The lay of the trilobite: rereading May Kendall

The impact of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection on the culture of late Victorian England and on the development of Western thought at large is at once widely acknowledged and hotly contested. In this essay, I revisit the question of what difference an understanding of Darwin's ideas, their reception and their afterlife within evolutionary biology makes to how we read Victorian poetry. I suggest that there are three distinct ways of approaching poetry after Darwin. The first is to examine poems in their own cultural context, considering how they respond to the scientific discourses of their time in the light of internal and external evidence as to the specific sources of each poet's knowledge of those discourses. The second is to ground an interpretative framework in Darwinism's insights into human biology itself. The third is to explore how a given poem's responses to the philosophical issues raised by Darwin's thinking, including questions of ethics and theology, give its readers a possible model for their own responses to the same concerns today. I suggest too that the limitations of each approach may be best overcome by bringing them together. I go on to explore the potential of the first and third approaches through a reading of May Kendall's poem 'The Lay of the Trilobite' in a series of different contexts, from its first appearance in 'Punch', through her first collection Dreams to Sell, to her essays on Christian ethics from the 1880s and 1890s

Television broadcast reception

The sections in this article are: Vestigial Sideband Modulation, Spectrum Allocation, VHF Versus UHF Propagation, Receivers, Interference, Multipath Equalization, and Digital Receivers

Binaural prediction of speech intelligibility in reverberant rooms with multiple noise sources

When speech is in competition with interfering sources in rooms, monaural indicators of intelligibility fail to take account of the listener’s abilities to separate target speech from interfering sounds using the binaural system. In order to incorporate these segregation abilities and their susceptibility to reverberation, Lavandier and Culling [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127, 387–399 (2010)] proposed a model which combines effects of better-ear listening and binaural unmasking. A computationally efficient version of this model is evaluated here under more realistic conditions that include head shadow, multiple stationary noise sources, and real-room acoustics. Three experiments are presented in which speech reception thresholds were measured in the presence of one to three interferers using real-room listening over headphones, simulated by convolving anechoic stimuli with binaural room impulse-responses measured with dummy-head transducers in five rooms. Without fitting any parameter of the model, there was close correspondence between measured and predicted differences in threshold across all tested conditions. The model’s components of better-ear listening and binaural unmasking were validated both in isolation and in combination. The computational efficiency of this prediction method allows the generation of complex “intelligibility maps” from room designs. © 2012 Acoustical Society of America

Synchronization of digital data decoders

Burst timing synchronisation is maintained in a digital data decoder during multiple burst reception in a TDMA system. The data within a multiple burst are streamed into memory storage and data corresponding to a first burst in the series of bursts are selected on the basis of a current timing estimate derived from a synchronisation burst. Selections of data corresponding to other bursts in the series of bursts are modified in accordance with updated timing estimates derived from previously processed bursts.

Prowess, the Nine Worthies and the Hundred Years War: the Prologues to the Chroniques of Jean Froissart and Enguerrand de Monstrelet

An analysis of the evolution of the image of chivalry in the successive redactions of the Prologue to Froissart's Chroniques, focussing on the figures of the Nine Worthies as models of behaviour for young noblemen. This is then compared and contrasted with the prologue written by his continuator, Enguerrand de Monstrelet, whose work betrays a shift in sensibilities that expresses itself, inter alia, by a near-total absence of the Worthies in his Chronique. Close textual analysis suggests that the two choniclers shared a comparable sense of disillusion, though expressed in different ways.

Sleepwalking certainties: agency, aesthetics, and incapacity in W.G. Sebald’s 'Austerlitz' and Hermann Broch’s 'The Sleepwalkers'

When we first encounter the narrator of Austerlitz, he is wandering around the unfamiliar town of Antwerp with, he tells us, “unsicheren Schritten” (1; 9). As well as reflecting the unfamiliarity of the locale, these “uncertain steps” evince a proud modesty characteristic of the classic Sebaldian narrator, a wanderer who discreetly relays the stories of the people and places he is privileged to encounter. Although Sebald does not use the phrase, steps of this sort, unpurposed yet unerring, are made with what is commonly known in German as somnambule Sicherheit: the legendary surefootedness of the sleepwalker. The convergence of sleepwalking and certainty in a single phrase poses an interesting challenge to one of the central tenets of the English-language canonization of Sebald, for his writing has been most highly valued for its ability to move the reader through apparent certainties towards a salutary uncertainty. But somnambule Sicherheit also presents the possibility that the current may be reversed, that narrative may move under cover of uncertainty towards certainty. That Sebald criticism has not been more troubled by this possibility is in no small part due to the fact that it tends to deploy the notion of sleepwalking with a minimum of reflection on its theoretical ramifications. To evoke some of the complexities of this matter, I first offer a brief cultural history of sleepwalking, as well as a brief account of the topic of uncertainty in Sebald criticism. Most of my argument, however, involves an extended comparative analysis of sleepwalking in Sebald's Austerlitz and Hermann Broch's 1933 trilogy The Sleepwalkers. Although these writers have not previously been the object of any sustained comparison, sleepwalking in Broch's novels illuminates much that is left implicit on the topic in Sebald's fiction and points toward some difficult questions regarding the role of aesthetics and agency in Sebald's work.

Cronaca, narrativa, and the unstable foundations of the Institution of Neorealism

The author contends that many of the conventions of Italian film studies derive from the conflicts and the critical vocabulary that shaped the Italian reception of neorealism in the first decade after the Second World War. Those conflicts, and that critical vocabulary, which lie at the foundation of what has been called the ‘institution of neorealism,’ established an irreconcilable binary: Cronaca and Narrativa. For the neorealists and their critics, Cronaca stood for the effort to record data faithfully, while Narrativa represented the effort to employ the shaping force of human invention in the representation of information. This essay’s first section analyzes the earliest reviews of Rossellini’s Roma città aperta alongside the contemporaneous literary debates over Cronaca and Narrativa. The second section reconsiders the reception of Pratolini’s Metello and Visconti’s Senso, which similarly centered upon the conflict between Cronaca and Narrativa. The third section proposes that the concepts which have often been employed to unify neorealism are destabilized by the Cronaca/Narrativa binary. In search of a solution to neorealism’s conceptual instability, this essay proposes more critical and purposeful appropriations of the movement’s problematic genealogy.

Edward Bond & the celebrity of exile

A shibboleth has grown up around the work of Edward Bond. The tag ‘controversial dramatist’ has continued to dog both the man and his work. This article will hope to explore some of the contradictory, and sometimes frustrating manifestations that such ‘celebrity’ has produced. Since the reception of The War Plays [1985] by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the National Theatre Bond has largely withdrawn his work from mainstream British theatre. Since the late 1990s he has looked to a new home – La Colline Theatre – in France, to premiere new work and run retrospective seasons of older plays. Here, Bond's celebrity is of a different kind, and has allowed him to enhance and develop his work as a playwright, director and writer about theatre. While this article draws on secondary sources it also uses material based on personal correspondence with Edward Bond.

The myths of modern primitivism

RE/Search Publications’ Modern Primitives (Vale and Juno 1989) changed countless lives, bringing what had been a localized and niche set of body modification practices, aesthetics and philosophies out of San Francisco to a global audience, dominating scholarly and popular discourse around body modification subculture for more than a decade afterwards. The voice of Fakir Musafar dominates the book. This article argues that modern primitives as Musafar defines them never really existed (and never could have existed) in the terms he suggests, and goes on to address an important sub-strand within Modern Primitives almost entirely ignored by critics and commentators, who have read the book as generally representative of the body modification culture as a whole. With specific reference to contributors such as infamous tattoo artist Don Ed Hardy who do not frame their practice in ‘primitive’ terms, the article concludes with a study of an alternative account presented by Vale and Juno’s book: body modification as artistic practice.

Foreign credit: travel writing and authenticity in the dutch translation of The memoirs and travels of Mauritius Augustus, Count de Benyowsky (1790)

This article explores the translation and reception of the Memoirs and Travels (1790) of Count Mauritius Augustus Benyowsky (1746-86) in the Netherlands, and examines the complications, tensions and problems that transfer between a major and a more minor European language involves. I analyse how the Dutch translator Petrus Loosjes Adriaanszoon positioned himself as a mediator between these very different source and target cultures and ask how he dealt with the problems of plausibility and ‘credit’ which had beleaguered the reception of the Memoirs and Travels from the outset. In this article I am concerned to restore minority languages to the discussion of how travel literature circulated in Western Europe at the close of the eighteenth century and to demonstrate how major/minor language translation was central to the construction of Dutch-language culture in the Low Countries in this period.

The influence of plant species number on productivity, ground coverage and floral performance in grass-free lawns

The grass-free lawn is a novel development in modern ornamental horticulture where the traditional monoculture of grass is replaced by a variety of mowing-tolerant clonal forbs. It brings floral aesthetics and a diverse species approach to the use of lawn space. How the number of constituent forb species affects the aesthetic and structural performance of grass-free lawns was investigated using grass-free lawns composed of four, six and twelve British native clonal perennial forb species. Lawn productivity was seen to increase with increasing species number but the relationship was not linear. Plant cover was dynamic in all lawn types, varied between years and was not representative of individual species' floral performance. The behaviour of component species common to all lawns suggested that lawns with 12 species show greater structural stability than the lawns with a lower species number. Visual performance in lawns with the greatest species number was lower than in lawns with fewer species, with increasing variety in floral size and individual species floral productivity leading to a trade-off between diversity and floral performance. Individual species were seen to have different aesthetic functions in grass-free lawns either by providing flowers, ground coverage or both.

Reflexive stasis, scale reversal and the myth of modern cinema

This chapter looks at three films whose Portuguese urban settings offer a privileged ground for the re-evaluation of the classical-modern-postmodern categorisation with regard to cinema. They are The State of Things (Wim Wenders, 1982), Foreign Land (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, 1995) and Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz, 2010). In them, the city is the place where characters lose their bearings, names, identities, and where vicious circles, mirrors, replicas and mise-en-abyme bring the vertiginous movement that had characterised the modernist city of 1920s cinema to a halt. Curiously, too, it is the place where so-called postmodern aesthetics finally finds an ideal home in self-ironical tales that expose the film medium’s narrative shortcomings. Intermedial devices, whether Polaroid stills or a cardboard cut-out theatre, are then resorted to in order to turn a larger-than-life reality into framed, manageable narrative miniatures. The scaled-down real, however, turns out to be a disappointing simulacrum, a memory ersatz that unveils the illusory character of cosmopolitan teleology. In my approach, I start by examining the intertwined and transnational genesis of these films that resulted in three correlated visions of the end of history and of storytelling, typical of postmodern aesthetics. I move on to consider intermedia miniaturism as an attempt to stop time within movement, an equation that inevitably brings to mind the Deleuzian movement-time binary, which I revisit in an attempt to disentangle it from the classical-modern opposition. I conclude by proposing reflexive stasis and scale reversal as the common denominator across all modern projects, hence, perhaps, a more advantageous model than modernity to signify artistic and political values.

The power of perceptions: exploring the role of urban design in cycling behaviours and healthy ageing

Good urban design has the power to aid in the provision of inclusive journey environments, yet traditionally neglects the perspective of the cyclist. This paper starts from the premise that more can be done to understand and articulate cyclists’ experiences and perceptions of the urban environment in which they cycle, as part of a closer linking of urban design qualities with transport planning and infrastructure interventions. This approach is particularly applicable in relation to older cyclists, a group whose needs are often poorly understood and for whom perceptions can significantly influence mobile behaviours. Currently, knowledge regarding the relationship between the built environment and physical activity, including cycling, in older adults is limited. As European countries face up to the challenges associated with ageing populations, some metropolitan regions, such as Munich, Germany, are making inroads into widening cycling’s appeal across generations through a combination of urban design, policy and infrastructure initiatives. The paper provides a systematic understanding of the urban design qualities and built environment features that affect cycling participation and have the potential to contribute towards healthy ageing. Urban design features such as legibility, aesthetics, scale and open space have been shown to influence and affect other mobile behaviours (e.g. walking), but their role as a mediator in cycle behaviour remains under-explored. Many of these design ‘qualities’ are related to individual perceptions; capturing these can help build a picture of quality in the built environment that includes an individual’s relationship with their local neighbourhood and its influences on their mobility choices. Issues of accessibility, facilities, and safety in cycling remain crucial, and, when allied to these design ‘qualities‘, provides a more rounded reflection of everyday journeys and trips taken or desired. The paper sets out the role that urban design might play in mediating these critical mobility issues, and in particular, in better understanding the ‘quality of the journey’. It concludes by highlighting the need for designers, policy makers, planners and academics to consider the role that design can play in encouraging cycle participation, especially as part of a healthy ageing agenda.

The 'veil' of control: exploring the attitudes and perceptions of UK design controllers

In the UK, architectural design is regulated through a system of design control for the public interest, which aims to secure and promote ‘quality’ in the built environment. Design control is primarily implemented by locally employed planning professionals with political oversight, and independent design review panels, staffed predominantly by design professionals. Design control has a lengthy and complex history, with the concept of ‘design’ offering a range of challenges for a regulatory system of governance. A simultaneously creative and emotive discipline, architectural design is a difficult issue to regulate objectively or consistently, often leading to policy that is regarded highly discretionary and flexible. This makes regulatory outcomes difficult to predict, as approaches undertaken by the ‘agents of control’ can vary according to the individual. The role of the design controller is therefore central, tasked with the responsibility of interpreting design policy and guidance, appraising design quality and passing professional judgment. However, little is really known about what influences the way design controllers approach their task, providing a ‘veil’ over design control, shrouding the basis of their decisions. This research engaged directly with the attitudes and perceptions of design controllers in the UK, lifting this ‘veil’. Using in-depth interviews and Q-Methodology, the thesis explores this hidden element of control, revealing a number of key differences in how controllers approach and implement policy and guidance, conceptualise design quality, and rationalise their evaluations and judgments. The research develops a conceptual framework for agency in design control – this consists of six variables (Regulation; Discretion; Skills; Design Quality; Aesthetics; and Evaluation) and it is suggested that this could act as a ‘heuristic’ instrument for UK controllers, prompting more reflexivity in relation to evaluating their own position, approaches, and attitudes, leading to better practice and increased transparency of control decisions.

What it means to stay: reterritorialising the Black Atlantic in Erna Brodber's writing of the local

The emphasis on migratory subjectivities within postcolonial studies has come from many directions—Bhabha, Gilroy, Appadurai, Boyce Davies—and their convergence has created a critical practice in which diaspora studies takes centre stage. More specifically the way in which the Caribbean person is given emblematic status as the metropolitan migrant is made clear in James Clifford's declaration that ‘We are all Caribbeans now…in our urban archipelagos'. This paper examines the serious impact on the critical reception of Caribbean writings that has been made as a result of the fact that metropolitan diasporas are now the privileged places in which to be properly ‘postcolonial’. It is my aim to show how Erna Brodber's culturally specific studies have enormous value in the face of the more general and flattened enunciations of diaspora and creolisation which are being circulated at a theoretical level. I shall look at two fairly recent pieces of writing by Brodber: a pamphlet entitled ‘The people of my Jamaican village (1817 – 1948)’ and an essay entitled ‘Where are all the others?’ in the book Caribbean Creolisation1