Re-Presenting/Representing Melbourne: A literary and cultural analysis of Melbourne’s inner city and outer suburbs in contemporary fiction

This article provides an overview of a research project investigating contemporary literary representations of Melbourne’s inner and outer suburban spaces. It will argue that the city represented by local writers is an often more complex way of envisioning the city than the one presented in public policy and cultural discourses. In this view, the writer’s vision of a city does not necessarily override or provide a “truer’ account but it is in the fictional city where the complexity of the everyday life of a city is most accurately portrayed. The article will also provide an overview of the theoretical framework for reading the fictional texts in this way, examining how Soja’s concept of Thirdspace (2006) provides a place to engage “critically with theoretical issues, while simultaneously being that space where the debate occurs” (Mole 2008: 3).

The relationship between lower intelligence, crime and custodial outcomes : a brief literary review of a vulnerable group

The relationship between intellectual functioning and criminal offending has received considerable focus within the literature. While there remains debate regarding the existence (and strength) of this relationship, there is a wider consensus that individuals with below average functioning (in particular cognitive impairments) are disproportionately represented within the prison population. This paper focuses on research that has implications for the effective management of lower functioning individuals within correctional environments as well as the successful rehabilitation and release of such individuals back into the community. This includes a review of the literature regarding the link between lower intelligence and offending and the identification of possible factors that either facilitate (or confound) this relationship. The main themes to emerge from this review are that individuals with lower intellectual functioning continue to be disproportionately represented in custodial settings and that there is a need to increase the provision of specialised programs to cater for their needs. Further research is also needed into a range of areas including: (1) the reason for this over-representation in custodial settings, (2) the existence and effectiveness of rehabilitation and release programs that cater for lower IQ offenders, (3) the effectiveness of custodial alternatives for this group (e.g. intensive corrections orders) and (4) what post-custodial release services are needed to reduce the risk of recidivism.

Literary prosumers : young people’s reading and writing in a new media landscape

The production of culture is today a matter of ‘user generated content’ and young people are vital participants as ‘prosumers’, i.e. both producers and consumers, of cultural products. Among other things, they are busy creating fan works (stories, pictures, films) based on already published material. Using the genre fan fiction as a point of departure, this article explores the drivers behind net communities organised around fan culture and argues that fan fiction sites can in many aspects be regarded as informal learning settings. By turning to the rhetoric principle of imitatio, the article shows how in the collective interactive processes between readers and writers such fans develop literacies and construct gendered identities.

Better half-dead than read? The Mezzomorto cases and their implications for literary culture in the 1930s

This article focusses on the two libel cases arising from Brian Penton's review of Vivian Crockett's novel Mezzomorto for the Bulletin in 1934, viewing them as points of entry into Australian literary politics in the 1930s, and as windows on to one of the most enduring and interesting feuds in Australian literary culture, that between P.R. 'Inky' Stephensen, self-styled 'Bunyip Critic,' and Brian Penton, arch exponent of 'destructive criticism' and scourge of parochial pretension. The cases are particularly interesting for what they reveal about the evolving positions of two influential figures in Australian writing of the 1930s and 1940s. They also play in to contemporary debates about the state and status of 'literature' in Australia. And while Penton's biographer Patrick Buckridge avers that the cases did not impact on any of the larger contemporary literary issues (meaning censorship and free speech), a case may be made for the significance of the libel actions in the context of attempts to establish an industrial and cultural presence for a diverse range of Australian writing.

The non-literary Latin letters. A study of their syntax and pragmatics

This dissertation studies the language of Latin letters that were written in Egypt and Vindolanda (in northern Britain) during the period 1st century BC 3rd century AD on papyri, ostraca, and wooden tablets. The majority of the texts is, in one way or another, connected with the Roman army. The focus of the study is on syntax and pragmatics. Besides traditional philological methods, modern syntactic theory is used as well, especially in the pragmatic analysis. The study begins with a critical survey of certain concepts that are current in the research on the Latin language, most importantly the concept of vulgar Latin , which, it is argued, seems to be used as an abstract noun for variation and change in Latin . Further, it is necessary to treat even the non-literary material primarily as written texts and not as straightforward reflections of spoken language. An examination of letter phraseology shows that there is considerable variation between the two major geographical areas of provenance. Latin letter writing in Egypt was influenced by Greek. The study highlights the importance of seeing the letters as a text type, with recurring phraseological elements appearing in the body text as well. It is argued that recognising these elements is essential for the correct analysis of the syntax. Three areas of syntax are discussed in detail: sentence connection (mainly parataxis), syntactically incoherent structures and word order (the order of the object and the verb). For certain types of sentence connection we may plausibly posit an origin in spoken Latin, but for many other linguistic phenomena attested in this material the issue of spoken Latin is anything but simple. Concerning the study of historical syntax, the letters offer information about the changing status of the accusative case. Incoherent structures may reflect contaminations in spoken language but usually the reason for them is the inability of the writer to put his thoughts into writing, especially when there is something more complicated to be expressed. Many incoherent expressions reflect the need to start the predication with a thematic constituent. Latin word order is seen as resulting from an interaction of syntactic and pragmatic factors. The preference for an order where the topic is placed sentence-initially can be seen in word order more generally as well. Furthermore, there appears a difference between Egypt and Vindolanda. The letters from Vindolanda show the order O(bject) V(erb) clearly more often than the letters from Egypt. Interestingly, this difference correlates with another, namely the use of the anaphoric pronoun is. This is an interesting observation in view of the fact that both of these are traditional Latin features, as opposed to those that foreshadow the Romance development (VO order and use of the anaphoric ille). However, it is difficult to say whether this is an indication of social or regional variation.

"Do Not Celebrate Your Feast without Your Neighbours" : A Study of References to Feasts and Festivals in Non-Literary Documents from Ramesside Period Deir el-Medina

This dissertation is a study of the forms and functions of feasts and feasting in the ancient Egyptian village of Deir el-Medina in Thebes (modern Luxor). This particular village, during the New Kingdom (c. 1550 1069 BC), was inhabited by the men (and their families) who constructed the Royal Tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. The royal artisans were probably more literate than the average Egyptians and the numerous Ramesside Period (c. 1295 1069 BC) non-literary texts found in the excavations of the village and its surroundings form the source material for this study. In this study, the methods used are mainly Egyptological and the references to feasts and feasting are considered in view of what is known of New Kingdom Egypt, Thebes, and Deir el-Medina. Nevertheless, it is the use of the methodological concept local vernacular religion that has resulted in the division of the research findings into two sections, i.e., references to feasts celebrated both in and outside the community and other references to feasts and feasting in the village. When considering the function of the feasts celebrated at Deir el-Medina, a functional approach to feasts introduced by anthropologists and archaeologists is utilized. The Deir el-Medina feasts which were associated with the official religion form a festival calendar of feasts celebrated annually on the same civil calendar day. The reconstructed festival calendar of Deir el-Medina reflects the feasts celebrated around Thebes or, at least, in Western Thebes. The function of the nationally and regionally observed feasts (which, at least at Deir el-Medina, resulted in a work-free day) may have been to keep people content so that they would continue to work which was to the advantage of the king and the elite surrounding him. Local feasts appear to have been observed more irregularly at Deir el-Medina or perhaps according to the lunar calendar. Feasts celebrated by the community as a whole served to maintain the unity of the group. In addition to feasts celebrated by the entire community, the inhabitants of Deir el-Medina could mark their own personal feasts and organize small gatherings during public feasts. Through such feasts, an individual man might form alliances and advance his chances of a favourable marriage or of acquiring a position on the work crew.

The Duet between the Author and the Translator: An Analysis of Style through Shifts in Literary Translation

The study proposes a method for identifying the personal imprint of literary translators in translated works of fiction. The initial assumption was that the style of a target text is not determined solely by the literary style of the author but also by features of its translator s idiolect. A method was developed for identifying the idiolectal features of individual translators, which were then used to describe personal translation styles. The method is not restricted to a particular language pair. To test the method and to establish the nature of the proposed personal imprint empirically, extracts from four English-language literary source texts (two novels by James Joyce and two by Ernest Hemingway) were first compared with their translations into Finnish (by four different translators) in order to identify changes, or shifts, that had taken place at the formal linguistic level in the translation process. To allow individual propensities to manifest themselves, only optional shifts in which the translators had a range of choices available to them were included in the study. In the second phase, extracts by different authors rendered into Finnish by the same translator were compared in order to gauge the extent of the potential impact of the author's style on the translator's work. In-depth analysis of the types of shifts made most frequently by the individual translators revealed further intersubjective differences, and the shifts were used to construct translation profiles for each of the translators. In order to determine the potential effects of frequently occurring shifts on the target text, some central concepts of narratology were adapted and used to establish an intermediate link between microlevel choices and macrolevel effects. In this way the propensity of an individual translator to opt for certain types of shift could be linked with the overall artistic effect of the target text.

A Literary Turn : Rethinking the Roles of Generalization and Theory in Anglo-American Moral Philosophy

This work investigates the role of narrative literature in late-20th century and contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophy. It aims to show the trend of reading narrative literature for purposes of moral philosophy from the 1970 s and early 80 s to the present day as a part of a larger movement in Anglo-American moral philosophy, and to present a view of its significance for moral philosophy overall. Chapter 1 provides some preliminaries concerning the view of narrative literature which my discussion builds on. In chapter 2 I give an outline of how narrative literature is considered in contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophy, and connect this use to the broad trend of neo-Aristotelian ethics in this context. In chapter 3 I connect the use of literature to the idea of the non-generalizability of moral perception and judgment, which is central to the neo-Aristotelian trend, as well as to a range of moral particularisms and anti-theoretical positions of late 20th century and contemporary ethics. The joint task of chapters 2 and 3 is to situate the trend of reading narrative literature for the purposes of moral philosophy in the present context of moral philosophy. In the following two chapters, 4 and 5, I move on from the particularizing power of narrative literature, which is emphasized by neo-Aristotelians and particularists alike, to a broader under-standing of the intellectual potential of narrative literature. In chapter 4 I argue that narrative literature has its own forms of generalization which are enriching for our understanding of the workings of ethical generalizations in philosophy. In chapter 5 I discuss Iris Murdoch s and Martha Nussbaum s respective ways of combining ethical generality and particularity in a philosophical framework where both systematic moral theory and narrative literature are taken seriously. In chapter 6 I analyse the controversy between contemporary anti-theoretical conceptions of ethics and Nussbaum s refutation of these. I present my suggestion for how the significance of the ethics/literature discussion for moral philosophy can be understood if one wants to overcome the limitations of both Nussbaum s theory-centred, equilibrium-seeking perspective, and the anti-theorists repudiation of theory. I call my position the inclusive approach .

Lecture by Jacques Judah Lyons on the history of the Jews, given before the Hebrew Religious and Literary Library Association

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On Mice and Men and De ratones y hombres: Cultural transfer of substandars characters from literary discourse to film discourse

Eguíluz, Federico; Merino, Raquel; Olsen, Vickie; Pajares, Eterio; Santamaría, José Miguel (eds.)

From words to images and then to one image: the poster in Spielberg' s translations of literary works

Eterio Pajares, Raquel Merino y José Miguel Santamaría (eds.)

Incorporating American Dreams into Australian Stories: Political Erasure and cultural transference in film adaptations of Australian Literary Classics

Eterio Pajares, Raquel Merino y José Miguel Santamaría (eds.)