"Four Ways of Writing the City" : St. Petersburg-Leningrad as a Metaphor in the Poetry of Joseph Brodsky

The present study discusses the theme of St. Petersburg-Leningrad in Joseph Brodsky's verse works. The chosen approach to the evolving im-age of the city in Brodsky's poetry is through four metaphors: St. Petersburg as "the common place" of the Petersburg Text, St. Petersburg as "Paradise and/or Hell", St. Petersburg as "a Utopian City" and St. Petersburg as "a Void". This examination of the city-image focusses on the aspects of space and time as basic categories underlying the poet's poetic world view. The method used is close reading, with an emphasis on semantical interpretation. The material consists of eighteen poems dating from 1958 to 1994. Apart from investigating the spatio-temporal features, the study focusses on exposing and analysing the allusions in the scrutinised works to other texts from Russian and Western belles lettres. Terminology (introduced by Bakhtin and Yury Lotman, among others) concerning the poetics of space in literature is employed in the present study. Conceptions originating from the paradigm of possible worlds are also used in elucidating the position of fictional and actual chronotopes and heroes in Brodsky's poetry. Brodsky's image of his native city is imbued with intertextual linkings. Through reminiscences of the "Divine Comedy" and Russian modernists, the city is paralleled with Dante's "lost and accursed" Florence, as well as with the lost St. Petersburg of Mandel'shtam and Akhmatova. His city-image is related to the Petersburg myth in Russian literature through their common themes of death and separation as well as through the merging of actual realia with the fictional worlds of the Petersburg Text. In his later poems, when his view of the city is that of an exiled poet, the city begins to lose its actual world referents, turning into a mental realm which is no longer connected to any particular geographical location or historical time. It is placed outside time. The native city as the homeland in its entirety is replaced by another existence created in language.

Projecting the prison: the depiction of the uncanny in The Shawshank Redemption

The space of the prison is no longer on the margins in relation to societal `centres', but instead acts as an adjunct to the urban environment. With the disappearance of the Gothic prison from the archi-texture of contemporary cities, the meaning conveyed by its façade has lost much of its potency. It is now contemporary prison drama, as opposed to the physical façade, that represents the interface between the public and the prison. This article explores a dramatic representation of the prison (The Shawshank Redemption) through the lens of Freud's (1919/1955) notion of the uncanny and Bachelard's (1958/1994) poetics of domestic space. Incarceration, as depicted in film and television, reinforces the `place myths' of the prison (Shields, 1991). Contemporary prison drama portrays the prison as a marginal space in much the way that the Gothic façades of the 19th-century prison projected a particular message. The prison, as depicted on screen, is a simulacrum. It is a facsimile of an architectural idea that only ever existed as a façade - a façade that occluded as much as it projected.

The influence of video games with apocalyptic content in adolescents

The aim of this study is the dissertation and analysis of the influence (sociological, psychological and cultural) exerted on adolescents by the concept of Apocalypse. Become a key thought of visual culture, the called doomsday theory achieves one of its highest expressions in video games, possibly the favorite entertainment for young people in their leisure time. The results obtained in this research represent a first approach to the subject through the selected samples, two secondary schools from the city of Seville with disparate locations and divergent socioeconomic backgrounds. To reinforce the comparative study, we have included issues related to parental control, principal gaming platforms used by respondents or the number of hours dedicated to this type of entertainment. The conclusions demonstrate an irremediable attraction from our youth towards apocalyptic universes, plotter consciously with leisure and entertainment as escape from their routine of everyday life.

The stamp of identities: negotiating diasporic Chinese subjectivity in philatelic spaces

This paper examines the politics and poetics of identity construction and articulation among guiqiao (Returned Overseas Chinese) through a case study of a postage stamp exhibition put up jointly by an ordinary guiqiao and an official huaqiao (Overseas Chinese) museum in Quanzhou, China. Two conflicting meaning systems are identified in this exhibition. On the surface and mainly through words, it promulgates a highly clichéd China-centred discourse of huaqiao as patriotic subjects, legitimated by the authority of an official museum. Simultaneously, it articulates implicitly a “trans-local diasporic subjectivity” conveyed by the imagery of stamps and constituted by constant interactions between the materiality of stamps and the bodily experience of stamp collectors beyond the museum. This study contributes to the study of guiqiao, and of Chinese diaspora in general, in two ways. First, it complicates the conventional understanding of guiqiao identity by pinpointing contested negotiations between the state from above and guiqiao from below, involving simultaneously conflicts and compromises. Secondly, it brings to light the important role of body, affect and materiality in the construction and articulation of guiqiao identities, paving the way for integrating museum and migration studies with the potential to re-conceptualize transnational mobilities in the Chinese context and beyond.

The career of the missed encounter in classic american literature

Cette dissertation explore la carrière de la rencontre manquée Lacanienne dans la littérature canonique américaine du dix-neuvième siècle à travers le prisme de la psychanalyse, la déconstruction, le postmodernisme et le postcolonialisme. Je me concentre particulièrement sur La Lettre Écarlate de Hawthorne et Moby-Dick de Melville, en montrant comment ils sont investis dans l'économie narrative de la rencontre manquée, l'économie de ce qui est au-delà de la symbolisation et l'assimilation. L’introduction examine les contours et les détours historiques, philosophiques et théoriques du concept de la rencontre manquée. Cette dissertation a donc deux objectifs: d'une part, elle tente d'examiner le statut et la fonction de la rencontre manquée dans la littérature américaine du dix-neuvième siècle, et d’autre part, elle explore comment la théorisation de la rencontre manquée pourrait nous aider à aller au-delà de la théorisation binaire qui caractérise les scènes géopolitiques actuelles. Mon premier chapitre sur La Lettre Écarlate de Hawthorne, tente de tracer la carrière du signifiant comme une navette entre l'archive et l'avenir, entre le sujet et l'objet, entre le signifiant et le signifié. Le but de ce chapitre est de rendre compte de la temporalité du signifiant et la temporalité de la subjectivité et d’expliquer comment ils répondent à la temporalité du tuché. En explorant la dimension crypto-temporelle de la rencontre manquée, ce chapitre étudie l'excès de cryptes par la poétique (principalement prosopopée, anasémie, et les tropes d'exhumation). Le deuxième chapitre élabore sur les contours de la rencontre manquée. En adoptant des approches psychanalytiques et déconstructives, ce chapitre négocie la temporalité de la rencontre manquée (la temporalité de l'automaton et de la répétition). En explorant la temporalité narrative (prolepse et analepse) conjointement à la psycho-poétique du double, ce chapitre essaie de dévoiler les vicissitudes de la mélancolie et la “dépression narcissique” dans Moby-Dick (en particulier la répétition d'Achab lors de sa rencontre originelle dénarrée ou jamais racontée avec le cachalot blanc et sa position mélancolique par rapport à l'objet qu'il a perdu). En exposant la nature du trauma comme une rencontre manquée, dont les résidus se manifestent symptomatiquement par la répétition (et le doublement), ce chapitre explique le glissement de la lettre (par l'entremise du supplément et de la différance). Le troisième chapitre élargit la portée de la rencontre manquée pour inclure les Autres de l'Amérique. Le but principal de ce chapitre est d'évaluer les investitures politiques, culturelles, imaginaires et libidinales de la rencontre manquée dans le Réel, le Symbolique nationale des États-Unis et la réalité géopolitique actuelle. Il traite également de la relation ambiguë entre la jouissance et le Symbolique: la manière dont la jouissance anime et régit le Symbolique tout en confondant la distinction entre le Réel et la réalité et en protégeant ses manœuvres excessives.

Getting on top of things: form and meaning in the pseudo-Vergilian Aetna

This article offers a fresh view on the poetics of the pseudo-Vergilian poem Aetna, proposing a carefully planned and executed structure which is supported through a deliberate arrangement of key terms in the poem as well as a network of verbal cross-references

The invisible blackness of Harryette Mullen's poetry: writing, miscegenation and what remais to be seen

Este ensaio aborda a poética de Harryette Mullen, poetisa afro-americana cuja obra questiona os limites que moldam as expectativas pela inteligibilidade acessível na literatura afro-americana. Os poemas de Mullen exploram as bordas da inteligibilidade, avançando para além das expectativas por uma forma visível/ Rev. Let., São Paulo, v.52, n.1, p.101-120, jan./jun. 2012. 119 inteligível de linguagem que abarcaria a experiência da negritude. Argumenta-se que a escrita na poesia de Mullen funciona como um processo de miscigenação ao jogar com a ilegibilidade da negritude, para além de uma linha visível de distinção entre o que é ou que deveria ser considerado como parte apropriada da negritude, o que possibilita novas formas de reflexão sobre a poesia como um instrumento politicamente significativo para se repensar o papel da poetisa e do poeta negros no espaço da diáspora negra.

Cultivation of Agaricus blazei in the environmental protection area of the Baturité region under three types of casing soils

The outdoor cultivation (ditches) of Agaricus blazei was evaluated in the protected natural area (APA) of the mountainous region of Baturité on three types of casing soils (A, B and C). Casing soil A (horizon A) of the local soil was used (Alfisol). Casing B was obtained with a mixture of 30% of eucalyptus charcoal (1-2 cm of length) and 70% of horizon B of the local soil. Casing C was composed of 25% of vermiculite, 25% of coconut fiber and 50% of coarse sand. Temperature, relative humidity and pluviometric rates were monitored. The physical-chemical properties of the three casing soils were analyzed. The effect of the casing soil on the number and weight of the mushrooms, productivity, yield and biological efficiency of A. blazei were evaluated. The yield, productivity, biological efficiency and number of mushrooms were higher when using soil A. The highest productivity for soil A was attributed mainly to the physical characteristics, which were considered more appropriate for the cultivation, in addition to the high pluviometric rates and relative humidity. The productivity with soil A (9.62%) is comparable with the average productivity obtained in Brazil, meaning that the cultivation of A. blazei in this APA may have good perspectives for cultivation.

The Invisible Blackness of Harryette Mullen's Poetry: Writing, Miscegenation, and What Remains to Be Seen

This essay addresses the poetics of Harryette Mullen, an awarded African-American female poet whose work questions the boundaries that shape the expectations for accessible intelligibility in African-American literature. Mullen’s poems skirt the edges of intelligibility by going beyond the expectations for a visible/intelligible form of language that would embrace the experience of blackness. I argue that writing in Mullen’s poetry works as process of miscegenation by playing on the illegibility of blackness, beyond a visible line of distinction between what is or should be considered part of blackness itself, which engages new forms of reflection on poetry as a politically meaningful tool for rethinking the role of the black (female) poet within the black diaspora.

Prometheus on Mars: Nineteenth-Century Science Fiction and the Language of Romanticism

The development of astrophysics in the nineteenth century drew mankind closer to the planets. For the first time, it was possible to give serious scientific consideration to the possibilities for life on other planets. The greatest leap, however, was in recognizing what was not known, and acknowledging the limits of human intuition. ‘Ideas,’ wrote Agnes M. Clerke, ‘have all at once become plastic’. As the scientific community tested the limits of scientific understanding, it became the role of science-fiction writers to imagine the universe beyond these limits. This paper will examine the ways in which nineteenth-century science fiction used the inheritance of the poetic language of Romanticism to reinstate the centrality of human being in the universe. I will explore the ways in which writers such as Edward Bulwer-Lytton (The Coming Race, 1871) and W. S. Lach-Szyrma (Aleriel, 1883) extended the Byronic hero to envisage extra-terrestrial utopias. The Hegelian systematic mythology described by Byron and Shelley had reimagined paradise and redemption on earth. Through science fiction, this mythology extended out towards the stars. A discourse on the possibilities of extra-terrestrial life became a Romantic discourse on the possibilities of being. The Byronic hero could now find a home not by escaping the shackles of religion, but as an angelic citizen of Venus or Mars. In this way, the paper will explore how science-fiction writers appropriated the language of Romantic poetry to build a bridge between the framework of scientific knowledge and the extent of human imagination.

Downscaling of global solar irradiation in R

A methodology for downscaling solar irradiation from satellite-derived databases is described using R software. Different packages such as raster, parallel, solaR, gstat, sp and rasterVis are considered in this study for improving solar resource estimation in areas with complex topography, in which downscaling is a very useful tool for reducing inherent deviations in satellite-derived irradiation databases, which lack of high global spatial resolution. A topographical analysis of horizon blocking and sky-view is developed with a digital elevation model to determine what fraction of hourly solar irradiation reaches the Earth's surface. Eventually, kriging with external drift is applied for a better estimation of solar irradiation throughout the region analyzed. This methodology has been implemented as an example within the region of La Rioja in northern Spain, and the mean absolute error found is a striking 25.5% lower than with the original database.

Mad Men, The Sopranos and The American Way of Life. The history of the capital in two times

Don Draper (Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, AMC: 2007-2015) actively colaborates in the birth and consolidationof a model of consumer society without realizing the enormous lie he is telling himself. Tony Soprano(The Sopranos, David Chase, HBO: 1999-2007) desperately grasps the wreckage of that ideal imageof effort and self-improvement which is not only disappearing but was actually never coherent or real.This article does a comparative textual, sociological, and discursive analysis these two characters as arepresentation of the evolution of the discourse of capitalism in the second half of the 20th century, that is,the artificiality of the hegemonic discourse of “pursuit of happiness” as the main myth in post-war NorthAmerican neoliberalism.