Letteratura scientifica selezionata sul tema "Literature, English (0593)"

Abstract Plasma cell granuloma of the thyroid is an uncommon lesion; only 6 cases have been reported in the English literature to date. All reported cases occurred in women, mostly after the age of 50 years. We report a case of plasma cell granuloma of the thyroid in a 46-year-old woman with a 20-year history of euthyroid goiter and a positive family history of goiter in 3 close relatives. The lesion was composed of sheets of plasma cells involving the entire parenchyma that histologically resembled plasmacytoma. Plasmacytoma was excluded by demonstration of polyclonal κ/λ light chain immunostaining and by lack of evidence of clonal bands by polymerase chain reaction for immunoglobulin heavy-chain gene rearrangement. Similarly, the predominant histologic pattern in all previously reported cases is that of marked plasma cell infiltration. A family history of thyroid disease (goiter, thyroiditis) was associated with diffuse involvement of the thyroid. Prognosis after surgery is excellent, and to our knowledge no cases of malignant transformation or recurrence have been described.

✓ Sarcoidosis is a multisystemic granulomatous disease characterized by noncaseating epithelioid granulomata that affects the lung in over 90% of patients and the central nervous system (CNS) in 5–9%. Neurosarcoidosis often occurs as multifocal meningeal and parenchymal lesions, and its diagnosis is particularly difficult in the absence of concomitant systemic disease. Hypothalamic-pituitary sarcoidosis occurs in fewer than 10% of patients with neurosarcoidosis and has been previously reported in association with profound endocrinological dysfunction. The authors report the case of a patient with isolated pituitary sarcoidosis who was first evaluated for visual symptoms and showed no preoperative endocrinological dysfunction or evidence of multisystemic or other CNS involvement. To the authors' knowledge, only 1 other such presentation is previously reported in the English literature. Such presentations are diagnostically and therapeutically challenging, and definitive diagnosis requires obtaining a biopsy specimen of the lesion with histological proof of noncaseating epithelioid granuloma, as well as the exclusion of other possible entities.

Abstract Background Solitary fibrous tumor (SFT) is a rare soft tissue tumor originally reported in the pleura. Although it has been reported in various extra-pleural sites, the occurrence of SFT in the scrotum is extremely rare. Herein, we present a 48-year-old man who had scrotal SFT. There are very few reported cases of genitourinary SFTs, this is only the fifth report of SFT of the scrotum in the English medical literature. Case presentation In this study, we report on a 48-year-old man who presented with a 5 × 8 cm scrotal mass between his testes. Physical examination revealed a 4.7 × 8.5 cm lobulated tumor mass located between his testicles. Surgical excision of the tumor with scrotal approach was done and pathology reported a SFT. The patient was alive without tumor recurrence or distant metastasis during ongoing follow-up for 9 months post-operatively.. Conclusion Scrotal SFTs are very rare and only five cases have been reported in English literature to date. Treatment often involves surgical resection, and a definite diagnosis is made with the help of immunohistochemistry. The current general consensus for the management of SFTs is long-term follow-up after surgical excision of the tumor.

Background and aimsAdenoma detection rate (ADR) has been shown to correlate with interval cancers after screening colonoscopy and is commonly used as surrogate parameter for its outcome quality. ADR improvements by various techniques have been studied in randomised trials using either parallel or tandem methodololgy.MethodsA systematic literature search was done on randomised trials (full papers, English language) on tandem or parallel studies using either adenoma miss rates (AMR) or ADR as main outcome to test different novel technologies on imaging (new endoscope generation, narrow band imaging, iScan, Fujinon intelligent chromoendoscopy/blue laser imaging and wide angle scopes) and mechanical devices (transparent caps, endocuff, endorings and balloons). Available meta analyses were also screened for randomised studies.ResultsOverall, 24 randomised tandem trials with AMR (variable definitions and methodology) and 42 parallel studies using ADR (homogeneous methodology) as primary outcome were included. Significant differences in favour of the new method were found in 66.7% of tandem studies (8222 patients) but in only 23.8% of parallel studies (28 059 patients), with higher rates of positive studies for mechanical devices than for imaging methods. In a random-effects model, small absolute risk differences were found, but these were double in magnitude for tandem as compared with parallel studies (imaging: tandem 0.04 (0.01, 0.07), parallel 0.02 (0.00, 0.04); mechanical devices: tandem 0.08 (0.00, 0.15), parallel 0.04 (0.01, 0.07)). Nevertheless, 94.2% of missed adenomas in the tandem studies were small (<1 cm) and/or non-advanced.ConclusionsA tandem study is more likely to yield positive results than a simple parallel trial; this may be due to the use of different parameters, variable definitions and methodology, and perhaps also a higher likelihood of bias. Therefore, we suggest to accept positive results of tandem studies only if accompanied by positive results from parallel trials.

This article investigates the prosthesis of identity through the process of branding. It examines cross-cultural manifestations of this phenomena from sixth millennium BCE Syria to twelfth century Japan and Britain. From the Neolithic Era, humanity has sort to extend their identities using pictorial signs that were characteristically simple. Designed to be distinctive and instantly recognisable, the totemic symbols served to signal the origin of the bearer. Subsequently, the development of branding coincided with periods of increased in mobility both in respect to geography and social strata. This includes fifth millennium Mesopotamia, nineteenth century Britain, and America during the 1920s.There are fewer articles of greater influence on contemporary culture than A Theory of Human Motivation written by Abraham Maslow in 1943. Nearly seventy-five years later, his theories about the societal need for “belongingness” and “esteem” remain a mainstay of advertising campaigns (Maslow). Although the principles are used to sell a broad range of products from shampoo to breakfast cereal they are epitomised by apparel. This is with refence to garments and accessories bearing corporation logos. Whereas other purchased items, imbued with abstract products, are intended for personal consumption the public display of these symbols may be interpreted as a form of signalling. The intention of the wearers is to literally seek the fulfilment of the aforementioned social needs. This article investigates the use of brands as prosthesis.Coats and Crests: Identity Garnered on Garments in the Middle Ages and the Muromachi PeriodA logo, at its most basic, is a pictorial sign. In his essay, The Visual Language, Ernest Gombrich described the principle as reducing images to “distinctive features” (Gombrich 46). They represent a “simplification of code,” the meaning of which we are conditioned to recognise (Gombrich 46). Logos may also be interpreted as a manifestation of totemism. According to anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, the principle exists in all civilisations and reflects an effort to evoke the power of nature (71-127). Totemism is also a method of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166).This principle, in a form garnered on garments, is manifested in Mon Kiri. The practice of cutting out family crests evolved into a form of corporate branding in Japan during the Meiji Period (1868-1912) (Christensen 14). During the Muromachi period (1336-1573) the crests provided an integral means of identification on the battlefield (Christensen 13). The adorning of crests on armour was also exercised in Europe during the twelfth century, when the faces of knights were similarly obscured by helmets (Family Crests of Japan 8). Both Mon Kiri and “Coat[s] of Arms” utilised totemic symbols (Family Crests of Japan 8; Elven 14; Christensen 13). The mon for the imperial family (figs. 1 & 2) during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia flowers (Goin’ Japaneque). “Coat[s] of Arms” in Britain featured a menagerie of animals including lions (fig. 3), horses and eagles (Elven).The prothesis of identity through garnering symbols on the battlefield provided “safety” through demonstrating “belongingness”. This constituted a conflation of two separate “needs” in the “hierarchy of prepotency” propositioned by Maslow. Fig. 1. The mon symbolising the Imperial Family during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia. "Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Ancient Key to Samurai Culture." Goin' Japaneque! 15 Nov. 2015. 27 July 2019 <http://goinjapanesque.com/05983/>.Fig. 2. An example of the crest being utilised on a garment can be found in this portrait of samurai Oda Nobunaga. "Japan's 12 Most Famous Samurai." All About Japan. 27 Aug. 2018. 27 July 2019 <https://allabout-japan.com/en/article/5818/>.Fig. 3. A detail from the “Index of Subjects of Crests.” Elven, John Peter. The Book of Family Crests: Comprising Nearly Every Family Bearing, Properly Blazoned and Explained, Accompanied by Upwards of Four Thousand Engravings. Henry Washbourne, 1847.The Pursuit of Prestige: Prosthetic Pedigree from the Late Georgian to the Victorian Eras In 1817, the seal engraver to Prince Regent, Alexander Deuchar, described the function of family crests in British Crests: Containing The Crest and Mottos of The Families of Great Britain and Ireland; Together with Those of The Principal Cities and Heraldic Terms as follows: The first approach to civilization is the distinction of ranks. So necessary is this to the welfare and existence of society, that, without it, anarchy and confusion must prevail… In an early stage, heraldic emblems were characteristic of the bearer… Certain ordinances were made, regulating the mode of bearing arms, and who were entitled to bear them. (i-v)The partitioning of social classes in Britain had deteriorated by the time this compendium was published, with displays of “conspicuous consumption” displacing “heraldic emblems” as a primary method of status signalling (Deuchar 2; Han et al. 18). A consumerism born of newfound affluence, and the desire to signify this wealth through luxury goods, was as integral to the Industrial Revolution as technological development. In Rebels against the Future, published in 1996, Kirkpatrick Sale described the phenomenon:A substantial part of the new population, though still a distinct minority, was made modestly affluent, in some places quite wealthy, by privatization of of the countryside and the industrialization of the cities, and by the sorts of commercial and other services that this called forth. The new money stimulated the consumer demand… that allowed a market economy of a scope not known before. (40)This also reflected improvements in the provision of “health, food [and] education” (Maslow; Snow 25-28). With their “physiological needs” accommodated, this ”substantial part” of the population were able to prioritised their “esteem needs” including the pursuit for prestige (Sale 40; Maslow).In Britain during the Middle Ages laws “specified in minute detail” what each class was permitted to wear (Han et al. 15). A groom, for example, was not able to wear clothing that exceeded two marks in value (Han et al. 15). In a distinct departure during the Industrial Era, it was common for the “middling and lower classes” to “ape” the “fashionable vices of their superiors” (Sale 41). Although mon-like labels that were “simplified so as to be conspicuous and instantly recognisable” emerged in Europe during the nineteenth century their application on garments remained discrete up until the early twentieth century (Christensen 13-14; Moore and Reid 24). During the 1920s, the French companies Hermes and Coco Chanel were amongst the clothing manufacturers to pioneer this principle (Chaney; Icon).During the 1860s, Lincolnshire-born Charles Frederick Worth affixed gold stamped labels to the insides of his garments (Polan et al. 9; Press). Operating from Paris, the innovation was consistent with the introduction of trademark laws in France in 1857 (Lopes et al.). He would become known as the “Father of Haute Couture”, creating dresses for royalty and celebrities including Empress Eugene from Constantinople, French actress Sarah Bernhardt and Australian Opera Singer Nellie Melba (Lopes et al.; Krick). The clothing labels proved and ineffective deterrent to counterfeit, and by the 1890s the House of Worth implemented other measures to authenticate their products (Press). The legitimisation of the origin of a product is, arguably, the primary function of branding. This principle is also applicable to subjects. The prothesis of brands, as totemic symbols, assisted consumers to relocate themselves within a new system of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166). It was one born of commerce as opposed to heraldry.Selling of Self: Conferring Identity from the Neolithic to Modern ErasIn his 1817 compendium on family crests, Deuchar elaborated on heraldry by writing:Ignoble birth was considered as a stain almost indelible… Illustrious parentage, on the other hand, constituted the very basis of honour: it communicated peculiar rights and privileges, to which the meaner born man might not aspire. (v-vi)The Twinings Logo (fig. 4) has remained unchanged since the design was commissioned by the grandson of the company founder Richard Twining in 1787 (Twining). In addition to reflecting the heritage of the family-owned company, the brand indicated the origin of the tea. This became pertinent during the nineteenth century. Plantations began to operate from Assam to Ceylon (Jones 267-269). Amidst the rampant diversification of tea sources in the Victorian era, concerns about the “unhygienic practices” of Chinese producers were proliferated (Wengrow 11). Subsequently, the brand also offered consumers assurance in quality. Fig. 4. The Twinings Logo reproduced from "History of Twinings." Twinings. 24 July 2019 <https://www.twinings.co.uk/about-twinings/history-of-twinings>.The term ‘brand’, adapted from the Norse “brandr”, was introduced into the English language during the sixteenth century (Starcevic 179). At its most literal, it translates as to “burn down” (Starcevic 179). Using hot elements to singe markings onto animals been recorded as early as 2700 BCE in Egypt (Starcevic 182). However, archaeologists concur that the modern principle of branding predates this practice. The implementation of carved seals or stamps to make indelible impressions of handcrafted objects dates back to Prehistoric Mesopotamia (Starcevic 183; Wengrow 13). Similar traditions developed during the Bronze Age in both China and the Indus Valley (Starcevic 185). In all three civilisations branding facilitated both commerce and aspects of Totemism. In the sixth millennium BCE in “Prehistoric” Mesopotamia, referred to as the Halaf period, stone seals were carved to emulate organic form such as animal teeth (Wengrow 13-14). They were used to safeguard objects by “confer[ring] part of the bearer’s personality” (Wengrow 14). They were concurrently applied to secure the contents of vessels containing “exotic goods” used in transactions (Wengrow 15). Worn as amulets (figs. 5 & 6) the seals, and the symbols they produced, were a physical extension of their owners (Wengrow 14).Fig. 5. Recreation of stamp seal amulets from Neolithic Mesopotamia during the sixth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49.1 (2008): 14.Fig. 6. “Lot 25Y: Rare Syrian Steatite Amulet – Fertility God 5000 BCE.” The Salesroom. 27 July 2019 <https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/artemis-gallery-ancient-art/catalogue-id-srartem10006/lot-a850d229-a303-4bae-b68c-a6130005c48a>. Fig. 7. Recreation of stamp seal designs from Mesopotamia from the late fifth to fourth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49. 1 (2008): 16.In the following millennia, the seals would increase exponentially in application and aesthetic complexity (fig. 7) to support the development of household cum cottage industries (Wengrow 15). In addition to handcrafts, sealed vessels would transport consumables such as wine, aromatic oils and animal fats (Wengrow 18). The illustrations on the seals included depictions of rituals undertaken by human figures and/or allegories using animals. It can be ascertained that the transition in the Victorian Era from heraldry to commerce, from family to corporation, had precedence. By extension, consumers were able to participate in this process of value attribution using brands as signifiers. The principle remained prevalent during the modern and post-modern eras and can be respectively interpreted using structuralist and post-structuralist theory.Totemism to Simulacrum: The Evolution of Advertising from the Modern to Post-Modern Eras In 2011, Lisa Chaney wrote of the inception of the Coco Chanel logo (fig. 8) in her biography Chanel: An Intimate Life: A crucial element in the signature design of the Chanel No.5 bottle is the small black ‘C’ within a black circle set as the seal at the neck. On the top of the lid are two more ‘C’s, intertwined back to back… from at least 1924, the No5 bottles sported the unmistakable logo… these two ‘C’s referred to Gabrielle, – in other words Coco Chanel herself, and would become the logo for the House of Chanel. Chaney continued by describing Chanel’s fascination of totemic symbols as expressed through her use of tarot cards. She also “surrounded herself with objects ripe with meaning” such as representations of wheat and lions in reference prosperity and to her zodiac symbol ‘Leo’ respectively. Fig. 8. No5 Chanel Perfume, released in 1924, featured a seal-like logo attached to the bottle neck. “No5.” Chanel. 25 July 2019 <https://www.chanel.com/us/fragrance/p/120450/n5-parfum-grand-extrait/>.Fig. 9. This illustration of the bottle by Georges Goursat was published in a women’s magazine circa 1920s. “1921 Chanel No5.” Inside Chanel. 26 July 2019 <http://inside.chanel.com/en/timeline/1921_no5>; “La 4éme Fête de l’Histoire Samedi 16 et dimache 17 juin.” Ville de Perigueux. Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Périgord. 28 Mar. 2018. 26 July 2019 <https://www.perigueux-maap.fr/category/archives/page/5/>. This product was considered the “financial basis” of the Chanel “empire” which emerged during the second and third decades of the twentieth century (Tikkanen). Chanel is credited for revolutionising Haute Couture by introducing chic modern designs that emphasised “simplicity and comfort.” This was as opposed to the corseted highly embellished fashion that characterised the Victorian Era (Tikkanen). The lavish designs released by the House of Worth were, in and of themselves, “conspicuous” displays of “consumption” (Veblen 17). In contrast, the prestige and status associated with the “poor girl” look introduced by Chanel was invested in the story of the designer (Tikkanen). A primary example is her marinière or sailor’s blouse with a Breton stripe that epitomised her ascension from café singer to couturier (Tikkanen; Burstein 8). This signifier might have gone unobserved by less discerning consumers of fashion if it were not for branding. Not unlike the Prehistoric Mesopotamians, this iteration of branding is a process which “confer[s]” the “personality” of the designer into the garment (Wengrow 13 -14). The wearer of the garment is, in turn, is imbued by extension. Advertisers in the post-structuralist era embraced Levi-Strauss’s structuralist anthropological theories (Williamson 50). This is with particular reference to “bricolage” or the “preconditioning” of totemic symbols (Williamson 173; Pool 50). Subsequently, advertising creatives cum “bricoleur” employed his principles to imbue the brands with symbolic power. This symbolic capital was, arguably, transferable to the product and, ultimately, to its consumer (Williamson 173).Post-structuralist and semiotician Jean Baudrillard “exhaustively” critiqued brands and the advertising, or simulacrum, that embellished them between the late 1960s and early 1980s (Wengrow 10-11). In Simulacra and Simulation he wrote,it is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum. (6)The symbolic power of the Chanel brand resonates in the ‘profound reality’ of her story. It is efficiently ‘denatured’ through becoming simplified, conspicuous and instantly recognisable. It is, as a logo, physically juxtaposed as simulacra onto apparel. This simulacrum, in turn, effects the ‘profound reality’ of the consumer. In 1899, economist Thorstein Veblen wrote in The Theory of the Leisure Class:Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods it the means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure… costly entertainments, such as potlatch or the ball, are peculiarly adapted to serve this end… he consumes vicariously for his host at the same time that he is witness to the consumption… he is also made to witness his host’s facility in etiquette. (47)Therefore, according to Veblen, it was the witnessing of “wasteful” consumption that “confers status” as opposed the primary conspicuous act (Han et al. 18). Despite television being in its experimental infancy advertising was at “the height of its powers” during the 1920s (Clark et al. 18; Hill 30). Post-World War I consumers, in America, experienced an unaccustomed level of prosperity and were unsuspecting of the motives of the newly formed advertising agencies (Clark et al. 18). Subsequently, the ‘witnessing’ of consumption could be constructed across a plethora of media from the newly emerged commercial radio to billboards (Hill viii–25). The resulting ‘status’ was ‘conferred’ onto brand logos. Women’s magazines, with a legacy dating back to 1828, were a primary locus (Hill 10).Belonging in a Post-Structuralist WorldIt is significant to note that, in a post-structuralist world, consumers do not exclusively seek upward mobility in their selection of brands. The establishment of counter-culture icon Levi-Strauss and Co. was concurrent to the emergence of both The House of Worth and Coco Chanel. The Bavarian-born Levi Strauss commenced selling apparel in San Francisco in 1853 (Levi’s). Two decades later, in partnership with Nevada born tailor Jacob Davis, he patented the “riveted-for-strength” workwear using blue denim (Levi’s). Although the ontology of ‘jeans’ is contested, references to “Jene Fustyan” date back the sixteenth century (Snyder 139). It involved the combining cotton, wool and linen to create “vestments” for Geonese sailors (Snyder 138). The Two Horse Logo (fig. 10), depicting them unable to pull apart a pair of jeans to symbolise strength, has been in continuous use by Levi Strauss & Co. company since its design in 1886 (Levi’s). Fig. 10. The Two Horse Logo by Levi Strauss & Co. has been in continuous use since 1886. Staff Unzipped. "Two Horses. One Message." Heritage. Levi Strauss & Co. 1 July 2011. 25 July 2019 <https://www.levistrauss.com/2011/07/01/two-horses-many-versions-one-message/>.The “rugged wear” would become the favoured apparel amongst miners at American Gold Rush (Muthu 6). Subsequently, between the 1930s – 1960s Hollywood films cultivated jeans as a symbol of “defiance” from Stage Coach staring John Wayne in 1939 to Rebel without A Cause staring James Dean in 1955 (Muthu 6; Edgar). Consequently, during the 1960s college students protesting in America (fig. 11) against the draft chose the attire to symbolise their solidarity with the working class (Hedarty). Notwithstanding a 1990s fashion revision of denim into a diversity of garments ranging from jackets to skirts, jeans have remained a wardrobe mainstay for the past half century (Hedarty; Muthu 10). Fig. 11. Although the brand label is not visible, jeans as initially introduced to the American Goldfields in the nineteenth century by Levi Strauss & Co. were cultivated as a symbol of defiance from the 1930s – 1960s. It documents an anti-war protest that occurred at the Pentagon in 1967. Cox, Savannah. "The Anti-Vietnam War Movement." ATI. 14 Dec. 2016. 16 July 2019 <https://allthatsinteresting.com/vietnam-war-protests#7>.In 2003, the journal Science published an article “Does Rejection Hurt? An Fmri Study of Social Exclusion” (Eisenberger et al.). The cross-institutional study demonstrated that the neurological reaction to rejection is indistinguishable to physical pain. Whereas during the 1940s Maslow classified the desire for “belonging” as secondary to “physiological needs,” early twenty-first century psychologists would suggest “[social] acceptance is a mechanism for survival” (Weir 50). In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard wrote: Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal… (1)In the intervening thirty-eight years since this document was published the artifice of our interactions has increased exponentially. In order to locate ‘belongness’ in this hyperreality, the identities of the seekers require a level of encoding. Brands, as signifiers, provide a vehicle.Whereas in Prehistoric Mesopotamia carved seals, worn as amulets, were used to extend the identity of a person, in post-digital China WeChat QR codes (fig. 12), stored in mobile phones, are used to facilitate transactions from exchanging contact details to commerce. Like other totems, they provide access to information such as locations, preferences, beliefs, marital status and financial circumstances. These individualised brands are the most recent incarnation of a technology that has developed over the past eight thousand years. The intermediary iteration, emblems affixed to garments, has remained prevalent since the twelfth century. Their continued salience is due to their visibility and, subsequent, accessibility as signifiers. Fig. 12. It may be posited that Wechat QR codes are a form individualised branding. Like other totems, they store information pertaining to the owner’s location, beliefs, preferences, marital status and financial circumstances. “Join Wechat groups using QR code on 2019.” Techwebsites. 26 July 2019 <https://techwebsites.net/join-wechat-group-qr-code/>.Fig. 13. Brands function effectively as signifiers is due to the international distribution of multinational corporations. This is the shopfront of Chanel in Dubai, which offers customers apparel bearing consistent insignia as the Parisian outlet at on Rue Cambon. Customers of Chanel can signify to each other with the confidence that their products will be recognised. “Chanel.” The Dubai Mall. 26 July 2019 <https://thedubaimall.com/en/shop/chanel>.Navigating a post-structuralist world of increasing mobility necessitates a rudimental understanding of these symbols. Whereas in the nineteenth century status was conveyed through consumption and witnessing consumption, from the twentieth century onwards the garnering of brands made this transaction immediate (Veblen 47; Han et al. 18). The bricolage of the brands is constructed by bricoleurs working in any number of contemporary creative fields such as advertising, filmmaking or song writing. They provide a system by which individuals can convey and recognise identities at prima facie. They enable the prosthesis of identity.ReferencesBaudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. United States: University of Michigan Press, 1994.Burstein, Jessica. Cold Modernism: Literature, Fashion, Art. United States: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.Chaney, Lisa. Chanel: An Intimate Life. United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited, 2011.Christensen, J.A. Cut-Art: An Introduction to Chung-Hua and Kiri-E. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1989. Clark, Eddie M., Timothy C. Brock, David E. Stewart, David W. Stewart. Attention, Attitude, and Affect in Response to Advertising. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis Group, 1994.Deuchar, Alexander. British Crests: Containing the Crests and Mottos of the Families of Great Britain and Ireland Together with Those of the Principal Cities – Primary So. London: Kirkwood & Sons, 1817.Ebert, Robert. “Great Movie: Stage Coach.” Robert Ebert.com. 1 Aug. 2011. 10 Mar. 2019 <https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-stagecoach-1939>.Elven, John Peter. The Book of Family Crests: Comprising Nearly Every Family Bearing, Properly Blazoned and Explained, Accompanied by Upwards of Four Thousand Engravings. London: Henry Washbourne, 1847.Eisenberger, Naomi I., Matthew D. Lieberman, and Kipling D. Williams. "Does Rejection Hurt? An Fmri Study of Social Exclusion." Science 302.5643 (2003): 290-92.Family Crests of Japan. California: Stone Bridge Press, 2007.Gombrich, Ernst. "The Visual Image: Its Place in Communication." Scientific American 272 (1972): 82-96.Hedarty, Stephanie. "How Jeans Conquered the World." BBC World Service. 28 Feb. 2012. 26 July 2019 <https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17101768>. Han, Young Jee, Joseph C. Nunes, and Xavier Drèze. "Signaling Status with Luxury Goods: The Role of Brand Prominence." Journal of Marketing 74.4 (2010): 15-30.Hill, Daniel Delis. Advertising to the American Woman, 1900-1999. United States of Ame: Ohio State University Press, 2002."History of Twinings." Twinings. 24 July 2019 <https://www.twinings.co.uk/about-twinings/history-of-twinings>. icon-icon: Telling You More about Icons. 18 Dec. 2016. 26 July 2019 <http://www.icon-icon.com/en/hermes-logo-the-horse-drawn-carriage/>. Jones, Geoffrey. Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Ancient Key to Samurai Culture." Goin' Japaneque! 15 Nov. 2015. 27 July 2019 <http://goinjapanesque.com/05983/>. Krick, Jessa. "Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895) and the House of Worth." Heilburnn Timeline of Art History. The Met. Oct. 2004. 23 July 2019 <https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wrth/hd_wrth.htm>. Levi’s. "About Levis Strauss & Co." 25 July 2019 <https://www.levis.com.au/about-us.html>. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Totemism. London: Penguin, 1969.Lopes, Teresa de Silva, and Paul Duguid. Trademarks, Brands, and Competitiveness. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010.Maslow, Abraham. "A Theory of Human Motivation." British Journal of Psychiatry 208.4 (1942): 313-13.Moore, Karl, and Susan Reid. "The Birth of Brand: 4000 Years of Branding History." Business History 4.4 (2008).Muthu, Subramanian Senthikannan. Sustainability in Denim. Cambridge Woodhead Publishing, 2017.Polan, Brenda, and Roger Tredre. The Great Fashion Designers. Oxford: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009.Pool, Roger C. Introduction. Totemism. New ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.Press, Claire. Wardrobe Crisis: How We Went from Sunday Best to Fast Fashion. Melbourne: Schwartz Publishing, 2016.Sale, K. Rebels against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age. Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1996.Snow, C.P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959. Snyder, Rachel Louise. Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.Starcevic, Sladjana. "The Origin and Historical Development of Branding and Advertising in the Old Civilizations of Africa, Asia and Europe." Marketing 46.3 (2015): 179-96.Tikkanen, Amy. "Coco Chanel." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 19 Apr. 2019. 25 July 2019 <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Coco-Chanel>.Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions. London: Macmillan, 1975.Weir, Kirsten. "The Pain of Social Rejection." American Psychological Association 43.4 (2012): 50.Williamson, Judith. Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. Ideas in Progress. London: Boyars, 1978.

This thesis presents a critical edition in modern spelling of The London Prodigal, a comedy played by the King's Men and printed in 1605 by Thomas Creede for the publisher Nathaniel Butter. The title-page (photographically reproduced) attributes the play to William Shakespeare. This claim is assessed and judged to be mistaken. Both external and internal evidence have been examined in relation to eight possible authorship candidates; Thomas Dekker emerges as the strongest. The present text of the play is based on the 1605 Quarto. Collation of twelve copies revealed several press variants. The introduction treats the play's publication and stage-history and takes a critical look at its background and sources, plot and structure, setting, characters, style, themes, and role in the development of Elizabethan-Jacobean drama. An attempt is made to determine the date of composition, as well as the author. A short section is devoted to conjecture about the manuscript copy used for the Quarto and to bibliographical deductions about its treatment in the printing-house. A full commentary glosses obscurities and enlarges on the play's literary, social, and historical allusions. There are textual notes on variants, emendations, and lineation. An appendix reproduces the parable of the Prodigal Son from the 1568 Bishops' Bible.
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Master of Arts
Department of English
Michael L. Donnelly
Among the body of criticism on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, critics such as Cleo McNelly Kearns and Alireza Farahbakhsh have recently interpreted the poet’s “intolerable wrestle / With words and meanings” (EC II) in light of deconstructionist theory. Although the poetry does recognize the difficulty of speaking about spiritual experience, it does not embrace the resulting linguistic miscommunication. In fact, the poems resist such a move, identifying the spiritual danger of such miscommunication; instead, they seek to overcome these difficulties and accurately communicate spiritual experience – an aim achieved in the context of biblical prophecy. Louis Martz argues that the Quartets are, in fact, not prophetic; however, he defines prophecy in terms of its social interests, rather than in terms of the interest in the human-divine relationship that characterizes both biblical tradition and Eliot’s poetry. I want to argue that reading the Quartets in the context of biblical prophecy, filtered through mystical tradition, explains their ability to transcend linguistic difficulty and explore spiritual experience in human language. In biblical tradition, the prophets overcome linguistic difficulty through a direct encounter with God, which purifies language of error and equips them to speak of divine reality. In Eliot’s Quartets, the poetry undergoes a similar purifying experience meant to replace linguistic error with a meaningful exploration of spiritual experience. For the Quartets, linguistic purification is accomplished by means of the mystical via negativa. Appropriating images associated with the via negativa, the poetry denies language tied to direct perception of spiritual reality and adopts instead a language that conveys such experience through unfamiliar words and images. In that language, the poetry is purified of its errors and made capable of exploring the human relationship with God. A poetry identified with the Incarnation, this solution communicates in human language the reality of spiritual experience. In this communication, the poetry at last explores spiritual experience in a way freed of miscommunication and meaningful for the audience, thereby fulfilling its prophetic aims.

Master of Arts
Department of English
Timothy A. Dayton
This thesis project seeks to reconcile the literary criticism of Marxist critic and advocate of literary realism Georg Lukács with the writing of postmodern author Thomas Pynchon in order to validate the continued relevance of Lukácsian aesthetics. Chapter 1 argues that Lukács’ The Historical Novel is not only a valid lens with which to analyze Pynchon’s own historical novel, Mason & Dixon, but that such analysis will yield valuable insight. Chapter 2 illustrates the aesthetic transition from the historical drama to the historical novel by using Lukács’ ideas to explicate The Courier’s Tragedy, a historical drama found within the pages of Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. Chapter 3 applies Lukács’ ideas on the “world-historical” figure and the “mediocre” hero of the classic historical novel to Mason & Dixon. Chapter 4 asserts that Mason & Dixon enables contemporary readers to experience the novel as what Lukács calls a “prehistory” to the present. This chapter also illustrates how the prehistory of Mason & Dixon anticipates Pynchon’s nonfiction essay “A Journey into the Mind of Watts.” Finally, this chapter demonstrates how Pynchon avoids the pitfall of modernization in Mason & Dixon, which Lukács defines as the dressing up of contemporary crises and psychology in a historical setting. Chapter 5 ties together the work of the previous four chapters and offers conclusions on both what Pynchon teaches us about Lukács, as well as what Lukács helps us to learn about Pynchon.

In Anglophone postcolonial fiction of the twentieth century, myth is used as a framing device that contains and interrogates historical event, thereby functioning as a form of alternative history. Despite the prevalence of cross-cultural symbolic systems and radically hybrid forms of narration, the dominant method of reading myth in postcolonial literary criticism remains dependent on conceptual models that construct myth as originary racial narrative. This particular approach fosters readings of contemporary secular myths of “nation”, “land” or “identity” within culturally monolithic frames. I scrutinize the intersections between early structuralist approaches to myth, and later post-structuralist deconstruction of myth and suggest a postcolonial reading of myth as the ideological coded middle space between sacred and secular narrative. Focusing on four novels from Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Caribbean, I demonstrate the continued influence and adaptability of myth to narrate vastly different historical and socio-cultural contexts. Taking into account several major shifts in the conceptualization of twentieth-century myth criticism , I develop a critical vocabulary for comparative readings of myth which interrogates existing discourses on the categories of “archetype”, “ideology” and “symbol”. My approach is comparativist, and foregrounds the importance of locating myth within literary and socio-cultural context. The introduction to this study defines the field of myth criticism in relation to postcolonial fiction. I provide outlines of the theoretical positions drawn from Carl Gustav Jung, Roland Barthes, Northrop Frye and Bruce Lincoln and demonstrate the relevance of each in relation to reading myth in the four novels under survey. The first chapter looks at the way Alfred Yuson exposes mythic constructions of Filipino identity in The Great Philippine Jungle Energy Café (1987). The second chapter provides a comparative study of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (1992) and Allan Sealy's The Everest Hotel A Calender (1998). This chapter analyzes Ondaatje and Sealy's employment of the Fisher King myth as a device for narrating radically different visions of postcolonial community. The third chapter analyzes the function of archetype as a vehicle for ideology in Wilson Harris's Jonestown (1996). The conclusion of this study suggests the way this method of analysis can provoke further critical inquiry in the field of postcolonial myth criticism.

This thesis argues that the Middle English alliterative prosody of the Piers Plowman tradition was influenced by a discourse combining law, history, homily and poetry which was inherited from the administrative practices of the Anglo-Saxon period. As literary and legal textual genres developed recognizably distinct formal characteristics in the later Middle Ages, the combination of homiletic rhetoric and alliterative sound-patterning evoked a surviving discourse in which the formal characteristics of poems and documents were less clearly distinguished. Thus insofar as it evoked Anglo-Saxon textual culture, Piers Plowman provided a formal model which was particularly suitable to criticisms of political institutions that consolidated their power by developing new distinctions between the genres of bureaucratic texts. In each of the texts and traditions studied – Wulfstan’s homiletic law code I–II Cnut and its Latin translations, The First Worcester Fragment, Laȝamon’s Arthurian Brut chronicle-poem, The South English Legendary "Life of St. Egwine", and the Piers Plowman tradition poem Mum and the Sothsegger – apparently “literary” devices are used to authorize historically-based “legal” claims, particularly on behalf of ecclesiastical institutions looking to maintain their local influence in the face of increasingly consolidated royal administrative authority. Though oaths played a much less important procedural role after the Norman Conquest than they did in the Anglo-Saxon period, the appearance of "creative" authenticating procedures in "commemorative" texts created the appearance of orality to post-Conquest readers, to criticize a government which claimed its English "common" law to originate in the remotest recorded antiquity, even as it abandoned the practices actually recorded in the earliest surviving law codes and documents to be written in England. Comparing these texts allows a deeper understanding of their shared authenticating strategies, and also a re-appraisal of the methods we use to describe the relationships between medieval documents and authors, literature and law, texts and contexts. Appended to the dissertation is an edition of the SEL "Life of St. Egwine." Because Egwine's hagiographic tradition is so thematically invested in political concerns and closely interconnected with legal documents attributed to Egwine himself, the edition provides an opportunity to take a "disjunctively" literary and diplomatic approach to the tradition, in the process exploring some of the practical implications of the larger theoretical issues raised by the thesis as a whole.

This dissertation analyzes undertheorized grammatical and linguistic details of Shakespeare’s language. Using tools derived from the fields of linguistics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis, I trace the ways that Shakespeare’s speakers represent themselves in language, and how they position themselves relative to their interlocutors. Grounding my study in a selection of Shakespeare’s works in which questions of self-positioning are particularly fraught, I argue that the nuances of grammar that undergird the linguistic performance of Shakespeare’s speakers encode significant clues about interaction and interpersonal relationships. I maintain that the minute details of linguistic encounters, easily overlooked words such as modal verbs (particularly shall and will) and deictic markers (words such as I, this, and now), hold important information about speakers’ perceptions of themselves, their interlocutors, and their environment. Attention to such details, and to charged moments of linguistic encounter in which speakers must negotiate their modes of self-positioning, helps to illuminate the troubled processes of self-representation and changing self-perception. Chapter one focuses on Shakespeare’s sonnets, and suggests that these poems provide a productive model for the examination of the nuances of speech and interactive dialogue. I anchor my discussion in the particular resonance of the word shall in the sonnets, and explore the ways in which the sonnet speaker attempts to preserve linguistic control relative to a threatening interlocutor. The second chapter extends these concerns to consider how the speakers of Troilus and Cressida respond to a wide network of potentially threatening interlocutors. In this chapter, I focus on linguistic encounters such as arguments and gossip to examine the risks that speakers encounter when they enter the fray of communal discourse. My third chapter turns to Coriolanus to consider moments of aggressive linguistic collisions, in which speakers vie for the right to speak a potent and contested word such as shall. The fourth and final chapter analyzes Richard II through the frame of deictic markers and grammatical modes of self-reference to consider the protective strategies afforded by language in moments of crisis.

This dissertation considers the literary treatment of revenge in medieval England and Iceland. Vengeance and feud were an essential part of these cultures; far from the reckless, impulsive action that the word conjures up in modern minds, revenge was considered both a right and a duty and was legislated and regulated by social norms. It was an important tool for obtaining justice and protecting property, family, and reputation. Accordingly, many medieval literary works seem to accept revenge without question. Many, however, evince a great sensitivity to the ambiguities and paradoxes inherent in an act of revenge. In my study, I consider three works that are emblematic of this responsiveness to and indeed, anxiety about revenge. Chapter one focuses on the Old English poem Beowulf; chapter two moves on to discuss Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale and Tale of Melibee from the Canterbury Tales; and chapter three examines the Old Icelandic family saga, Ljósvetninga saga. I focus in particular on the treatment of the avenger in each work. The poet or author of each work acknowledges the perspective of the avenger by allowing him to express his motivations, desires, and justifications for revenge in direct speech. Alongside this acknowledgement, however, is the author’s own reflection on the risks, rewards, and repercussions of the avenger’s intentions and actions. The resulting parallel but divergent narratives highlight the multiplicity of viewpoints found in any act of revenge or feud and reveal a fundamental ambivalence about the value, morality, and necessity of revenge. Each of the works I consider resists easy conclusions about revenge in its own context and remains incredibly current in the way it poses challenging questions about what constitutes injury, punishment, justice, and revenge in our own time.

«Construire hors limite: collisions fantastiques entre corps et machines dans la littérature fin-de-siècle française et anglaise» explore un ensemble de textes qui ont surgi à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle en réponse et en réaction à la fulgurante évolution de l’environnement scientifique et technologique, et qui considèrent la relation entre l’homme et la machine en fantasmant sur la zone grise où ils s’intersectent. Les principaux textes étudiés comprennent L’Ève future de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Le Surmâle d’Alfred Jarry, Trilby de George Du Maurier, Le Château des Carpathes de Jules Verne, ainsi qu’une sélection de contes dont nous pouvons qualifier de «contes à appareils», notamment «La Machine à parler» de Marcel Schwob. Utilisant la théorie des systèmes comme base méthodologique, cette dissertation cherche à réinterpréter les textes de la fin du dix-neuvième siècle qui naviguent les limites de l’humain et du mécanique et les surfaces sensibles où ils se touchent et interagissent en les réinscrivant dans un projet plus vaste de construction d’identité qui défie le temps chronologique et les échelles mathématiques. Le lien entre la théorie des systèmes et l’architecture – comme méthode d’organisation d’espace blanc en espace habitable – est exploré dans le but de comprendre la manière dont nous façonnons et interprétons le néant à l’origine de l’identité individuelle, et par association collective, en pratiquant littéralement la schématisation et la construction du corps. Des auteurs tels Villiers et Jarry imaginent la construction du corps comme une entreprise scientifique nécessairement fondée et réalisée avec les matériaux et les technologies disponibles, pour ensuite démanteler cette proposition en condamnant le corps technologique à la destruction. La construction d’une identité amplifiée par la technologie prend donc des proportions prométhéennes perpétuellement redessinées dans des actes cycliques de rasage (destruction) et d’érection (édification), et reflétées dans l’écriture palimpsestique du texte. L’intégrité du corps organique étant mis en question, le noyau même de ce que signifie l’être (dans son sens de verbe infinitif) humain pourrait bien s’avérer, si l’on considère la correspondance entre perte de voix et état pathologique dans les textes de Du Maurier, Verne et Schwob, être une structure des plus précaires, distinctement hors sens (unsound).
“Building Beyond Limits: Fantastic Collisions Between Bodies and Machines in French and English Fin-de-Siècle Literature” explores late-nineteenth-century texts that emerged in response, or in reaction to, the rapidly evolving scientific and technological environment and which specifically consider man’s relationship to the machine by fantasizing about the grey area where they intersect. The core texts examined include Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s L’Ève future, Alfred Jarry’s Le Surmâle, George Du Maurier’s Trilby, Jules Verne’s Le Château des Carpathes, and a selection of short stories which we may refer to as contes à appareils, most prominently Marcel Schwob’s “La Machine à parler.” Using systems theory as its underlying structure, this dissertation sets out to reinterpret late-nineteenth-century texts that navigate the limits of the human and the mechanical and the sensitive surfaces where they touch and interact by re-inscribing them into a greater project of identity-building that defies chronological time and mathematical scale. As such, the connection between systems theory and architecture – as a method of organizing blank space into space that is inhabitable – is explored in order to understand the way in which we shape and make sense of the void at the origin of individual, and by extension collective, identity by engaging in the literal act of body mapping and building. Authors such as Villiers and Jarry set up the building of bodies as a scientific endeavor which must necessarily rely on available materials and technologies only to level this proposition by condemning the technological body to destruction. The construction of a technologically-enabled identity thus takes on promethean proportions which are perpetually redesigned in the cyclical acts of raising and razing, and reflected in the palimpsestic qualities of the texts. At stake is the integrity of the organic body, of the very nucleus of what it means to be human which, as evidenced by the equating of pathology with the loss of voice in the texts of Du Maurier, Verne and Schwob, may very well prove to be a structure which is distinctly unsound.

L’objectif de ce mémoire est de démontrer le rôle important de la langue dans la pièce de théâtre Death and the King’s Horseman par l’auteur nigérian Wole Soyinka. Le premier chapitre traite les implications de l'écriture d'un texte postcolonial dans la langue anglaise et revisite les débats linguistiques des années 1950 et 1960. En plus de l'anglais, ce mémoire observe l'utilisation d'autres formes de communication telles que l'anglais, le pidgin nigérian, les dialectes locaux et les métaphores Yoruba. Par conséquent, l'intersection entre la langue et la culture devient évidente à travers la description des rituels. La dernière partie de ce mémoire explore l'objectif principal de Soyinka de créer une «essence thrénodique». Avec l'utilisation de masques rituels, de la danse et de la musique, il développe un type de dialogue qui dépasse les limites de la forme écrite et est accessible seulement à ceux qui sont équipés de sensibilités culturelles Yoruba.
The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the significant role of language in the development of the play Death and King’s Horseman by Nigerian author Wole Soyinka. The first chapter discusses the implications of writing a postcolonial text in the English language and revisits the language debates of the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to English, the thesis observes the use of other forms of communication such as Nigerian Pidgin English, local dialects, and Yoruba metaphors. Consequently, the intersection between language and culture becomes apparent through the description of the rituals. The final section of the thesis explores Soyinka’s primary focus of creating a “threnodic essence.” With the use of ritual masks, dance and music, he develops a type of dialogue that transcends the written form and is accessible only to those who are equipped with Yoruba cultural sensibilities.