When things were ‘closing-in’ and ‘rolling up’: the imaginative geography of Elizabeth Bowen’s Anglo-Irish war novel The Last September

This paper examines the imaginative geography of Elizabeth Bowen’s 1929 novel The Last September. Drawing on Said’s analysis of imaginative geographies as registers of territorial identity, I consider the ways in which Bowen’s text maps Anglo-Irish territorial identity in early twentieth-century Ireland. Reading the text as an authoritative, albeit subjective, record of Anglo-Irish experience in Ireland, I identify four interconnected spaces which constitute the imaginative geography of the novel: the open, empty and isolated country; a wider landscape of resistance and control; a distant but necessary England; and an historical landscape of colonial decline. In conclusion, I outline how the concept of imaginative geographies provides a useful lens through which the often fragmented and conflicted nature of territorial identities, both during and after the colonial period, can be explored.     

«Pondere, Numero et Mensura» Roberval et la Géométrie divine

Among the notable features of Roberval'sAristarchi Samii de Mundi Systemate (1644) is the frequent appearance in the text of the abbreviation «P.N.E.M.», standing for «pondere, numero et mensura». The allusion is to the line from the Wisdom of Solomon, XI, 20: «Pondere, mensura, numero Deus omnia fecit» (Vulgate). The line crops up in many authors praising God the Mathematician. However, Roberval's invocation of the verse was not an exercise in piety, but more likely a sign of solidarity with his fellow-mathematicians in the Collège royal, whose motto might have been the same dictum from the Wisdom of Solomon.     

The craniology and relationships of four species of Bos,: 4. The Relationship between Bos primigenius Boj. and B. taurus L. and its implications for the Phylogeny of the Domestic Breeds

The three previous papers in this series Grigson, 1974, Grigson, 1975, Grigson, 1976 were a study of the basic craniology of the genus Bos using B. taurus as an example. This paper deals with B. primigenius from Holocene deposits in northern Europe, studying the relationship of absolute size, cranial proportions, angles and non-measurable characters to age and sex. It concludes that the two size forms of B. primigenius are merely the expression of sexual dimorphism, that the two forms B. primigenius and B. taurus are so similar that they form a continuum and should be considered to be of the same taxon, and that where B. taurus does differ from B. primigenius the differences can usually be ascribed to breed and can be described as specializations.     

Rhetoric and Corpuscularism in Berkeley's Siris

Berkeley's Siris may be an unduly neglected treatise. Yet it reveals and confirms its author's philosophical ambitions and achievements. The greatest of them is his theory of causality. Berkeley tries to show that agents can influence the world by using ethereal corpuscles as their instruments. These particles are both material but also in some sense immaterial or occult because they both follow and do not follow the laws of nature. Siris is a rhetorical text which uses analogy, metaphor, paradox, and ambiguity to illuminate the reader. I argue that the universe in Siris is ambiguous with respect to its material and immaterial essence. The world is at the same time scientific and material and metaphysical and immaterial. Berkeley fights against scientific mechanistic materialism when he subordinates science to God's will. I try to clarify how ambiguity works for Berkeley the metaphysician in establishing the superiority of minds or agents over matter and mechamisms.     

La réflexion Benthamienne sur les mathématiques

In 1814, Jeremy Bentham began to writeChrestomathia; this work is a presentation of what is useful to learn. However this text is, more generally, an entire organization of the knowledge of his time, through developing a «theory of fictions», which is a reflexion on concepts and a critics of nomenclatures. The following essay focuses on the fifty pages refering to mathematics in a work that considers the integrality of sciences at the beginning of the xix^th century and criticizes the FrenchEncyclopédie of Diderot and D’Alembert. A most singular idea expressed by the author, indirectly echoed by Gaston Bachelard through some books, is the conflict between concepts and their being designated by words. Signified, signifying entities and concepts are reciprocally adrift so that nobody, even the scholar, can keep control of these motions; what makes education unceasingly difficult.     

Comment on connections between the 11-year solar cycle,the Q.B.O. and total ozone

Global total ozone does not show any evident connection during the period 1958–1984 with 10.7 cm solar flux (F_10.7). However, when the data are separated according to the east or west phase of the Quasi-Biennial-Oscillation (Q.B.O.) in the equatorial stratosphere, the following connection is found: when the Q.B.O. is in its west phase the global total ozone is positively correlated with the solar cycle; the opposite holds for the east phase of the Q.B.O.     

Pāṇinian accounts of the Vedic subjunctive:

To determine which Vedic texts Pā?ini knew requires a comprehensive approach that establishes a high correlation between the complete set of linguistic traits his treatise describes and the complete set of linguistic traits exhibited in each text in question. The examination of individual linguistic traits is inadequate to determine which texts he knew because neither the Vedic nor the grammatical tradition is uniform and static. Bronkhorst (Pā?inian Studies: Professor S. D. Joshi Felicitation Volume, p. 75, 1991) calls into question the assumption that Vedic texts were known to Pā?ini in the form we have received them, while Cardona (Pā?inian Studies: Professor S. D. Joshi Felicitation Volume, p. 130, 1991) shows that Pā?ini’s silence concerning certain Vedic forms may be due to deference to certain received exegetical traditions. The current paper considers a case where the Pā?inian grammatical tradition entertains disagreement over the derivation of obscure forms. Doubt concerning the recurrence of the term pit (3.4.92) into 3.4.94 brings into question whether Pā?ini systematically accounts for stem strengthening in the present subjunctive. Kātyāyana, Patañjali, Jayāditya, and Jinendrabuddhi remain silent on the point. Rāmacandra, ?rīkri??a, and Bha??ojidīk?ita assert that pit recurs, thereby allowing stem strengthening. Haradatta, on the other hand, maintains that a rule of indeterminate variation, 3.4.117 chandasy ubhayathā, accounts for it. Nāge?a points out that the latter procedure is more comprehensive in that it accounts for the lack of stem strengthening in exceptional forms, such as kr??vaíte in the R?gveda. The implication is that the former procedure fails to account for the form, which, if Pā?ini’s knowledge of texts were to be established based upon the consideration of individual traits, would imply the absurdity that Pā?ini, as interpreted by Rāmacandra et al. did not know the R?gveda. On the contrary, however, the procedure of Rāmacandra et al. can employ another rule of indeterminate variation: 3.1.85 vyatyayo bahulam. This procedure, which provides a systematic explanation of the present subjunctive generally and requires a rule of indeterminate variation only to account for exceptional forms, is preferable to leaving the account of stem strengthening in the present subjunctive generally to a rule of indeterminate variation. Since both procedures rely on rules of indeterminate variation to account for the R?gvedic form, however, it is impossible to establish either Pā?ini’s knowledge or ignorance of the text on the basis of his account of the subjunctive. The controversy demonstrates that the depth and variety of the Indian grammatical tradition must be taken into account in determining which rules describe which linguistic facts and that it is inadequate to consider individual traits. A comprehensive approach is required.     

Was Thomas Favent a political pamphleteer? Faction and politics in later fourteenth-century London

Thomas Favent’s Historia has long been recognised as an important source for the turbulent middle years of Richard II’s reign, in particular for its praise of the actions of the Lords Appellant in the Merciless Parliament of 1388. But why did Favent write the Historia and for whom was it written? In recent years the Historia has for the first time been subjected to detailed scrutiny and a case has made for regarding it as a political pamphlet written for a community of reform-minded civil servants eager to celebrate the achievements of parliament. This study offers an alternative explanation. It seeks to place the Historia more squarely within the turbulent environment of London’s factional politics. Favent’s factional affiliations are easily discerned, but his motivations for writing the Historia were complex and multi-faceted. A new reading of this text suggests, in fact, that it was written not to perpetuate divisions within London, but to draw a line underneath them. The article highlights the use of textual representation to shape and ultimately control memories of political conflict.     

Disentangling long bones of foxes (Vulpes vulpes and Alopex lagopus) from arctic archaeological sites

To discern the presence of two anatomically close species within an archaeological assemblage is always a problem for the analyst. A particularly interesting case is the distinction between the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and the arctic fox (Alopex lagopus), which is often determined using non-rigorous criteria and producing results that must be regarded with caution. Classical methods for separating these two species and determining sexual dimorphism, and eventually the sex ratio, such as analyses using uni- and bivariate plots, are based on arbitrarily fixed limits between sexes. In this text, a more robust statistical method termed mixture analysis (MA) is used to determine the species of limb bones from foxes. First, the MA is applied to a sample of each species using metric data taken from a collection of present-day fox skeletons. Afterwards, the MA is applied to archaeological samples dated to the Dorset period and retrieved from the Tayara site (near Salluit, South Hudson Strait, Nunavik). The results clearly demonstrate that the greatest length (GL) of long bones, especially the humerus and tibia, is the best measurement for distinguishing the species, followed by the distal breadth and the proximal breadth; and that GL is better suited for sexing foxes. The results of MA applied to the Tayara site collection lead to the conclusion that the red fox is present along with the arctic fox among the assemblage, and that there is no fox body size change during the last two millennia in the Eastern Arctic.     

Some effects of geomagnetic activity on spread-F occurrence and ionospheric height variations in equatorial regions

AE indices have been used to investigate, at times of increased geomagnetic activity, the possibility of significant changes to both spread-F occurerence and h′F values for 3 stations in equatorial latitudes. The investigation covered a sunspot minimum period. Furthermore, data for each of these parameters have been considered for both a pre-midnight period (interval A) and a post-midnight period (interval B). The use of the AE indices at 12 different times at 2 h intervals allows the measurement of the delay times, after increased geomagnetic activity, of any significant changes in the parameters being investigated.The results show that for interval A significant suppressions of spread-F occurrence are recorded at delay times of approximately 3 h and 9 h. These delays correspond to enhanced geomagnetic activity at local times of 1800 and 1200, respectively. Also, for interval A the h′F variations suggest that h′F is suppressed at times of spread-F suppression. For interval B spread-F occurrence seems to be controlled by two opposing effects. For several hours after enhanced geomagnetic activity spread-F occurrence increases significantly, followed by a sharp decline culminating in suppressed occurrence, again related to increased geomagnetic activity at 1800 local time for the maximum effect. Also, for interval B h′F values lift abruptly a few hours after enhanced geomagnetic activity, followed by a gradual decline when delays of up to 20 h are considered. Further work on these delays may allow reliable short-term forecasting of some ionospheric behaviour in equatorial regions.     

The political will and the administrative won't? Mathieu Thomassin and his dauphins (Charles III and Louis II)

The delphinal counsellor Mathieu Thomassin composed a Breviere des anciens droys … du Dauphiné de Viennoys (c.1453) after a career of 30 years in the service of Charles III (the French king Charles VII) and Louis II (the future Louis XI). This was his first major historical text in French, but has been overshadowed by his better-known Registre delphinal, commissioned by Louis II in 1456. This article analyses the historical culture and the conception of history revealed in the Breviere. It notes how Thomassin's careful definitions of frontiers in the past and present reflect his experience of territorial disputes. History and geography are imbued with polemic, however, allowing Thomassin to override competing claims to territory or autonomy by delphinal opponents within and outside the Dauphiné. The principles set out in the Breviere were refined and extended in the Registre. However, it is unlikely that either work was ever intended for wide circulation; rather, they were written to provide ‘authentic’ texts which could be consulted primarily by other delphinal officers. As such, they reflect on occasion the divergence of views between a proto-professional administrator, with a concern for the long-term, and his preoccupied (if not dilettante) prince, much more subject to the requirements of realpolitik.