Polish metaphorical perceptions of the translator and translation

The paper offers a comprehensive overview of the Polish metaphorics of translation. It starts by examining the Polish linguistic image of translating, followed by a survey of metaphorical descriptions of the translator and translation from the 18th century, representing the pre-scientific era in reflection on translation. Most attention is devoted to metaphors found in contemporary Polish discourse on translation, centered around: (1) the nature of translation; (2) the relationship between the source and target text, and between the author and translator; and (3) the role of the translator. It is demonstrated that the Polish context offers a rich repertoire of metaphorical depictions of translating, which reflects its distinctive historical and cultural setup.

Early crime writing and the state: Jonathan Wild, Daniel Defoe and Bernard Mandeville in 1720s London

This article argues that the early development of crime writing needs to be understood in relation to the consolidation of the modern state. It demonstrates that London in the 1720s constitutes a significant moment in this early development for three main reasons. First, the period witnessed a crime epidemic which reached its climax in the 1720s and which precipitated a set of particularly aggressive counter-measures by the state; second, it saw the rise and eventual fall of the infamous Jonathan Wild who acted as both thief and surrogate policeman; and third, it was also marked by a surge in interests on the part of writers like Daniel Defoe and Bernard Mandeville in the related matters of crime and punishment. This article explores the ways in which accounts of crime and punishment in this period deployed and in some instances interrogated the rhetoric of social contract theory and writings on statecraft, particularly by Thomas Hobbes and Mandeville. But while the criminal biographies and gallows sermons produced by the Newgate prison’s ‘ordinaries’ provided crude and reductive accounts of the efficacy of the state, the article shows how two accounts of the life of Jonathan Wild (by Defoe and H.D) responded in highly complex ways to the issues of crime and policing and provided a consistently and self-consciously ambivalent reading of the state and state power. To conclude, I suggest that this ambivalence can be read as a critique of the impartial or neutral state and that it constitutes one of the key features of what we would later understand to be crime writing as a dedicated literary genre.

Exeter-Hall Science and Evangelical Rhetoric in Mid-Victorian Britain

In the early and mid-Victorian period public pronouncements by evangelicals were often described as the antithesis of rational speech. The voice of science, on the other hand, was routinely equated with the voice of reason. This disparity was particularly clear in satirical and critical commentary about the platform rhetoric associated with London’s Exeter Hall, a key meeting place for evangelicals and a metonym for evangelical expressions of Christian belief. It was against this backdrop that the fledgling Young Men’s Christian Association inaugurated a popular series of lectures in 1845. Held in Exeter Hall from 1848, the series ran until 1865 and proved to be immensely popular. By investigating the ways in which the promotion of science was combined with religious exhortation in the YMCA lectures, this paper examines how evangelicals positioned themselves with respect to the growing cultural authority of science. The paper also argues that these efforts were indelibly marked by the Hall and the communicative medium in which they were made. As such, the paper sheds light on the significance of platform culture within and beyond evangelicalism and on the importance of venue and audience in understanding science and religion relations in an age of lecturing.

Tolstoy, stories, and facilitating insight in end of life care: Exploring ethics through vicarious experience (with Glackin M and Henry R)

Facilitating moral insight in end of life care can be challenging, and the purpose of this paper is to illustrate how this can be nurtured by means of creative literature. Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilych is presented as an example of such literature. Aristotle's Nichomean Ethics provides the philosophical underpinning for the method used. Sources also include the nursing literature, and students' evaluations of the impact of Tolstoy's novella on their ability to perceive the ethical issues arising in end of life care. Comments from evaluations were analysed and significant themes emerged. Students' comments clearly support the suggestion that use of this novella has facilitated insight into ethical issues at the end of life. Evaluations also indicate that vicarious experience gained through reading this novella has helped to nurture sensitivity and professional insight into the importance of compassion and offering ‘comfort’ to the dying person.

Non-uptake of predictive genetic testing for BRCA1/2 among relatives of known carriers: Attributes, cancer worry, and barriers to testing in a multicenter clinical cohort

BRCA1/2 test decliners/deferrers have received almost no attention in the literature and this is the first study of this population in the United Kingdom. The aim of this multicenter study is to examine the attributes of a group of individuals offered predictive genetic testing for breast/ovarian cancer predisposition who did not wish to proceed with testing at the time of entry into this study. This forms part of a larger study involving 9 U.K. centers investigating the psychosocial impact of predictive genetic testing for BRCA1/2. Cancer worry and reasons for declining or deferring BRCA1/2 predictive genetic testing were evaluated by questionnaire following genetic counseling. A total of 34 individuals declined the offer of predictive genetic testing. Compared to the national cohort of test acceptors, test decliners are significantly younger. Female test decliners have lower levels of cancer worry than female test acceptors. Barriers to testing include apprehension about the result, traveling to the genetics clinic, and taking time away from work/family. Women are more likely than men to worry about receiving less screening if found not to be a carrier. The findings do not indicate that healthy BRCA1/2 test decliners are a more vulnerable group in terms of cancer worry. However, barriers to testing need to be discussed in genetic counseling.

On Suffering and Sympathy: Jude the Obscure, Evolution and Ethics

This article links Thomas Hardy’s exploration of sympathy in Jude the Obscure to contemporary scientific debates over moral evolution. Tracing the relationship between pessimism, progressivism, and determinism in Hardy’s understanding of sympathy, it also considers Hardy’s conception of the author as enlarger of “social sympathies”--a position, I argue, that was shaped by Leslie Stephen’s advocacy of novel writing as moral art. Considering Hardy’s engagement with writings by Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and others, I explore the novel’s participation in a debate about the evolutionary significance of sympathy and its implications for Hardy’s understanding of moral agency. Hardy, I suggest, offered a stronger defence of morality based on biological determinism than Darwin, but this determinism was linked to an unexpected evolutionary optimism.

Weather Prognostics in Anglo-Saxon England

Prognostics concerning the day of the week on which kalendae ianuariae and Christmas Day fall, commonly known as the Revelatio Esdrae , purport to be a set of prophecies by the Biblical Esdras. They make predictions about the weather and other natural phenomena for the year to come, and they then extend their predictions to the field of human affairs. A remarkable number of copies of the Revelatio appear in English manuscripts from the tenth to the twelfth centuries. Some of these versions have been attributed to Bede and Abbo of Fleury as part of their computus works.

Both R. M. Liuzza and L. S. Chardonnens point out the frequent occurrence of the Revelatio in religious and scientific manuscripts and therefore reject the label of folklore, stressing instead the probable monastic origin of this prognostication. This study will provide the first complete collation and analysis of the surviving exemplars, to give as full an idea as possible of their circumstances of composition, their transmission, and their relationship to one another. It will consider how the Revelatio Esdrae was copied and used in Anglo-Saxon England, the audience to which it was addressed, and whether any conclusion can be drawn from its appearance in particular manuscripts, alongside certain other texts.

The regular occurrence of the Revelatio along with computistical material supports the case for its monastic origin and learned nature. Such a text would have been a helpful handbook to be used by monks and priests, and was among the standard holdings of continental and Anglo-Saxon monasteries and scriptoria, giving further proof of the monks’ intellectual eclecticism and their knowledge of the kinds of continental literature from which this text derives.

Policing the Globe: State Sovereignty and the International in the Post-9/11 Crime Novel

Two recent studies of 9/11 literature are dismissive of the contributions that crime and espionage novels have made to ongoing efforts to map the significance of 9/11 and its aftermath. My essay contests the assumption that only literary fiction – which pays sufficient attention to trauma – can “bear witness” to the events of 9/11 and argues that such fiction is, in fact, singularly ill-equipped to illuminate the complex geo-political circumstances that 9/11 entrenched and transformed. By contrast, genre novels by John Le Carré and Don Winslow have responded in imaginative and critical ways to post-9/11 and avowedly trans-national securitization initiatives and hence to efforts to trouble traditional accounts of state sovereignty.

An Absence of Ghosts: cultural and theatrical translation in the British Reception of The Mysteries-Yiimimangaliso

Mark Dornford-May’s widely-acclaimed adaptation of the medieval English Chester “mystery” plays, The Mysteries-Yiimimangaliso, reveal the extent to which theatrical translation, if it is to be intelligible to audiences, risks trading in cultural stereotypes belonging to both source and target cultures. As a South African production of a medieval English theatrical tradition which subsequently plays to an English audience, The Mysteries-Yiimimangaliso enacts a number of disorientating forms of cultural translation. Rather than facilitating the transmission of challenging literary and dramatic traditions, The Mysteries-Yiimimangaliso reveals the extent to which translation, as a politically correct - and thus politically anaemic - act, can become an end in itself in a globalised Anglophone theatrical culture.

A 'Teague' and a 'True Briton': Charles Johnstone, Ireland, and Empire

Charles Johnstone's literary output - which included Chrysal: or, the Adventures of a Guinea (1760) and a series of novels between 1762 and 1781 prior to his departure for Calcutta in 1782 - features a marked geographical and historical preoccupation with empire. The trajectory of Johnstone's life from Carrigogunnell and Dublin in Ireland, to London, and finally to Calcutta, indicates the remarkable possibilities for self-transformation which empire from Ireland to India offered during the eighteenth century. This paper examines the significance of empire in Johnstone's oeuvre, and identifies for the first time a series of articles written by him in The Calcutta Gazette in 1785.

Chopper: From the Inside: Discourses of the "Celebrity" Criminal Mark Read

Popular culture has been inundated with stories and images of True Crime for a long time, which is testament to people’s enduring fascination with criminals and their deviant actions. In such stories, which present actual cases of notorious crimes in a style that often resembles fiction, criminals are either reviled as monsters or lauded as cultural icons. More recently, popular autobiographical accounts by criminals themselves have begun to emerge within this True Crime genre. Typically self-celebratory in nature, such representations construct a rather glamorized public image of the author. This article undertakes a multimodal analysis of what has been classed as one typical example of this True Crime sub-genre, Australian Mark Brandon Read’s autobiographical account Chopper: From the Inside. It thereby seeks to demonstrate that the book, while glamorizing and mythologizing its protagonist, simultaneously offers scope for a qualitative understanding of Read’s life of crime and the sensual dynamics of his violent offending. To this end, the analysis focuses on some of the linguistic and pictorial strategies Read employs in constructing a public image of himself that alternates between the dangerous ‘hardman’ and the ‘larrikin’ criminal hero. However, it is also shown that Read’s account reveals a degree of critical self-reflection. In addition to the multimodal analysis, the article also endeavours to explore the link between celebrity and crime, thereby engaging with the nature of popular culture’s fascination with celebrated criminals.