmented family which represents the British dissolute society at that time, and shows their effects in developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder later on. That society was akin to another wasteland. The paper adopts a psychoanalytic approach as it attempts to penetrate into the hero’s traumatic experiences. Hence emerges the significance of such a psychoanalytic approach.

ABSTRACT John Aubrey singled out the concept of hupsos—sublimity—in two of Milton’s political sonnets. This article examines the importance of this effect, as theorized by Longinus, in four of Milton’s other poems. Longinus identified striking thought and pathos or strong feeling (pathema) as two natural sources of hupsos; both of these origins are explored in Lycidas. Longinus’s analysis of the truth of emotion in an ode by Sappho and that poem’s fusion of opposite sensations is then applied to Milton’s three sonnets on his blindness. Of these, “Methought I saw my late espousèd saint” is the best appreciated in the context of Longinus’s insights, in particular the intensification by displacement. The article’s larger argument is that Longinus can both defamiliarize Milton and gloriously uphold him.

Poverty remains a major problem among refugees, and the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have exacerbated its incidences. In Kenya, although refugees ordinarily face serious economic conditions, COVID-19 worsened their economic status. The objective of this paper was to analyze the determinants of poverty dynamics among Kenyan refugees during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data were the COVID-19 rapid response panel data that were collected between May 2020 and June 2021 by the Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the University of California, Berkeley with technical assistance from the World Bank. The random effects probit regression model was used for data analysis using the absolute and relative poverty lines. The results showed that, using the Kenya’s national poverty lines, 73.03% of the respondents were poor across time, while there was a steady decline in poverty incidences from 76.55 in July–September 2020 to 68.44% in March–June 2021. The results further showed the presence of significant heterogeneity, thereby justifying the panel estimation approach. Poverty significantly declined (p < 0.05) with receipt of food assistance, remittances, gifts, amount of loan, amount realized from sale of assets and agricultural enterprises, while it increased with education, household size, non-farm enterprises, residence in urban areas, and at the Kakuma, Kalobeyei and Shona camps. It was concluded that welfare deprivation among refugees during COVID-19 is pathetic, and post-COVID-19 recovery should, among other things, take cognizance of place and camp of residence, and access to some form of socioeconomic support.

The essay investigates Mary Oliver’s reflection upon, and questioning of, language as a marker of human/nonhuman divide as it unfolds in her second, 2013 “species collection” on dogs, Dog Songs (her first one being Owls and Other Fantasies, her 2006 similar collection, portraying her ways of communicating with birds). Through an exploration of both the visual and audial modes of Oliver’s conversations with the dogs she owned in her life, and treated as companions, this study demonstrates that the poet held an attitude toward the nonhuman which in contemporary theoretical terms would be defined as an “indistinction approach” to the animal question (Calarco 2015). In Dog Songs, Oliver portrays a proximity between humans and animals that ultimately preserves an unavoidable distance. Her writing exploits both her intuition of animals’ capacity for agency and creativity—which accompanies the de-emphasizing of human uniqueness—and her consciousness that we need tropes from human experience to convey our perception of nonhuman ways of life. Moreover, through her representation of the animal’s gaze, of a powerfully ironic reversal of the aims (and effects) of the pathetic fallacy, and of narrative empathy, she proves that an imaginative use of language makes poetry a distinct space for our efforts to envisage an ecosystem that animals may inhabit as our equals.

Few technologies have been as misused as cameras in the encounter with the "other." Photography has provided travelers, journalists, and, indeed, anthropologists with a tool to bring distant cultures and landscapes closer to home audiences. Entailing a process of selective framing and focusing, it has enabled practitioners to construct views of "exotic" people and worlds, building upon preconceived ideas about what they are like and how they differ from us, by stressing either the "picturesque" or the "pathetic" according to what feelings the images were meant to arouse. These are often shaped by the larger context of ideology and politics surrounding our relationship with such groups, as Jane Collins and Catherine Lutz (Reading National Geographic. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993) show in their seminal and spirited critique of the National Geographic. But are reifying or alienating the subject inherent effects of photographic practice? Not necessarily. Parallel to conventional photography that uses indigenous people as mere objects of representation, there have been some notable efforts by visual anthropologists and communication specialists to directly involve minorities and marginal populations in producing images of themselves, their social and physical landscapes, and in using photography for bolstering their status and their claims in society.

This article focuses on Richard Ford’s short story “Calling,” collected in the volume entitled A Multitude of Sins (2001). It consists of the detailed recalling by a first-person narrator, from the vantage point of adulthood, of a duck-hunting outing with his father at a moment of acute family crisis when he was still a teenager. This episode, redolent of America’s nostalgic motif of male bonding and father-son transmission in the midst of mythical American nature, is shown to have proved a pathetic failure at the time, and the story stages—to pick up Svetlana Boym’s famous distinction between two main types of nostalgia—the enlightening “reflective” effects of recalling this moment of “restorative” longing for the protagonist. However, the highly analytical narrator does not consciously dwell upon the peripheral yet disturbing presence of two grotesque characters that, I contend, are the locus of the implicit meaning of the text. Through precise textual reading and references to Southern Gothic, I indeed argue that the subtext of “Calling” invites the reader to journey back into a region’s (the South’s) troubled collective past and to question its own relation to nostalgia. “Calling” thus also stages the ambivalence of nostalgic longing on the collective plane as it shows willful nostalgic recollection wavering in the face of the return of the historical repressed, that of America’s ineffable original sin.

Zoshchenko’s “The Goat” and Gogol’s “The Overcoat” have a strong intertextual connection. The quoted image of the “little man”, the plot, motif reminiscences, similar narrative peculiarities disclose the writers’ literary succession. In this article we will analyze the intertextuality of the writers’ prose on the example of “The Overcoat” and “The Goat”, and consider Zoshchenko’s transformation of Gogol’s plots, motifs; we will figure out what meaningful functions the intertexts are performing. The main results are summarized as follows. Firstly, Zabezhkin is an old-fashioned man, he is Bashmachkin’s double in the modern world. The sense of fluctuation and the immensity of the world led him to the pursuit of seeking familiar and soothing signs, the goat represents metaphysically a symbolic character of peace and happiness, which seemed to Zabezhkin to be the basis in a fragile world. The image of the “little man” quoted by Zoshchenko is a symbol of the disappearing past. The similarity between Zabezhkin and Bashmachkin’s fate demonstrates not the integrity and permanence of the past, but rather its irrevocability. Intertexts in the course of time become a measure of the old culture decline. Secondly, in “The Goat” Gogol’s techniques of grotesque and indeterminacy, changeability of the narration, are used. In the beginning of the novel the sentimental and comic, pathetic and familiar, tense and objective intonations intertwine. Just like Gogol’s language, Zoshchenko’s language is kaleidoscopic, it has a wide style range: from the bureaucratic language, clerical wording, newspaper and advertising clichés, literary speech to uneducated speech. The structural unification of the different language styles creates a humorous effect.

The paper examines the suggestive potential of political speeches of state leaders. The author argues that the greatest political addresses given at turning points in history demonstrate a programming effect and, consequently, are intended as texts with suggestive features. The current study proves that rhythm is the essential feature of a suggestive text. The rhythm is a complex phenomenon built on the balanced alternation or repetition of certain elements (formal and semantic). The distinctive rhythm for political address is established via lexical and, broader, semantic repetition of key verbal elements carrying dominant meanings which comprise two opposite functional textual groups via grammatical (morphological and syntactic) patterns or parallelism, accompanied by phonetic repetition. Such repetition serves the communicative-pragmatic purpose of the suggestor, namely, to consolidate the dominant meanings. The results of this study indicate that emotiogenic attributes (or qualifiers) aimed at emotional "charging" of the target audience are the primary means of suggestion. The texts of political speeches contain the elements of solemn rhetoric and pathetic appeal to the sacred forces. Political addresses of state leaders provide a strong impetus for creating meaningful public narratives favouring one or another political course of society. Furthermore, an informative political speech, which employs suggestive techniques, serves as a potent tool to exercise power over the target audience and as a means to shape public opinion and influence the mood in society. Finally, the political leader plays the role of an authoritative communicator who organizes, structures the individual's picture of the world, helps to resist communicative warfare and gives people a sense of order in a life of chaos.

The present research study was carried out to collect the evidences of the climate change impact on the local communities of district Khairpur and to understand the views of people how they experience the climate change impact on their lives. The current study was undertaken employing the qualitative research methodology with a small sample size of villages aging from 25 to 65 age from a single union council. Qualitative research cannot be generalized as qualitative findings are generalized where large sample size is selected to collect the data. The study was carried out on four major areas of the climate change stressors which are Changes in weather patterns, floods, heat waves and heavy rains. All four stressor have direct severed effect on the lives of rural-based population. The findings of the study reveal that climate change has severe impact on the lives of common people which bear lots of pain in terms of agriculture loss where their standing crops are vanished away , their homes are destroyed completely, livestock is dying off due to the diseases spread and lack of pastures in the vicinity where flooded water stand. Other than this, findings tell us that the role of government seems very pathetic towards the affected people of district Khairpur where score of people have no food items to eat, no shelter to live in and other temporary things at the time of heavy rains and floods. This study can be a torch bearer for the policy makers, governments to formulate the policies according to the ground realities. The vulnerabilities of people due to these climate change stressors are visible to governments. Hence, Climate disasters are affecting every corner of the Sindh, and its marginalized communities are left to face a disproportionate share of the impacts of climate change which is violation of UN Framework for climate change.

Purpose of the study: The purpose of this study is a critical discourse analysis of position and role of women in the contemporary Iranian feminist, based upon Norman Fairclough theory as well as writings, books, speech and stories of feminists, such as Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, at three levels: 1) description 2) interpretation and 3) explanation. Methodology: Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis is used as a research method. “Discourse analysis” methodology seeks to study production structure and its general relationship using apparent effects of speech and writing, in critical discourse analysis, examined texts at three levels of description, interpretation, and explanation. The researcher accurately analyzed the works of Ahmadi Khorasani at three levels of description, interpretation, and explanation. Main Findings: findings indicate that, at the description level, highly frequent words referring to “women” and “family” have limited the women’s rights. At the interpretation level, writings and stories portray a very pathetic image of a woman; at the explanation level, sexual view, dominant patriarchal discourse, and power ruling women can be seen in the stories. Applications of this study: Application of this study can be used for the analysis of other writing in all over writers, special writers who work about women's rights and Women's Education. Also, finding this research help another researcher in doing critically studies for improving his/her research. Finally using this finding of research can help the reader to find hidden Ideology in writing. Novelty/Originality of this study: one of the main new aspects of this research is to paying attention to view’s Noshin Ahmadi Korasani. She is one of the women who try to change the law about human rights in Iran. There is no research about her writings & stories, especially from the critical aspect, so this research and finding is new research about women's rights.

Ecosystems that are currently struggling are likely faring and pathetic conditions because of climate change. The most pressing problems facing people in the world's developing parts of the world are water scarcity, dwindling biodiversity, and stagnant agricultural output. According to the majority of scientists, global warming can be stopped before it becomes irreversible if temperatures are kept within a range of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius. Greenhouse gases, sometimes known as GHGs, are the burning causes of climate change impacts. Accelerated emissions of GHGs could be dependent on the rate of social, economic, and technological development. Forest systems have a crucial impact in mitigating global warming. Clearing forests, setting them on fire, or otherwise destroying those releases massive amounts of other greenhouse gases (GHGs), even if the forests are the planet's greatest terrestrial carbon sink. Forests' source-sink dynamics and the total quantity of carbon they store are profoundly impacted by regional differences in human land use, anthropogenic climate change, and disturbance. Constantly expanding conservation, restoration, reforestation, and afforestation operations will be necessary to keep global warming under control and stop it from exceeding the crucial threshold. Forests are currently being employed as a potential tool for combating climate change, which has been demonstrated to be an effective and long-term strategy. However, the impact of climate change on forests is largely negative. The negative effects of climate change on forests are becoming more pronounced, as evidenced by an increase in the forest fire events and results in a shift in species distribution at higher altitudes, an increase in dieback, an increase in the number of insect and pathogen infestations, drought and flood conditions, and a decrease in the ecosystem services provided by forests. The IPCC has predicted that changes to ecosystems, arctic ice melting, rising sea levels, decreased grain yields, declining fisheries, and the loss of coral reefs will all have significant consequences. Therefore, protecting ecosystem services and biodiversity is crucial to ensuring humanity's survival.

Let me start by quoting a paragraph from a century old edition of Terence, which will serve as a reminder of changes in our background knowledge of both comedy and this particular comic playwright: Of the six extant Terentian comedies the Andria is the most pathetic, the Adelphoe in general more true to human nature than the rest, the Eunuchus the most varied and lively, with the largest number of interesting characters, and the Hecyra the one of least merit. All six are remarkable for the art with which the plot is unfolded through the natural sequence of incidents and play of motives. Striking effects, sharp contrasts and incongruities, which meet us in many plays of Plautus, are almost wholly absent. All is smooth, consistent and moderate, without any of the extravagance of exuberant humour or even creative fancy which characterizes the writing of the older poet. But Terence was essentially an imitative artist and his distinguishing feature was his artistic finish, a fact fully recognized by Horace (Epistle 2.1.59).There is plenty here to question, if not correct. What does it mean to call Adelphoe more true to human nature? What defines an ‘interesting character’? And do present day readers still find Hecyra the play of least merit? As for the art with which Terence’s plots are unfolded, we still cannot guess how much of this is his own contribution rather than derived from Menander (whose plays were still unknown when this edition was written). However, scholars have used both the evidence given by Terence in the prologues and his commentator Donatus to identify where he has himself innovated in his plots—removing the expository prologues to replace irony with suspense, introducing a second lover and slave into Andria, working a braggart soldier and his parasite into Eunuchus and inserting an abduction scene into the second act of Adelphoe. And yet it was Terence’s immediate predecessor Caecilius whom Varro, most learned of ancient critics, praised for his superior plots. Certainly Terence does not indulge in the extravagance of Plautus, but is this because he is ‘essentially an imitative artist’? On the other hand I would not challenge the editor’s evaluation of his scripts as ‘smooth, consistent and moderate’ or his praise for the playwright’s ‘artistic finish’. Instead I would ask if this is what we want, or ought to want from comedy.

Abstract Background Depending on the risk of disease, the use of all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) combined with arsenic trioxide (ATO) and/or anthracyclines is the current standard for therapy of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). Despite the high rates of remission and overall survival (OS) that approach 100%, the extent and characterization of long-term morbidity following treatment in these patients is unknown. We performed a retrospective study to investigate the long-term clinical course of these patients. Methods We performed a retrospective analysis of adult patients with newly diagnosed APL from 2004 through 2014. Therapeutic regimens were ATRA+ATO-based (LoCoco et al. NEJM 2013;369:2), ATRA+anthracycline+ATO-based per CALBG 9710 (Powell et al. Blood 2010;116:19), ATRA+anthracycline+mitoxantrone-based per PATHEMA (Sanz et al. Blood 2004;103), and ATO+ATRA+gemtuzumab per SWOG S0535 (ASCO 2015). Co-morbidities were documented at diagnosis and extracted from the medical record, including the date of incident event. Long-term comorbidities were defined as those occurring mostly > 6 months after complete remission (CR). Patients were followed from the time of presentation to death or censored at last known follow-up. The cumulative incidence of co-morbid conditions after diagnosis was calculated by the Fine and Gray method, with relapse and death as competing risks. OS and progression-free survival (PFS) were calculated by the Kaplan and Meier method. Results We identified 116 patients with a new diagnosis of APL. Of the 116 patients, 102 (88%) achieved CR. 54 patients were treated per CALBG 9710, 17 were treated per LoCoco et al., 24 were treated per PATHEMA, and 6 were treated per SWOG S0535. 5 patients relapsed during follow up, and underwent hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. OS for all groups was 91.3%, 89.5%, 88.5% at 1, 12, and 24 months, respectively. PFS was 91.3%, 88.6%, 85.6% at 1, 12, and 24 months, respectively. Each of the 102 patients achieving CR had an echocardiogram after completion of chemotherapy; of these, 13 (12.7%) had newly depressed ejection fraction < 50% consistent with systolic heart failure with a cumulative incidence of 6.0% at 3 years from diagnosis (CI95 1.3-6.0%) (Figure 1A). However, there was no difference in subsequent development of systolic heart failure between the regimens with and without anthracycline (chi-squared, p=0.65). Neurological co-morbidities were common following therapy, with a cumulative incidence at 3 years, which included peripheral neuropathy 13.6% (CI95 6.9-20.4%), vision change 10.5% (CI95 4.6-16.5%), and memory or cognitive change 6.5% (CI95 1.8-11.1%) (Figure 1B). Conclusions APL is a highly curable form of leukemia but patients undergoing treatment may face significant long-term cardiac and neurologic co-morbidities regardless of the treatment regimens. It is critical that future care strategies incorporate treatments to improve and prevent comorbid effects of anti-leukemic treatment, potentially incorporating cardiac and neurological care into survivorship guidelines. Figure A. Cumulative incidence of systolic heart failure plotted against relapse and death as competing risks. B. Cumulative incidence of neurological complications including vision change, peripheral neuropathy, memory or cognitive change plotted against relapse and death as competing risks. Figure. A. Cumulative incidence of systolic heart failure plotted against relapse and death as competing risks. B. Cumulative incidence of neurological complications including vision change, peripheral neuropathy, memory or cognitive change plotted against relapse and death as competing risks. Disclosures Fathi: Bexalata: Other: Advisory Board participation; Merck: Other: Advisory Board participation; Seattle Genetics: Consultancy, Other: Advisory Board participation, Research Funding; Celgene: Consultancy, Research Funding; Agios Pharmaceuticals: Other: Advisory Board participation.

Background. The article is devoted to the piano work of the famous English pianist, teacher and composer Johann Baptist Kramer (1771–1858), whose 250th anniversary is celebrated in 2021. I. B. Kramer, like other pianists of the late XVIII – early XIX centuries, tried to solve a significant problem – mastering the basics of composition, its laws, principles, techniques, their combination with the game nature and capabilities of the piano. Objectives. The purpose of the article is to reveal the relationship between performing and compositional means in I. B. Kramer’s piano works. Methods. The basis of the methodology is a systematic approach, through which musicological research methods are combined with historical ones. The main document of the era in the field of musicological research is the musical text, so the analysis of musical works is carried out from the standpoint of performance at the levels of performing technical means, musical thinking of the composer and performer. Other components of the texture, the development of its individual layers in the whole system, as well as the coverage of one or another feature of the playing nature of the piano are also taken into account. Conclusions. I. B. Kramer’s pedagogical system is considered, which is a system of technical means of performance, which contributed to the embodiment of the game nature of the instrument. In works of art, the composer used these techniques as needed to create a certain figurative sphere. Analyzed “Pathetic Fantasy” op. 87 (1837), four notebooks Suite – arrangements for piano chamber works of classical composers, where the composer embodied ensemble thinking on the piano, introduced the principles of dialogicity and comparison of registers as a method of artistic development of musical material. Results. Continuing the work of his teacher M. Clementi, I. B. Kramer contributed to the development of concert activities in Europe, the differentiation of pedagogy, performance and composition into independent musical activities. His methodical works and opuses of etudes were the basis of pedagogy for the next generations of pianists, defined the foundations of piano pedagogy as a scientific discipline. The piano instructional material created by I. B. Kramer allowed to master the techniques of piano playing in a short time. Along with L. V. Beethoven, I. B. Kramer made an important contribution to deepening the content of musical works by means of composer’s writing. The perfection of the presentation of piano technique had a positive effect on the development of compositional techniques in the works of the musician – the development of contrasting themes, the principles of development of musical material, the improvement of musical forms. The sphere of dramatic pathos and heroism defined the image of pathos in music, which corresponded to the possibilities of the instrument and at the same time contributed to the formation of a romantic style in piano art.

The article highlights the methods of working on a Ukrainian piano concert with students-pianists in the lessons on "Instrumental Performance (Piano)" in higher education institutions. The stages of the formation and development of the Ukrainian piano concert are presented: the end of the 20s-30s of the XX century – the origin and formation, the 40-60s – the development period, the 80-90s – the heyday of the concert genre. The best examples of this genre in the works of domestic composers of the past and the present are analyzed, namely, piano concerts by L. Revutsky, M. Skorik, V. Ptushkin. It has been proved that the positive qualities of the piano concerto No. 2 of L. Revutsky consist in the organic development of Ukrainian classical traditions, in the deep embodiment of elevated, cheerful moods, lyrical-excited pathetics, and strong-willed images. The piano concerto No. 1 by M. Skorik is characterized by an artistic-figurative emotionality combined with brilliant virtuosity and is designed for vivid external effects. Marked by neoclassical style, M. Skorik’s concert is built on the free competition of a virtuoso pianist with an orchestra and refers to the type of concerts with relatively equal parts of solo and orchestra. When performing the interpretation of the first part of the piano concert of V. Ptushkin, the main attention is paid to the nature of the performance of the main themes, namely the contrast and dialogue between them. It was found out that acquaintance of students-pianists in the instrumental performance classes with the genre of the Ukrainian piano concerto expands the knowledge of future music art teachers in developing this genre in our country. Processing the best examples of piano concerts by composers of the past and the present develops a sense of ensemble playing among students, influences timbre hearing, introduces composers' innovations in the fields of style, musical language, means of shaping, as well as a wide emotional palette of musical images. The concerts focused on the functions of a soloist and orchestra, the artistic content of works, shaping, composer innovations in the field of musical language.

Problem setting. The purpose of establishing diplomatic relations is to maintain constant relations between the countries at the highest diplomatic level. The main stages of establishing diplomatic relations are regulated by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of April 18, 1961. At the same time, this document in many respects refers to the national law of countries. The presentation of credentials is the final action, after which diplomatic relations are considered established, and the powers of state representatives take effect. However, international law does not specify the specific form and procedure for the presentation of credentials, as it is up to the States to decide. Therefore, each state has its own practice of the presentation of credentials, which depends on its form of government, national characteristics, historical past. Therefore, it is relevant today to compare the protocols of credentials in the practice of different countries to determine the positive and negative aspects. Target research. The aim of the work is to determine the main content of credentials in the process of establishing diplomatic relations, to study the practice of ceremonies of credentials on the example of Europe and Ukraine, to analyze existing problems in this area of international relations and solutions. Analysis of recent research and publication. This topic is the basis of research in many works of recognized authors. Examples are theoretical works Sagaidak O.P. «Diplomatic protocol and etiquette», Tkacha D.I. «Diplomatic protocol in the Republic of Hungary: general, special», Tymoshenko N.L. «Features of diplomatic, business protocol and etiquette of the Netherlands», and other Ukrainian scholars. Also well-known works of foreign authors are the works of Ikanovich S. and Picarsky J. «Diplomatic Protocol and Good Manners», John Wood and Jean Serre «Diplomatic Ceremony and Protocol», Bennett Carol «Business Etiquette and Protocol». Article’s main body. The establishment of diplomatic relations is aimed at the exchange of diplomatic missions between states. This process ends with the procedure of presenting credentials. Credentials are a document that officially certifies the status of a diplomatic representative of the accrediting state in the host state. This document is important in international law because it has a long history and represents the beginning of the official activities of the ambassador to the host country. Modern elements of the procedure of awarding credentials are common to many states. But each country today has its own characteristics of the ceremony of awarding credentials, which usually depends on its form of government. For example, monarchies (Netherlands, England) still have in their practice a lavish and pathetic conduct of diplomatic events. In contrast, іn today’s democracies (Hungary) the protocol of credentials is more modern and simplified due to the absence of outdated traditions and irrelevant measures. However, each country has both positive and negative aspects of the ceremony. Ukraine has little experience in diplomatic protocol since gaining independence in 1991. Today, national law effectively regulates the procedure for awarding credentials, but many provisions do not correspond to reality. Therefore, Ukraine must develop in this area of international relations on the basis of foreign experience. Conclusions and prospect of development. Thus, the presentation of credentials plays an important role in regulating diplomatic relations between countries. The basis for this ceremony is the characteristics of the state, which includes the political regime, form of government, historical past, modern development, features of the national mentality. In our opinion, the process of universalization of the diplomatic protocol is a variant of development of this field of international relations. The appropriate direction of such development may be the unification of norms relating to the ceremony of awarding credentials, as international law is being actively improved and updated, as exemplified by European integration. As modern Ukraine continues to actively establish diplomatic relations with other countries and exchange diplomatic missions, it is necessary to streamline legislation and develop it on the example of the positive experience of European countries.

This paper builds on Pager-McClymont’s model of pathetic fallacy to show how its converse can equally impact narratives and readers’ or viewers’ perspective of texts. The link between pathetic fallacy and its converse are established, and an identification method is provided. Examples from literature and multimodal texts are provided to explore how the converse of pathetic fallacy is featured in texts and the effects it can have on narratives, especially characterisation. With the use of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, findings show that the mappings good is dark and bad is light (the reverse of the known conceptual metaphors good is light and bad is dark) are prevalent in several instances of PF’s converse, rendering them non-novel mappings despite the lack of research surrounding them.

This article aims to provide a stylistically founded model of pathetic fallacy (PF hereafter). Pathetic fallacy is a Romantic literary technique used in art and literature to convey emotions through natural elements. This technique has been researched mostly from a literary viewpoint, but no linguistic model exists to define it. It is difficult to identify it precisely or consensually because definitions and uses vary, and it is often associated with other techniques (i.e. personification). Despite those inconsistencies, PF is likely to be taught as part of the Department for Education subject content in the English National Curriculum for students studying English Literature at GCSE and A Level. I thus conducted a survey of English teachers to collect data on PF, and based on their answers and suggested texts, created an updated stylistic model of PF using a combination of (cognitive) stylistic frameworks. The model defines PF as a projection of emotions from an animated entity onto the surroundings. I identify three ‘linguistic indicators’ of PF in my corpus: imagery, repetition and negation. I draw on metaphor research to further analyse the metaphorical nature of PF and its effects in texts from my corpus. Four effects of PF are identified: communicating implicit emotions, building ambience, building characters and plot foreshadowing.

Abstract The article focusses on a particular type of ‘pathetic alliteration’ in Virgil’s poetry which links the adjective solus with words strictly related in meaning. By means of a detailed stylistic analysis of passages from Aeneid, Eclogues and Georgics the author demonstrates the stylistically motivated use of this kind of alliteration and shows how sound effects are usually combined with other stylistic figures charging the diction with expressiveness.

Objective: In the present study, emphasis has been made to assay the antifungal activity of some angiospermic epiphytes like Cuscuta reflexa, Viscum orientale, Cymbidium bicolor, Bulbophyllum propinquum, Hoya ovalifolia and Dendrophthoe falcata. Methods: The antifungal activity due to epiphytes extracts was expressed in term of reduction in dry biomass of fungi based on the relationship of ergosterol content and electrolyte leakage in fungal pathogens viz., Colletotrichum dematium, Drechslera oryzae, Fusarium oxysporum and Fusarium solani treated with epiphytes extract. Results: Treated fungi showed increased in ergostesrol content and increased electrolyte leakage confirmed the pathetic situation of fungi; hence there was fungistatic effect, which was dose-dependent. Conclusion: The angiospermic epiphytes of selected species chosen for the study could be serves an alternative eco-friendly source to synthetic fungicides.

Trauma is a foremost theme of contemporary literature. The term “post-traumatic stress disorder” (PTSD) found its existence in the 1980s, exploring the shattering effects of trauma on the victim. Traumatic mutism is one such psychological disorder characterised by the victim’s sudden inability to speak, following the trauma. The protagonist Maya in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is subjected to the horror of incest at the age of seven. Overwhelmed by the incident, she locks herself in a private cage of self-imposed silence for four long years. Applying Jennifer Freyd’s “Betrayal Trauma Theory”, the article discusses the events that led to Maya’s silence. She is dumbstruck, fearing the repressive consequences of this pathetic predicament in the community. And to wriggle out of the present pathos, the post-traumatic symptoms, such as psychic numbing, withdrawal and mutism are adopted by the victim. The article further presents the importance of external sources that help the victim out of these dissociative behaviours. The article concludes by stating the role of literature both as a therapeutic tool for the victim and as a narrative tool for the readers, providing an accurate understanding of trauma and its implications.

Nigeria is a country with an abundance of human and natural resources, yet over forty percent of the population of Nigeria live in poverty. The appalling, pathetic and depressing condition of high rate of poverty in Nigeria cannot be separated from the absence of accountability and on government’s ineptitude and lack of prudence in the expenditure and management of resources. The study examined the effect of accountability and resource management on national prosperity. The research work adopted the use of descriptive survey research design. Primary data sourced from administering questionnaires to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in South East Nigeria was collated. Descriptive statistics, regression analysis and one sampled t-test tool were utilized in analyzing the data. The study revealed that accountability and effective resource management has a positive impact on the prosperity of a nation. The study also posited that a transition from poverty to national prosperity has higher likelihood of actualization when there are bedrocks or building blocks in place for sustainable economic growth through having good accountability and resource management. Therefore, the study recommends a consolidation of existing financial controls for improved accountability in the public sector in Nigeria and that accounting records should be prepared in line with the IPSAS.

In the slang of the caring profession, there is an enduring use of the personal pronoun "we" whose infantilising effect – and I am sure "we" all share this view - is indeed hard to endure. Pronoun it may be, personal it surely isn't. On a larger scale, the inadequacy of this pathetic, in fact pseudo-empathetic, babble becomes increasingly apparent, especially for two reasons whose incompatibility exposes the true dimension of the dilemma. Firstly, this sort of talk excruciatingly extends into an overkill of compassion, well-meaning, and good advice, whose self-righteousness in time results in normative stereotypes of healthy living: positive thinking, creative visualisations, and not least, physical exercise. Secondly and simultaneously, though, this tyranny of caring can barely conceal the fact that illness is still widely viewed as a stigma. Entering the present discourse of HIV and AIDS at this point, one can hardly fail to notice that it is this very stigma that increasingly forces gay men into normative spectacles of health, even though, as Dollimore accurately contends, "contesting these negative representations (homosexuality = pathology = death) could never be just a question of substituting positive ones (homosexuality = health = life)" (Dollimore, Death, Desire and Loss xi). Put simply, there is urgent need for a cure against the stigma of illness, a cure that successfully counters both the debilitating, indeed incapacitating, treatment of the patient and his called-for charade of healthy living. One such cure is camp.

Eating disorders are a heterogeneous group of diseases affecting mainly young people in devel-oped countries. Among them, anorexia nervosa (AN) is the one with the highest mortality, up to five times higher compared to healthy individuals. The etiology of this medical condition is complex and still un-certain. However, disturbances of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and increased lipolysis resulting in a decrease of the adipose tissue volume are common findings among AN patients. Since ANS is directly connected to adipocyte tissue, thus significantly affecting the body’s metabolic homeostasis, we suspect that this relationship may be a potential pathophysiological underpinning for the development of AN. In this narrative review, we have analyzed scientific reports on ANS activity in AN considering different phases of the disease in humans as well as animal models. Due to the different effects of the disease itself on the ANS as well as specific variations within animal models, the common feature seems to be dysre-gulation of its function without the identification of one universal pattern. Nonetheless, higher norepi-nephrine concentrations have been reported in adipocyte tissue, suggesting local dominance of the sym-pathetic nervous system. Further studies should explore in depth the modulation of sympathetic in adipose tissue factor and help answer key questions that arise during this brief narrative review.

This paper is a study on Corona virus and its effects on human beings in particular and how it has become a global pandemic. The reason for the world’s pandemic, Corona virus is an RNA virus found extensively in mammals including humans. It is found that the most human corona virus infections cause from mild symptoms to severe respiratory problems and lead to death. In the recent past the world has faced two great epidemics caused by two different beta-corona viruses and they were named as SARS-CoV (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus) and (MERS-CoV Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus). Despite these viruses had high infectivity, had less mortality rate. As it is known, these types of viruses, in general, cause a mild illness and considerably affect children and young adults. As the whole world is facing a pandemic situation today, carrying out research on finding vaccine to kill the virus is a need of the time. It is obvious that to understand the fighting measurements, in other words readiness of the nation in handling the situation, the local risk assessments are considered to be one of the key factors in comprehending COVID-19. It is pathetic to know that this virus spreads rapidly everywhere and considering this fast outbreak, the global wide readiness, building capacity and mutual collaborations among countries are the most important needs in order to control the outbreak.

Abstract Yoga has been shown to improve autonomic conditioning in humans, as evidenced by the enhancement of parasym-pathetic activity and baroreflex sensitivity. Therefore, we hypothesized that the experience of yoga may result in adaptation to acute hemodynamic changes. To decipher the long-term effects of yoga on cardiovascular variability, yoga practitioners were compared to yoga-naïve subjects during exposure to –40 mm Hg lower-body negative pressure (LBNP). A comparative study was conducted on 40 yoganaïve subjects and 40 yoga practitioners with an average age of 31.08 ± 7.31 years and 29.93 ± 7.57 years, respectively. Heart rate variability, blood pressure variability, baroreflex sensitivity, and correlation between systolic blood pressure and RR interval were evaluated at rest and during LBNP. In yoga practitioners, the heart rate was lower in supine rest (p = 0.011) and during LBNP (p = 0.043); the pNN50 measure of heart rate variability was higher in supine rest (p = 0.011) and during LBNP (p = 0.034). The yoga practitioners’ standard deviation of successive beat-to-beat blood pressure intervals of systolic blood pressure variability was lower in supine rest (p = 0.034) and during LBNP (p = 0.007), with higher sequence baroreflex sensitivity (p = 0.019) and ~ high-frequency baroreflex sensitivity. Mean systolic blood pressure and RR interval were inversely correlated in the yoga group (r = –0.317, p = 0.049). The yoga practitioners exhibited higher parasympathetic activity and baroreflex sensitivity with lower systolic blood pressure variability, indicating better adaptability to LBNP compared to the yoga-naïve group. Our findings indicate that the yoga module was helpful in conditions of hypovolemia in healthy subjects; it is proposed to be beneficial in clinical conditions associated with sympathetic dominance, impaired barore-flex sensitivity, and orthostatic intolerance.

Nous prenons comme point de départ l’extraordinaire profusion des marques d’intensité insérées dans L’histoire de Manon Lescaut et du chevalier des Grieux afin d’analyser leurs différentes fonctions communicatives en tenant compte de leur inscription dans un contexte discursif déterminé pour étudier ensuite leur rôle dans quelques stratégies narratives spécifiques. Nous nous intéressons d’abord à la relation entre l’intensité et le registre pathétique qui traverse les genres littéraires au XVIII siècle, puis aux valeurs sémantico-pragmatiques de la construction consécutive intensive et aux effets de généricité signalés par Adam (2011) pour d’autres genres de discours. Finalement, nous analysons les stratégies d’intensification mis en œuvre dans le roman afin de capter l’intérêt du lecteur et de générer des situations plutôt humoristiques. Based on the extraordinary profusion of marks of intensity in L’histoire de Manon Lescaut et du chevalier des Grieux, we will analyse the different communicative functions of intensification in Prévost’s novel based on its inscription in a specific discursive context, so as to end the relationship between such linguistic operation and several, more specific narrative strategies. Thus, it will be examined the relationship with the register of the pathetic that crosses the XVIII century literary genres, as well as the semantic-pragmatic values of the intensive consecutive construction and the effects of “genericity” noted by Adam (2011) in relation to other discursive genres. To conclude, it will be analysed the intensification strategies in the novel, destined to capture the interest of the reader and to generate humorous situations. Nous prenons comme point de départ l’extraordinaire profusion des marques d’intensité insérées dans L’histoire de Manon Lescaut et du chevalier des Grieux afin d’analyser leurs différentes fonctions communicatives en tenant compte de leur inscription dans un contexte discursif déterminé pour étudier ensuite leur rôle dans quelques stratégies narratives spécifiques. Nous nous intéressons d’abord à la relation entre l’intensité et le registre pathétique qui traverse les genres littéraires au XVIII siècle, puis aux valeurs sémantico-pragmatiques de la construction consécutive intensive et aux effets de généricité signalés par Adam (2011) pour d’autres genres de discours. Finalement, nous analysons les stratégies d’intensification mis en œuvre dans le roman afin de capter l’intérêt du lecteur et de générer des situations plutôt humoristiques.

The reality of disablement, being handicapped and physical disfigurement, opens up anew the theological debate regarding God-images in human suffering. It is argued that the Hellenistic understanding of the power of God, God as a pantokrator [Almighty], presupposes the immutability of an apathetic God. In terms of the logic of a cause-effect paradigm, God becomes the deterministic principle behind human suffering. With reference to a theologia crucis [theology of the Cross], the paradigm of theopaschitic theology proposes a pathetic understanding of God. Weakness and vulnerability (astheneia) describes an authentic identification of God with human suffering. Forsakenness (derelictio) reframes power as compassionate weakness or vulnerability and divine disability. The disabled God is, in terms of the New Testament a connection between divine compassion and human predicament (ta splanchna), the passionate God. Bowel categories make it possible to speak of the ‘puffing God in the wheelchair’. A theology of the cross should be supplemented by a theology of ability (theologia resurrectionis). The resurrection introduces the spiritual ability parrhesia − the transformation of the weakness of suffering into the fortigenitics of hope.Lyding tussen lot en deug binne die dilemma van gestremdheid. Die onwikkeling van ’n teologie van die ‘gestremde God, hygend in ’n rolstoel’. Die gegewendheid en realiteit van verskillende vorme van gestremdheid onderstreep menslike weerloosheid en magteloosheid. Vir gelowiges wat worstel met die vraag na sin in lyding, roep dit onder andere die vraag op na die verband tussen lyding en die almag en krag van God. Die basiese argument is dat die Hellenistiese konsep en paradigma van die mag van God, God as pantokrator, die starre onbeweeglikheid van ’n apatiese God voorveronderstel. Met behulp van die oorsaak-gevolg skema van denke, word God, in terme van die menslike logika, ’n deterministiese kousaliteitsbeginsel en verklaringsmeganisme. Met behulp van ’n teopasgitiese hermeneutiek binne die raamwerk van ’n kruisteologie, word aandag gegee aan die opsie van ’n lydende en meelydende God (die passie van God). Die swakheid en weerloosheid van God (astheneia) beskryf die egtheid en integriteit van God in terme van ’n wesenlike identifikasie met die lyding van mense. Verlatenheid (derelictio) transformeer die populêre, dogmatiese siening van almags-determinisme in die sensitiewe paradigma van weerlose medelye. ’n Teologie van die ‘gestremde God’ word ontwikkel in die lig van die teologiese implikasies van ta splanchna op ’n eksistensiële Godsverstaan. ’n Tipe erbarmingsteologie (‘binnegoed’ of dermteologie) word ontwikkel wat help om die metafoor van ’n ‘ gestremde God, hygend in ’n rolstoel’ pastoraal te verstaan. Met die oog op die omvattende verstaan van hoop, moet ’n kruisteologie aangevul word met ’n opstandingsteologie. Die uitwerking van troos op mense met gestremdheid is parrhēsia: die moed om te lewe.

Abstract Background Ayeyarwady Region in Myanmar has made significant progress towards malaria elimination, with cases decreasing from 12,312 in 2015 to 122 in 2019. As transmission declines, malaria becomes increasingly focalized both in geographic hotspots and among population groups sharing certain risk factors. Developing a thorough profile of high-risk activities associated with malaria infections is critical to ensure intervention approaches are evidence-based. Methods A test-negative study was conducted from September 2017 to May 2018 in Ngaputaw, Pathein and Thabaung townships in Ayeyarwady Region. Patients that presented to selected public facilities or community health volunteers with fever answered survey questions on demographic and behavioural risk factors, including exposure to malaria interventions, and were assigned to case and control groups based on the result of a malaria rapid diagnostic test. A random-effects logistic regression model adjusted for clustering at the facility level, as well as any variables along the causal pathway described by a directed acyclic graph, was used to determine odds ratios and association with malaria infections. Results A total of 119 cases and 1744 controls were recruited from 41 public facilities, with a mean age of 31.3 and 63.7% male. Higher risk groups were identified as males (aOR 1.8, 95% CI 1.2–2.9) and those with a worksite located within the forest (aOR 2.8, 95% CI 1.4–5.3), specifically working in the logging (aOR 2.7, 95% CI 1.5–4.6) and rubber plantation (aOR 3.0, 95% CI 1.4–6.8) industries. Additionally, links between forest travel and malaria were observed, with risk factors identified to be sleeping in the forest within the past month (aOR 2.6, 95% CI 1.1–6.3), and extended forest travel with durations from 3 to 14 days (aOR 8.6, 95% CI 3.5–21.4) or longer periods (aOR 8.4, 95% CI 3.2–21.6). Conclusion Malaria transmission is highly focalized in Ayeyarwady, and results illustrate the need to target interventions to the most at-risk populations of working males and forest goers. It will become increasingly necessary to ensure full intervention coverage of at-risk populations active in forested areas as Myanmar moves closer to malaria elimination goals.

Of all the characteristics that may be emphasised by those seeking to set apart the serious, authoritative critic from the inconsequential, workaday reviewer, perhaps the most fundamental is the liberty typically enjoyed by the former. So, while the celebrated literary critic F.R. Leavis (in The Great Tradition) is able to confidently assert in microscopic detail the comparative merits of Lawrence, Joyce, Conrad and Woolf, what Meaghan Morris (106) calls the “gulp it down, chew it over, throw it up” crowd strive (in no more than five hundred words and by close of business today, thanks very much) to explain why John Grisham’s latest tome will turn either heads or stomachs. Amongst reviewers, not surprisingly, one can find hugely varying levels of competence and principle. But when it comes to contemporary music, where the art of the review continues to be practiced across a wide range of media, there are many commentators who would deem the virtues of competence and principle irrelevant to begin with. These critics can be grouped into two distinct camps. On the one hand, it has long been argued that discussions of music (popular or otherwise) are intrinsically flawed if they eschew technical analysis. Thus Wilfrid Mellers, in his 1973 book The Music of the Beatles: Twilight of the Gods, states that “descriptive accounts of music cannot be valid unless they are based on what happens in musical terms” (15). In what amounts to a variation on Mellers’s theme, cultural studies analysts have largely studied popular music as “an expression of rebellion, subversion, resistance and critique” (Regev 258), thereby supporting the view that the sounds themselves cannot be discussed with any authority outside of musicology departments. In this way the virtues of Madonna (and, largely due to her extra-musical activities and role in the development of the video clip, it almost always was Madonna) could be couched in terms of ideological meaning without the need to negotiate the awkward terrain of aesthetic content (Frith 14). At the same time, those few critics who shared Mellers’s technical grounding were poking at the alien specimen that is contemporary music with an entirely different set of instruments, but more or less the same results – that is, conducting no doubt useful but ultimately bloodless examinations. A prime example of this is William Echard’s amazingly meticulous musicological/semiotic dismantling of Neil Young’s “Powderfinger”, from which it is nonetheless impossible to discern whether the author actually likes the song in question. However, a second arm of criticism has been even more dismissive of modern music writing. Because here is where Michael Bywater, Martha Bayles, Roger Scruton and others conclude, by implication, that there is no value in such practices for the simple reason that there is essentially no aesthetic value in contemporary music, period. This school of thought, emanating from a lonely island fortress mired in a perceived sea of mass-cultural pollutants, takes Frankfurt School culture industry critique to its (il)logical nadir by roping off high culture from its insidious, ubiquitous opposite and claiming entire genres, such as popular music, to be inherently anti-intellectual: “Pop is surface all the way down. The musical toolbag contains only surface instruments – rhythmic thud, punch, whine and whop – and the emotions, too, are superficial” (Bywater 44). On this thinking the new Eminem record, for example, is seen as part of a phenomenon to brood over rather than as a distinct artefact worthy of thoughtful evaluation. Both strands of critical thought – the first locking contemporary music inside the musicology building, the second dropping it in the garbage can outside – are characterised by the kind of uncompromising, one-way dialogue Robert Dessaix describes as “excluding”. This style of argument, even when meritorious, ensures that anyone who approaches from outside certain scholarly circles is “silenced – but not by respect for authority” (129). It also calls to mind another commonly cited distinction between critic and reviewer (discussed in Morris 108-9) – a superiority of knowledge and taste that defines not only the serious critic but also the limited scope of his or her audience. Although the popular press, too, has its fair share of didactic prose, Dessaix’s theory does suggest where the worth may lie in an oft-maligned occupation like record reviewing. While non-academic music writers must endure likely time and word limitations, the twin criticisms of abstraction and irrelevance, and the tedious old “dancing about architecture” cliché, at least there is some chance they will invite “complicity in an unexpected adventure” (133) by deftly treading that fine line between expert and enthusiast. Whether plotting a course through English literature à la Leavis or discussing the latest batch of Scandinavian death metal albums, it would be churlish to claim that the role of critic/reviewer is not a legitimate one: the impossibly vast array of cultural productions accessible to the modern-day audience make some form of “expert” guidance indispensable. So, as new music tumbles down upon us like an endless monsoonal rain, thousands of fans masquerading as journalists (or, more frighteningly, journalists masquerading as fans) dutifully strive to sort the releases of the past week, year or decade into some semblance of order … and, as with all criticism, the judgements they come up with are only part of the story. The greatest trick a reviewer (and when referring to the practice of “reviewing” one trusts that at least some degree of editorial control is involved – read the customer comments at Amazon.com and weep) can master is to convince the reader that his or her piece of creative non-fiction is a minor work of art, whilst simultaneously putting forward a lucid argument to the effect that the object under scrutiny is (or isn’t, as the case may be) a valuable one. And, despite the endless kilometres of formulaic and/or sycophantic copy that clog review columns in newspapers, magazines, and on innumerable Web-sites, it does happen every now and then. In Spin magazine’s review of the year 2000’s musical landscape, Jon Dolan provided the following capsule review of P.J. Harvey’s fifth album, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea: Chapter V: Polly Gets Her Gun. But it’s not the return to true grit that makes this her best record since she was Jesus with PMS; it’s that whereas the old stuff took your head off, this rewires your guts. All the beautiful bullshit’s here – pathetic fallacies, Patti Smith mythopoeia, a Thom Yorke duet – but it’s more earned, more cathartic. Sand in her joints. Wind through her hair. Blood on her tracks. What I believe Dolan achieves here is a near-perfect amalgamation of instruction and art. He doesn’t ram his analysis down our throats – to discover how he feels about Harvey, the writer assumes you actually might know something about her yourself: her approximate location on the rock family tree (the Patti Smith allusion is indirect, yet perceptive); that she has been brilliant before (this record merely presenting a new type of brilliance); that at its best her music is complicated and unconventional, furious and revolutionary. The subtlety of the writing evokes shared connections for those familiar with the artist’s recorded output, at the same time inviting neophytes to come and see what all the fuss is about. Not only do the last three sentences summarise Harvey’s resolve, free will and intensity in thrillingly-eloquent prose, but the oblique Bob Dylan reference invites readers to consider complex associations across space and time whilst implicitly recognising their ability to figure out those associations for themselves. And all of this in well under one hundred words. Dolan’s seamless, perspicacious set-piece is evidence that, in all forms of art, the informal-yet-intelligent review can stand alongside the meticulous, highly-ritualised assessment of the academically-situated critic. Of course serious criticism has an important role but it certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on intelligent writing, and besides, there are some aesthetic pleasures that are only enhanced by a less pretentious style of analysis. Or, as P.J. Harvey herself puts it on Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea: “I can’t believe life’s so complex/when I just want to sit here and watch you undress.” The art of the entertaining, insightful review is alive and well in creative non-fiction; you just have to sort through a considerable amount of chaff to find it. References Bayles, Martha. “Body and Soul: The Musical Miseducation of the Youth.” Public Interest 131 (1998): 36-49. Bywater, Michael. “Never Mind the Width, Feel the Lack of Quality.” The Spectator 13 May 1995: 44-5. Dessaix, Robert. (& So Forth). Sydney: MacMillan, 1998. Echard, William. “An Analysis of Neil Young’s ‘Powderfinger’ Based on Mark Johnson’s Image Schemata.” Popular Music 18.1 (1999): 133-44. Frith, Simon. Performing Rites: Evaluating Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Leavis, F.R. The Great Tradition. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1948. Mellers, Wilfrid. The Music of the Beatles: Twilight of the Gods. New York: Schirmer, 1973. Morris, Meaghan. The Pirate’s Fiancee. London: Verso, 1988. Regev, Motti. “The ‘Pop-Rockization’ of Popular Music.” Popular Music Studies. Ed. David Hesmondhalgh and Keith Negus. London: Arnold, 2002. 117-30. Scruton, Roger. Aesthetics of Music. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Biron, Dean. "The Tortoise and the Hare." M/C Journal 8.5 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0510/05-biron.php>. APA Style Biron, D. (Oct. 2005) "The Tortoise and the Hare," M/C Journal, 8(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0510/05-biron.php>.

IntroductionWhat can we learn about anomaly from the strangeness of a puppet, a lifeless object, that can both bleed and die? How does the filming process of a puppet’s death engage across media and produce a new media genre that is not easily classified within traditional conventions? Why do these fighting and bleeding puppets’ scenes consistently attract audiences? This study examines how Pili puppetry (1984-present), a popular TV series depicting martial arts-based narratives and fight sequences, interacts with digital technologies and constructs a new media genre. The transmedia constitution of a virtual world not only challenges the stereotype of puppetry’s target audience but also expands the audience’s bodily imagination and desires through the visual component of death scenes. Hence, the show does not merely represent or signify an anomaly, but even creates anomalous desires and imaginary bodies.Cultural commodification and advancing technologies have motivated the convergence and displacement of traditional boundaries, genres, and media, changing the very fabric of textuality itself. By exploring how new media affect the audience’s visual reception of fighting and death, this article sheds light on understanding the metamorphoses of Taiwanese puppetry and articulates a theoretical argument regarding the show’s artistic practice to explain how its form transverses traditional boundaries. This critical exploration focusses on how the form represents bleeding puppets, and in doing so, explicates the politics of transmedia performing and viewing. Pili is an example of an anomalous media form that proliferates anomalous media viewing experiences and desires in turn.Beyond a Media Genre: Taiwanese Pili PuppetryConverging the craft technique of puppeteering and digital technology of filmmaking and animation, Pili puppetry creates a new media genre that exceeds any conventional idea of a puppet show or digital puppet, as it is something in-between. Glove puppetry is a popular traditional theatre in Taiwan, often known as “theatre in the palm” because a traditional puppet was roughly the same size as an adult’s palm. The size enabled the puppeteer to easily manipulate a puppet in one hand and be close to the audience. Traditionally, puppet shows occurred to celebrate the local deities’ birthday. Despite its popularity, the form was limited by available technology. For instance, although stories with vigorous battles were particularly popular, bleeding scenes in such an auspicious occasion were inappropriate and rare. As a live theatrical event featuring immediate interaction between the performer and the spectator, realistic bleeding scenes were rare because it is hard to immediately clean the stage during the performance. Distinct from the traditional puppet show, digital puppetry features semi-animated puppets in a virtual world. Digital puppetry is not a new concept by any means in the Western film industry. Animating a 3D puppet is closely associated with motion capture technologies and animation that are manipulated in a digitalised virtual setting (Ferguson). Commonly, the target audience of the Western digital puppetry is children, so educators sometimes use digital puppetry as a pedagogical tool (Potter; Wohlwend). With these young target audience in mind, the producers often avoid violent and bleeding scenes.Pili puppetry differs from digital puppetry in several ways. For instance, instead of targeting a young audience, Pili puppetry consistently extends the traditional martial-arts performance to include bloody fight sequences that enrich the expressiveness of traditional puppetry as a performing art. Moreover, Pili puppetry does not apply the motion capture technologies to manipulate the puppet’s movement, thus retaining the puppeteers’ puppeteering craft (clips of Pili puppetry can be seen on Pili’s official YouTube page). Hence, Pili is a unique hybrid form, creating its own anomalous space in puppetry. Among over a thousand characters across the series, the realistic “human-like” puppet is one of Pili’s most popular selling points. The new media considerably intervene in the puppet design, as close-up shots and high-resolution images can accurately project details of a puppet’s face and body movements on the screen. Consequently, Pili’s puppet modelling becomes increasingly intricate and attractive and arguably makes its virtual figures more epic yet also more “human” (Chen). Figure 1: Su Huan-Jen in the TV series Pili Killing Blade (1993). His facial expressions were relatively flat and rigid then. Reproduced with permission of Pili International Multimedia Company.Figure 2: Su Huan-Jen in the TV series Pili Nine Thrones (2003). The puppet’s facial design and costume became more delicate and complex. Reproduced with permission of Pili International Multimedia Company.Figure 3: Su Huan-Jen in the TV series Pili Fantasy: War of Dragons (2019). His facial lines softened due to more precise design technologies. The new lightweight chiffon yarn costumes made him look more elegant. The multiple-layer costumes also created more space for puppeteers to hide behind the puppet and enact more complicated manipulations. Reproduced with permission of Pili International Multimedia Company.The design of the most well-known Pili swordsman, Su Huan-Jen, demonstrates how the Pili puppet modelling became more refined and intricate in the past 20 years. In 1993, the standard design was a TV puppet with the size and body proportion slightly enlarged from the traditional puppet. Su Huan-Jen’s costumes were made from heavy fabrics, and his facial expressions were relatively flat and rigid (fig. 1). Pili produced its first puppetry film Legend of the Sacred Stone in 2000; considering the visual quality of a big screen, Pili refined the puppet design including replacing wooden eyeballs and plastic hair with real hair and glass eyeballs (Chen). The filmmaking experience inspired Pili to dramatically improve the facial design for all puppets. In 2003, Su’s modelling in Pili Nine Thrones (TV series) became noticeably much more delicate. The puppet’s size was considerably enlarged by almost three times, so a puppeteer had to use two hands to manipulate a puppet. The complex costumes and props made more space for puppeteers to hide behind the puppet and enrich the performance of the fighting movements (fig. 2). In 2019, Su’s new modelling further included new layers of lightweight fabrics, and his makeup and props became more delicate and complex (fig. 3). Such a refined aesthetic design also lends to Pili’s novelty among puppetry performances.Through the transformation of Pili in the context of puppetry history, we see how the handicraft-like puppet itself gradually commercialised into an artistic object that the audience would yearn to collect and project their bodily imagination. Anthropologist Teri Silvio notices that, for some fans, Pili puppets are similar to worship icons through which they project their affection and imaginary identity (Silvio, “Pop Culture Icons”). Intermediating with the new media, the change in the refined puppet design also comes from the audience’s expectations. Pili’s senior puppet designer Fan Shih-Ching mentioned that Pili fans are very involved, so their preferences affect the design of puppets. The complexity, particularly the layer of costumes, most clearly differentiates the aesthetics of traditional and Pili puppets. Due to the “idolisation” of some famous Pili characters, Shih-Ching has had to design more and more gaudy costumes. Each resurgence of a well-known Pili swordsman, such as Su Huan-Jen, Yi Ye Shu, and Ye Hsiao-Chai, means he has to remodel the puppet.Pili fans represent their infatuation for puppet characters through cosplay (literally “costume play”), which is when fans dress up and pretend to be a Pili character. Their cosplay, in particular, reflects the bodily practice of imaginary identity. Silvio observes that most cosplayers choose to dress as characters that are the most visually appealing rather than characters that best suit their body type. They even avoid moving too “naturally” and mainly move from pose-to-pose, similar to the frame-to-frame techne of animation. Thus, we can understand this “cosplay more as reanimating the character using the body as a kind of puppet rather than as an embodied performance of some aspect of self-identity” (Silvio 2019, 167). Hence, Pili fans’ cosplay is indicative of an anomalous desire to become the puppet-like human, which helps them transcend their social roles in their everyday life. It turns out that not only fans’ preference drives the (re)modelling of puppets but also fans attempt to model themselves in the image of their beloved puppets. The reversible dialectic between fan-star and flesh-object further provokes an “anomaly” in terms of the relationship between the viewers and the puppets. Precisely because fans have such an intimate relationship with Pili, it is important to consider how the series’ content and form configure fans’ viewing experience.Filming Bleeding PuppetsDespite its intricate aesthetics, Pili is still a series with frequent fighting-to-the-death scenes, which creates, and is the result of, extraordinary transmedia production and viewing experiences. Due to the market demand of producing episodes around 500 minutes long every month, Pili constantly creates new characters to maintain the audience’s attention and retain its novelty. So far, Pili has released thousands of characters. To ensure that new characters supersede the old ones, numerous old characters have to die within the plot.The adoption of new media allows the fighting scenes in Pili to render as more delicate, rather than consisting of loud, intense action movements. Instead, the leading swordsmen’s death inevitably takes place in a pathetic and romantic setting and consummates with a bloody sacrifice. Fighting scenes in early Pili puppetry created in the late 1980s were still based on puppets’ body movements, as the knowledge and technology of animation were still nascent and underdeveloped. At that time, the prestigious swordsman mainly relied on the fast speed of brandishing his sword. Since the early 1990s, as animation technology matured, it has become very common to see Pili use CGI animation to create a damaging sword beam for puppets to kill target enemies far away. The sword beam can fly much faster than the puppets can move, so almost every fighting scene employs CGI to visualise both sword beams and flame. The change in fighting manners provokes different representations of the bleeding and death scenes. Open wounds replace puncture wounds caused by a traditional weapon; bleeding scenes become typical, and a special feature in Pili’s transmedia puppetry.In addition to CGI animation, the use of fake blood in the Pili studio makes the performance even more realistic. Pili puppet master Ting Chen-Ching recalled that exploded puppets in traditional puppetry were commonly made by styrofoam blocks. The white styrofoam chips that sprayed everywhere after the explosion inevitably made the performance seem less realistic. By contrast, in the Pili studio, the scene of a puppet spurting blood after the explosion usually applies the technology of editing several shots. The typical procedure would be a short take that captures a puppet being injured. In its injury location, puppeteers sprinkle red confetti to represent scattered blood clots in the following shot. Sometimes the fake blood was splashed with the red confetti to make it further three-dimensional (Ting). Bloody scenes can also be filmed through multiple layers of arranged performance conducted at the same time by a group of puppeteers. Ting describes the practice of filming a bleeding puppet. Usually, some puppeteers sprinkle fake blood in front of the camera, while other puppeteers blasted the puppets toward various directions behind the blood to make the visual effects match. If the puppeteers need to show how a puppet becomes injured and vomits blood during the fight, they can install tiny pipes in the puppet in advance. During the filming, the puppeteer slowly squeezes the pipe to make the fake blood flow out from the puppet’s mouth. Such a bloody scene sometimes accompanies tears dropping from the puppet’s eyes. In some cases, the puppeteer drops the blood on the puppet’s mouth prior to the filming and then uses a powerful electric fan to blow the blood drops (Ting). Such techniques direct the blood to flow laterally against the wind, which makes the puppet’s death more aesthetically tragic. Because it is not a live performance, the puppeteer can try repeatedly until the camera captures the most ideal blood drop pattern and bleeding speed. Puppeteers have to adjust the camera distance for different bleeding scenes, which creates new modes of viewing, sensing, and representing virtual life and death. One of the most representative examples of Pili’s bleeding scenes is when Su’s best friend, Ching Yang-Zi, fights with alien devils in Legend of the Sacred Stone. (The clip of how Ching Yang-Zi fights and bleeds to death can be seen on YouTube.) Ting described how Pili prepared three different puppets of Ching for the non-fighting, fighting, and bleeding scenes (Ting). The main fighting scene starts from a low-angle medium shot that shows how Ching Yang-Zi got injured and began bleeding from the corner of his mouth. Then, a sharp weapon flies across the screen; the following close-up shows that the weapon hits Ching and he begins bleeding immediately. The successive shots move back and forth between his face and the wound in medium shot and close-up. Next, a close-up shows him stepping back with blood dripping on the ground. He then pushes the weapon out of his body to defend enemies; a final close-up follows a medium take and a long take shows the massive hemorrhage. The eruption of fluid plasma creates a natural effect that is difficult to achieve, even with 3D animation. Beyond this impressive technicality, the exceptional production and design emphasise how Pili fully embraces the ethos of transmedia: to play with multiple media forms and thereby create a new form. In the case of Pili, its form is interactive, transcending the boundaries of what we might consider the “living” and the “dead”.Epilogue: Viewing Bleeding Puppets on the ScreenThe simulated, high-quality, realistic-looking puppet designs accompanying the Pili’s featured bloody fighting sequence draw another question: What is the effect of watching human-like puppets die? What does this do to viewer-fans? Violence is prevalent throughout the historical record of human behaviour, especially in art and entertainment because these serve as outlets to fulfill a basic human need to indulge in “taboo fantasies” and escape into “realms of forbidden experience” (Schechter). When discussing the visual representations of violence and the spectacle of the sufferings of others, Susan Sontag notes, “if we consider what emotions would be desirable” (102), viewing the pain of others may not simply evoke sympathy. She argues that “[no] moral charge attaches to the representation of these cruelties. Just the provocation: can you look at this? There is the satisfaction of being able to look at the image without flinching. There is the pleasure of flinching” (41). For viewers, the boldness of watching the bloody scenes can be very inviting. Watching human-like puppets die in the action scenes similarly validates the viewer’s need for pleasure and entertainment. Although different from a human body, the puppets still bears the materiality of being-object. Therefore, watching the puppets bleeding and die as distinctly “human-like’ puppets further prevent viewers’ from feeling guilty or morally involved. The conceptual distance of being aware of the puppet’s materiality acts as a moral buffer; audiences are intimately involved through the particular aesthetic arrangement, yet morally detached. The transmedia filming of puppetry adds another layer of mediation over the human-like “living” puppets that allows such a particular experience. Sontag notices that the media generates an inevitable distance between object and subject, between witness and victim. For Sontag, although images constitute “the imaginary proximity” because it makes the “faraway sufferers” be “seen close-up on the television screen”, it is a mystification to assume that images serve as a direct link between sufferers and viewers. Rather, Sontag insists: the distance makes the viewers feel “we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence” (102). Echoing Sontag’s argument, Jeffrey Goldstein points out that “distancing” oneself from the mayhem represented in media makes it tolerable. Media creates an “almost real” visuality of violence, so the audience feels relatively safe in their surroundings when exposed to threatening images. Thus, “violent imagery must carry cues to its unreality or it loses appeal” (280). Pili puppets that are human-like, thus not human, more easily enable the audience to seek sensational excitement through viewing puppets’ bloody violence and eventual death on the screen and still feel emotionally secure. Due to the distance granted by the medium, viewers gain a sense of power by excitedly viewing the violence with an accompanying sense of moral exemption. Thus, viewers can easily excuse the limits of their personal responsibility while still being captivated by Pili’s boundary-transgressing aesthetic.The anomalous power of Pili fans’ cosplay differentiates the viewing experience of puppets’ deaths from that of other violent entertainment productions. Cosplayers physically bridge viewing/acting and life/death by dressing up as the puppet characters, bringing them to life, as flesh. Cosplay allows fans to compensate for the helplessness they experience when watching the puppets’ deaths on the screen. They can both “enjoy” the innocent pleasure of watching bleeding puppets and bring their adored dead idols “back to life” through cosplay. The onscreen violence and death thus provide an additional layer of pleasure for such cosplayers. They not only take pleasure in watching the puppets—which are an idealized version of their bodily imagination—die, but also feel empowered to revitalise their loved idols. Therefore, Pili cosplayers’ desires incite a cycle of life, pleasure, and death, in which the company responds to their consumers’ demands in kind. The intertwining of social, economic, and political factors thus collectively thrives upon media violence as entertainment. Pili creates the potential for new cross-media genre configurations that transcend the traditional/digital puppetry binary. On the one hand, the design of swordsman puppets become a simulation of a “living object” responding to the camera distance. On the other hand, the fighting and death scenes heavily rely on the puppeteers’ cooperation with animation and editing. Therefore, Pili puppetry enriches existing discourse on both puppetry and animation as life-giving processes. What is animated by Pili puppetry is not simply the swordsmen characters themselves, but new potentials for media genres and violent entertainment. AcknowledgmentMy hearty gratitude to Amy Gaeta for sharing her insights with me on the early stage of this study.ReferencesChen, Jasmine Yu-Hsing. “Transmuting Tradition: The Transformation of Taiwanese Glove Puppetry in Pili Productions.” Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia 51 (2019): 26-46.Ferguson, Jeffrey. “Lessons from Digital Puppetry: Updating a Design Framework for a Perceptual User Interface.” IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology, 2015.Goldstein, Jeffrey. “The Attractions of Violent Entertainment.” Media Psychology 1.3 (1999): 271-282.Potter, Anna. “Funding Contemporary Children’s Television: How Digital Convergence Encourages Retro Reboot.” International Journal on Communications Management 19.2 (2017): 108-112.Schechter, Harold. Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment. New York: St. Martin’s, 2005.Silvio, Teri. “Pop Culture Icons: Religious Inflections of the Character Toy in Taiwan.” Mechademia 3.1 (2010): 200-220.———. Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan. Honolulu: U Hawaii P, 2019. Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004.Ting, Chen-Ching. Interview by the author. Yunlin, Taiwan. 24 June 2019.Wohlwend, Karen E. “One Screen, Many Fingers: Young Children's Collaborative Literacy Play with Digital Puppetry Apps and Touchscreen Technologies.” Theory into Practice 54.2 (2015): 154-162.

It is widely acknowledged among film scholars that Lynch’s 2001 neo-noir Mulholland Drive is richly infused with intertextual references and homages — most notably to Charles Vidor’s Gilda (1946), Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966). What is less recognised is the extent to which J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 Gothic novella Carmilla has also influenced Mulholland Drive. This article focuses on the dynamics of the relationship between Carmilla and Mulholland Drive, particularly the formation of femme fatale Camilla Rhodes (played by Laura Elena Harring), with the aim of establishing how the Gothic shapes the viewing experience of the film. I argue that not only are there striking narrative similarities between the texts, but lying at the heart of both Carmilla and Mulholland Drive is the uncanny. By drawing on this elusive and eerie feeling, Lynch successfully introduces an archetypal quality both to Camilla and Mulholland Drive as a whole, which in turn contributes to powerful sensations of desire, dread, nostalgia, and “noirness” that are aroused by the film. As such Mulholland Drive emerges not only as a compelling work of art, but also a deeply evocative cinematic experience. I begin by providing a brief overview of Le Fanu’s Gothic tale and establish its formative influence on later cinematic texts. I then present a synopsis of Mulholland Drive before exploring the rich interrelationship the film has with Carmilla. Carmilla and the Lesbian Vampire Carmilla is narrated from the perspective of a sheltered nineteen-year-old girl called Laura, who lives in an isolated Styrian castle with her father. After a bizarre event involving a carriage accident, a young woman named Carmilla is left in the care of Laura’s father. Carmilla is beautiful and charming, but she is an enigma; her origins and even her surname remain a mystery. Though Laura identifies a number of peculiarities about her new friend’s behaviour (such as her strange, intense moods, languid body movements, and other irregular habits), the two women are captivated with each other, quickly falling in love. However, despite Carmilla’s harmless and fragile appearance, she is not what she seems. She is a one hundred and fifty year old vampire called Mircalla, Countess Karnstein (also known as Millarca — both anagrams of Carmilla), who preys on adolescent women, seducing them while feeding off their blood as they sleep. In spite of the deep affection she claims to have for Laura, Carmilla is compelled to slowly bleed her dry. This takes its physical toll on Laura who becomes progressively pallid and lethargic, before Carmilla’s true identity is revealed and she is slain. Le Fanu’s Carmilla is monumental, not only for popularising the female vampire, but for producing a sexually alluring creature that actively seeks out and seduces other women. Cinematically, the myth of the lesbian vampire has been drawn on extensively by film makers. One of the earliest female centred vampire movies to contain connotations of same-sex desire is Lambert Hilyer’s Dracula’s Daughter (1936). However, it was in the 1960s and 1970s that the spectre of the lesbian vampire exploded on screen. In part a response to the abolishment of Motion Picture Code strictures (Baker 554) and fuelled by latent anxieties about second wave feminist activism (Zimmerman 23–4), films of this cycle blended horror with erotica, reworking the lesbian vampire as a “male pornographic fantasy” (Weiss 87). These productions draw on Carmilla in varying degrees. In most, the resemblance is purely thematic; others draw on Le Fanu’s novella slightly more directly. In Roger Vadim’s Et Mourir de Plaisir (1960) an aristocratic woman called Carmilla becomes possessed by her vampire ancestor Millarca von Karnstein. In Roy Ward Baker’s The Vampire Lovers (1970) Carmilla kills Laura before seducing a girl named Emma whom she encounters after a mysterious carriage breakdown. However, the undead Gothic lady has not only made a transition from literature to screen. The figure also transcends the realm of horror, venturing into other cinematic styles and genres as a mortal vampire whose sexuality is a source of malevolence (Weiss 96–7). A well-known early example is Frank Powell’s A Fool There Was (1915), starring Theda Barra as “The Vampire,” an alluring seductress who targets wealthy men, draining them of both their money and dignity (as opposed to their blood), reducing them to madness, alcoholism, and suicide. Other famous “vamps,” as these deadly women came to be known, include the characters played by Marlene Dietrich such as Concha Pérez in Joseph von Sternberg’s The Devil is a Woman (1935). With the emergence of film noir in the early 1940s, the vamp metamorphosed into the femme fatale, who like her predecessors, takes the form of a human vampire who uses her sexuality to seduce her unwitting victims before destroying them. The deadly woman of this era functions as a prototype for neo-noir incarnations of the sexually alluring fatale figure, whose popularity resurged in the early 1980s with productions such as Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat (1981), a film commonly regarded as a remake of Billy Wilder’s 1944 classic noir Double Indemnity (Bould et al. 4; Tasker 118). Like the lesbian vampires of 1960s–1970s horror, the neo-noir femme fatale is commonly aligned with themes of same-sex desire, as she is in Mulholland Drive. Mulholland Drive Like Sunset Boulevard before it, Mulholland Drive tells the tragic tale of Hollywood dreams turned to dust, jealousy, madness, escapist fantasy, and murder (Andrews 26). The narrative is played out from the perspective of failed aspiring actress Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts) and centres on her bitter sexual obsession with former lover Camilla. The film is divided into three sections, described by Lynch as: “Part one: She found herself inside a perfect mystery. Part two: A sad illusion. Part three: Love” (Rodley 54). The first and second segments of the movie are Diane’s wishful dream, which functions as an escape from the unbearable reality that, after being humiliated and spurned by Camilla, Diane hires a hit man to have her murdered. Part three reveals the events that have led up to Diane’s fateful action. In Diane’s dream she is sweet, naïve, Betty who arrives at her wealthy aunt’s Hollywood home to find a beautiful woman in the bathroom. Earlier we witness a scene where the woman survives a violent car crash and, suffering a head injury, stumbles unnoticed into the apartment. Initially the woman introduces herself as Rita (after seeing a Gilda poster on the wall), but later confesses that she doesn’t know who she is. Undeterred by the strange circumstances surrounding Rita’s presence, Betty takes the frightened, vulnerable woman (actually Camilla) under her wing, enthusiastically assuming the role of detective in trying to discover her real identity. As Rita, Camilla is passive, dependent, and grateful. Importantly, she also fondly reciprocates the love Betty feels for her. But in reality, from Diane’s perspective at least, Camilla is a narcissistic, manipulative femme fatale (like the character portrayed by the famous star whose name she adopts in Diane’s dream) who takes sadistic delight in toying with the emotions of others. Just as Rita is Diane’s ideal lover in her fantasy, pretty Betty is Diane’s ego ideal. She is vibrant, wholesome, and has a glowing future ahead of her. This is a far cry from reality where Diane is sullen, pathetic, and haggard with no prospects. Bitterly, she blames Camilla for her failings as an actress (Camilla wins a lead role that Diane badly wanted by sleeping with the director). Ultimately, Diane also blames Camilla for her own suicide. This is implied in the dream sequence when the two women disguise Rita’s appearance after the discovery of a bloated corpse in Diane Selwyn’s apartment. The parallels between Mulholland Drive and Carmilla are numerous to the extent that it could be argued that Lynch’s film is a contemporary noir infused re-telling of Le Fanu’s novella. Both stories take the point-of-view of the blonde haired, blue eyed “victim.” Both include a vehicle accident followed by the mysterious arrival of an elusive dark haired stranger, who appears vulnerable and helpless, but whose beauty masks the fact that she is really a monster. Both narratives hinge on same-sex desire and involve the gradual emotional and physical destruction of the quarry, as she suffers at the hands of her newly found love interest. Whereas Carmilla literally sucks her victims dry before moving on to another target, Camilla metaphorically drains the life out of Diane, callously taunting her with her other lovers before dumping her. While Camilla is not a vampire per se, she is framed in a distinctly vampirish manner, her pale skin contrasted by lavish red lipstick and fingernails, and though she is not literally the living dead, the latter part of the film indicates that the only place Camilla remains alive is in Diane’s fantasy. But in the Lynchian universe, where conventional forms of narrative coherence, with their demand for logic and legibility are of little interest (Rodley ix), intertextual alignment with Carmilla extends beyond plot structure to capture the “mood,” or “feel” of the novella that is best described in terms of the uncanny — something that also lies at the very core of Lynch’s work (Rodley xi). The Gothic and the Uncanny Though Gothic literature is grounded in horror, the type of fear elicited in the works of writers that form part of this movement, such as Le Fanu (along with Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelly, and Bram Stoker to name a few), aligns more with the uncanny than with outright terror. The uncanny is an elusive quality that is difficult to pinpoint yet distinct. First and foremost it is a sense, or emotion that is related to dread and horror, but it is more complex than simply a reaction to fear. Rather, feelings of trepidation are accompanied by a peculiar, dream-like quality of something fleetingly recognisable in what is evidently unknown, conjuring up a mysterious impression of déjà vu. The uncanny has to do with uncertainty, particularly in relation to names (including one’s own name), places and what is being experienced; that things are not as they have come to appear through habit and familiarity. Though it can be frightening, at the same time it can involve a sensation that is compelling and beautiful (Royle 1–2; Punter 131). The inventory of motifs, fantasies, and phenomena that have been attributed to the uncanny are extensive. These can extend from the sight of dead bodies, skeletons, severed heads, dismembered limbs, and female sex organs, to the thought of being buried alive; from conditions such as epilepsy and madness, to haunted houses/castles and ghostly apparitions. Themes of doubling, anthropomorphism, doubt over whether an apparently living object is really animate and conversely if a lifeless object, such as a doll or machinery, is in fact alive also fall under the broad range of what constitutes the uncanny (see Jentsch 221–7; Freud 232–45; Royle 1–2). Socio-culturally, the uncanny can be traced back to the historical epoch of Enlightenment. It is the transformations of this eighteenth century “age of reason,” with its rejection of transcendental explanations, valorisation of reason over superstition, aggressively rationalist imperatives, and compulsive quests for knowledge that are argued to have first caused human experiences associated with the uncanny (Castle 8–10). In this sense, as literary scholar Terry Castle argues, the eighteenth century “invented the uncanny” (8). In relation to the psychological underpinnings of this disquieting emotion, psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch was the first to explore the subject in his 1906 document “On the Psychology of the Uncanny,” though Sigmund Freud and his 1919 paper “The Uncanny” is most popularly associated with the term. According to Jentsch, the uncanny, or the unheimlich in German (meaning “unhomely”), emerges when the “new/foreign/hostile” corresponds to the psychical association of “old/known/familiar.” The unheimlich, which sits in direct opposition to the heimlich (homely) equates to a situation where someone feels not quite “at home” or “at ease” (217–9). Jentsch attributes sensations of the unheimlich to psychical resistances that emerge in relation to the mistrust of the innovative and unusual — “to the intellectual mystery of a new thing” (218) — such as technological revolution for example. Freud builds on the concept of the unheimlich by focusing on the heimlich, arguing that the term incorporates two sets of ideas. It can refer to what is familiar and agreeable, or it can mean “what is concealed and kept out of sight” (234–5). In the context of the latter notion, the unheimlich connotes “that which ought to have remained secret or hidden but has come to light” (Freud 225). Hence for Freud, who was primarily concerned with the latent content of the psyche, feelings of uncanniness emerge when dark, disturbing truths that have been repressed and relegated to the realm of the unconscious resurface, making their way abstractly into the consciousness, creating an odd impression of the known in the unknown. Though it is the works of E.T.A. Hoffman that are most commonly associated with the unheimlich, Freud describing the author as the “unrivalled master of the uncanny in literature” (233), Carmilla is equally bound up in dialectics between the known and the unknown; the homely and the unhomely. Themes centring on doubles, the undead, haunted gardens, conflicting emotions fuelled by desire and disgust — of “adoration and also of abhorrence” (Le Fanu 264), and dream-like nocturnal encounters with sinister, shape-shifting creatures predominate. With Carmilla’s arrival the boundaries between the heimlich and the unheimlich become blurred. Though Carmilla is a stranger, her presence triggers buried childhood memories for Laura of a frightening and surreal experience where Carmilla appears in Laura’s nursery during the night, climbing into bed with her before seemingly vanishing into thin air. In this sense, Laura’s remote castle home has never been homely. Disturbing truths have always lurked in its dark recesses, the return of the dead bringing them to light. The Uncanny in Mulholland Drive The elusive qualities of the uncanny also weave their way extensively through Mulholland Drive, permeating all facets of the cinematic experience — cinematography, sound score, mise en scène, and narrative structure. As film maker and writer Chris Rodley argues, Lynch mobilises every aspect of the motion picture making process in seeking to express a sense of uncanniness in his productions: “His sensitivity to textures of sound and image, to the rhythms of speech and movement, to space, colour, and the intrinsic power of music mark him as unique in this respect.” (Rodley ix–xi). From the opening scenes of Mulholland Drive, the audience is plunged into the surreal, unheimlich realm of Diane’s dream world. The use of rich saturated colours, soft focus lenses, unconventional camera movements, stilted dialogue, and a hauntingly beautiful sound score composed by Angelo Badalamenti, generates a cumulative effect of heightened artifice. This in turn produces an impression of hyper-realism — a Baudrillardean simulacrum where the real is beyond real, taking on a form of its own that has an artificial relation to actuality (Baudrillard 6–7). Distorting the “real” in this manner produces an effect of defamiliarisation — a term first employed by critic Viktor Shklovsky (2–3) to describe the artistic process involved in making familiar objects seem strange and unfamiliar (or unheimlich). These techniques are something Lynch employs in other works. Film and literary scholar Greg Hainge (137) discusses the way colour intensification and slow motion camera tracking are used in the opening scene of Blue Velvet (1984) to destabilise the aesthetic realm of the homely, revealing it to be artifice concealing sinister truths that have so far been hidden, but that are about to come to light. Similar themes are central to Mulholland Drive; the simulacra of Diane’s fantasy creating a synthetic form of real that conceals the dark and terrible veracities of her waking life. However, the artificial dream place of Diane’s disturbed mind is disjointed and fractured, therefore, just as the uncanny gives rise to an elusive sense of mystery and uncertainty, offering a fleeting glimpse of the tangible in something otherwise inexplicable, so too is the full intelligibility of Mulholland Drive kept at an obscure distance. Though the film offers a succession of clues to meaning, the key to any form of complete understanding lingers just beyond the grasp of certainty. Names, places, and identities are infused with doubt. Not only in relation to Betty/Diane and Rita/Camilla, but regarding a succession of other strange, inexplicable characters and events, one example being the recurrent presence of a terrifying looking vagrant (Bonnie Aarons). Figures such as this are clearly poignant to the narrative, but they are also impossibly enigmatic, inviting the audience to play detective in deciphering what they signify. Themes of doubling and mirroring are also used extensively. While these motifs serve to denote the split between waking and dream states, they also destabilise the narrative in relation to what is familiar and what is unfamiliar, further grounding Mulholland Drive in the uncanny. Since its publication in 1872, Carmilla has had a significant formative influence on the construct of the seductive yet deadly woman in her various manifestations. However, rarely has the novella been paid homage to as intricately as it is in Mulholland Drive. Lynch draws on Le Fanu’s archetypal Gothic horror story, combining it with the aesthetic conventions of film noir, in order to create what is ostensibly a contemporary, poststructuralist critique of the Hollywood dream-factory. Narratively and thematically, the similarities between the two texts are numerous. However, intertextual configuration is considerably more complex, extending beyond the plot and character structure to capture the essence of the Gothic, which is grounded in the uncanny — an evocative emotion involving feelings of dread, accompanied by a dream-like impression of familiar and unfamiliar commingling. Carmilla and Mulholland Drive bypass the heimlich, delving directly into the unheimlich, where boundaries between waking and dream states are destabilised, any sense of certainty about what is real is undermined, and feelings of desire are paradoxically conjoined with loathing. Moreover, Lynch mobilises all fundamental elements of cinema in order to capture and express the elusive qualities of the Unheimlich. In this sense, the uncanny lies at the very heart of the film. What emerges as a result is an enigmatic work of art that is as profoundly alluring as it is disconcerting. References Andrews, David. “An Oneiric Fugue: The Various Logics of Mulholland Drive.” Journal of Film and Video 56 (2004): 25–40. Baker, David. “Seduced and Abandoned: Lesbian Vampires on Screen 1968–74.” Continuum 26 (2012): 553–63. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan: U Michigan P, 1994. Bould, Mark, Kathrina Glitre, and Greg Tuck. Neo-Noir. New York: Wallflower, 2009. Castle, Terry. 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