Early versions in medieval textual traditions. Wolfram’s Parzival as a test case

Wolfram von Eschenbach’s novel Parzival is a courtly romance composed in German language shortly after 1200. In a project, based at the University of Bern, a new critical edition of the poem is prepared in electronic and printed form. It visualizes parallel textual versions, which, depending on particular circumstances of oral performance, have developed in the early stage of the poem’s transmission. Philological research as well as phylogenetic techniques common in the natural sciences, e.g. in molecular biology, have been used to demonstrate the existence of these early textual versions. The article shows how both methods work and how they are applied to the ongoing edition. Exemplary passages to be presented include the text of some rare fragments written in the first decades of the 13th century, which might even go back to the author’s lifetime and which allow to date the existence of the versions they belong to.

New Philology and the Biogenetics of Texts

The discussion on the New Philology triggered by French and North American scholars in the last decade of the 20th century emphasized the material character of textual transmission inside and outside the written evidences of medieval manuscripts by downgrading the active role of the historical author. However, the reception of the ideas propagated by the New Philology adherents was rather divided. Some researchers considered it to be the result of an academic “crisis” (R.T. Pickens) or questioned its innovative status (K. Stackmann: “Neue Philologie?”); others appreciated the “new attitudes to the page” it had brought to mind (J. Bumke after R.H. and M.A, Rouse) or even saw a new era of the “powers of philology” evoked (H.-U. Gumbrecht). Besides the debates on the New Philology another concept of textual materiality strengthened in the last decade, maintaining that textual alterations somewhat relate to biogenetic mutations. In a matter of fact, phenomena such as genetic and textual variation, gene recombination and ‘contamination’ (the mixing of different exemplars in one manuscript text) share common features. The paper discusses to what extent the biogenetic concepts can be used for evaluating manifestations of textual production (as the approach of ‘critique génétique’ does) and of textual transmission (as the phylogenetic analysis of manuscript variation does). In this context yet the genealogical concept of stemmatology – the treelike representation of textual development abhorred by the New Philology adepts – might prove to be useful for describing the history of texts. The textual material to be analyzed will be drawn from the Parzival Project, which is currently preparing a new electronic edition of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival novel written shortly after 1200 and transmitted in numerous manuscripts up to the age of printing. Researches of the project have actually resulted in suggesting that the advanced knowledge of the manuscript transmission yields a more precise idea on the author’s own writing process.

From Similes to Allegory: The Deconstruction of Chariot Imagery in Early Buddhist Texts, Analyzed with Cognitive Metaphor Theory

The presentation will start by unfolding the various layers of chariot imagery in early Indian sources, namely, chariots as vehicles of gods such as the sun (sūrya), i.e. as symbol of cosmic stability; chariots as symbols of royal power and social prestige e.g. of Brahmins; and, finally, chariots as metaphors for the “person”, the “mind” and the “way to liberation” (e.g., Kaṭ.-Up. III.3; Maitr.-Up. II. 6). In Buddhist and non-Buddhist sources, chariots are in certain aspects used as a metaphor for the (old) human body (e.g., Caraka-S., Vi.3.37-38; D II.100; D II.107); apart from that, there is, of course, mention of the “real” use of chariots in sports, cults, journey, and combat. The most prominent example of the Buddhist use of chariot imagery is its application as a model for the person (S I.134 f.; Milindapañha, ed. Trenckner, 26), i.e., for highlighting the “non-substantial self”. There are, however, other significant examples of the usage of chariot imagery in early Buddhist texts. Of special interest are those cases in which chariot metaphors were applied in order to explain how the ‘self’ may proceed on the way to salvation – with ‘mindfulness’ or the ‘self’ as charioteer, with ‘wisdom’ and ‘confidence’ as horses etc. (e.g. S I. 33; S V.7; Dhp 94; or the Nārada-Jātaka, No. 545, verses 181-190). One might be tempted to say that these instances reaffirm the traditional soteriology of a substantial “progressing soul”. Taking conceptual metaphor analysis as a tool, I will, in contrast, argue that there is a special Buddhist use of this metaphor. Indeed, at first sight, it seems to presuppose a non-Buddhist understanding (the “self” as charioteer; the chariot as vehicle to liberation, etc.). Yet, it will be argued that in these cases the chariot imagery is no longer fully “functional”. The Buddhist usage may, therefore, best be described as a final allegorical phase of the chariot-imagery, which results in a thorough deconstruction of the “chariot” itself.

Fast parallel kriging-based stepwise uncertainty reduction with application to the identification of an excursion set

Stepwise uncertainty reduction (SUR) strategies aim at constructing a sequence of points for evaluating a function  f in such a way that the residual uncertainty about a quantity of interest progressively decreases to zero. Using such strategies in the framework of Gaussian process modeling has been shown to be efficient for estimating the volume of excursion of f above a fixed threshold. However, SUR strategies remain cumbersome to use in practice because of their high computational complexity, and the fact that they deliver a single point at each iteration. In this article we introduce several multipoint sampling criteria, allowing the selection of batches of points at which f can be evaluated in parallel. Such criteria are of particular interest when f is costly to evaluate and several CPUs are simultaneously available. We also manage to drastically reduce the computational cost of these strategies through the use of closed form formulas. We illustrate their performances in various numerical experiments, including a nuclear safety test case. Basic notions about kriging, auxiliary problems, complexity calculations, R code, and data are available online as supplementary materials.

The Transmission of Manuscripts and the Genetics of Texts. A new critical edition of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival

The discussion on the New Philology triggered by French and North American scholars in the last decade of the 20th century emphasized the material character of textual transmission inside and outside the written evidences of medieval manuscripts by downgrading the active role of the historical author. However, the reception of the ideas propagated by the New Philology adherents was rather divided. Some researchers questioned its innovative status (K. Stackmann: “Neue Philologie?”), others saw a new era of the “powers of philology” evoked (H.-U. Gumbrecht). Besides the debates on the New Philology another concept of textual materiality strengthened in the last decade, maintaining that textual alterations somewhat relate to biogenetic mutations. In a matter of fact, phenomena such as genetic and textual variation, gene recombination and ‘contamination’ (the mixing of different exemplars in one manuscript text) share common features. The paper discusses to what extent the biogenetic concepts can be used for evaluating manifestations of textual production (as the approach of ‘critique génétique’ does) and of textual transmission (as the phylogenetic analysis of manuscript variation does). In this context yet the genealogical concept of stemmatology – the treelike representation of textual development abhorred by the New Philology adepts – might prove to be useful for describing the history of texts. The textual material to be analyzed will be drawn from the Parzival Project, which is currently preparing a new electronic edition of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival novel written shortly after 1200 and transmitted in numerous manuscripts up to the age of printing (www.parzival.unibe.ch). Researches of the project have actually resulted in suggesting that the advanced knowledge of the manuscript transmission yields a more precise idea on the author’s own writing process.

A g-factor metric for k-t-GRAPPA- and PEAK-GRAPPA-based parallel imaging.

PURPOSE The aim of this work is to derive a theoretical framework for quantitative noise and temporal fidelity analysis of time-resolved k-space-based parallel imaging methods. THEORY An analytical formalism of noise distribution is derived extending the existing g-factor formulation for nontime-resolved generalized autocalibrating partially parallel acquisition (GRAPPA) to time-resolved k-space-based methods. The noise analysis considers temporal noise correlations and is further accompanied by a temporal filtering analysis. METHODS All methods are derived and presented for k-t-GRAPPA and PEAK-GRAPPA. A sliding window reconstruction and nontime-resolved GRAPPA are taken as a reference. Statistical validation is based on series of pseudoreplica images. The analysis is demonstrated on a short-axis cardiac CINE dataset. RESULTS The superior signal-to-noise performance of time-resolved over nontime-resolved parallel imaging methods at the expense of temporal frequency filtering is analytically confirmed. Further, different temporal frequency filter characteristics of k-t-GRAPPA, PEAK-GRAPPA, and sliding window are revealed. CONCLUSION The proposed analysis of noise behavior and temporal fidelity establishes a theoretical basis for a quantitative evaluation of time-resolved reconstruction methods. Therefore, the presented theory allows for comparison between time-resolved parallel imaging methods and also nontime-resolved methods. Magn Reson Med, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Evidence for C−H⋅⋅⋅O Hydrogen Bond Assisted Recognition of a Pyrimidine Base in the Parallel DNA Triple-Helical Motif

The efficient recognition of the pyrimidine base uracil by hypoxanthine or thymine in the parallel DNA triplex motif is based on the interplay of a conventional N−H⋅⋅⋅O and an unconventional C−H⋅⋅⋅O hydrogen bond.