“The Man of the Hour”: Hawthorn(e), Nebraska and Haunting

Graeme Gilloch

doi:10.3390/arts8020053

“The Man of the Hour”: Hawthorn(e), Nebraska and Haunting

Arts ◽

10.3390/arts8020053 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 53

Author(s):

Graeme Gilloch

Keyword(s):

Close Reading ◽

Conventional Meaning ◽

Key Issues ◽

Central Characters ◽

Father And Son

This paper provides a close reading and critical unfolding of central themes and motifs in Alexander Payne’s acclaimed 2013 comic ‘road movie’ Nebraska. It focuses on three key issues: (1) the symbolic significance of hawthorn as a threshold between different worlds (Hawthorne, Nebraska being the former hometown to which father and son make a detour); (2) the notion of ‘haunting’ in relation both to ‘importuning’ memories besetting the central characters and to particular sites of remembrance to which they return; and, (3) how the film’s pervasive mood of melancholy is subject to repeated interruption and punctuation by comic utterances and put-downs. In presenting us with a reluctant ‘gathering of ghosts’, a veritable phantasmagoria, the film articulates a particular sense of nostalgia, of a ‘homesickness’ understood here not in the conventional meaning of a longing to return to a forsaken ‘home’, but rather as a weariness and wariness at the prospect of revisiting familiar haunts and reviving old spirits.

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A Shadow of Truth: Honor Klein in Iris Murdoch’s A Severed Head

Prague Journal of English Studies ◽

10.2478/pjes-2019-0002 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 21-34

Author(s):

Barbora Kašpárková

Keyword(s):

Julius Caesar ◽

Close Reading ◽

Wide Range ◽

Female Protagonist ◽

Real Person ◽

Central Characters ◽

Narrative Function

Abstract Iris Murdoch’s novel A Severed Head (1961) is an example of convoluted relationships that may appear hilarious upon superficial analysis. A close reading, however, reveals the suffering triggered by the behaviour of the central characters. The most mysterious female protagonist, the sexually ambivalent Honor Klein, deploys a wide range of possible interpretations. Honor’s powerful figure is like an axis around which the rest of the characters rotate and without whom the plot would fall apart. The question is, nonetheless, if she is a real figure or not. This paper argues that this pivotal character is not a real person but a dreamy and ghostly concentration of elements in relation to the protagonist Martin Lynch-Gibbon. Honor Klein is a force, is suspicion, and fear, and seems to be an external projection of Martin’s subconscious imaginary fears and trauma. She has a similar narrative function as Shakespeare‘s ghosts in, e.g., Macbeth, Hamlet and Julius Caesar.

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Birth, Discipleship, and Precepts

Envisioning a Tibetan Luminary ◽

10.1093/oso/9780199362349.003.0003 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 37-66

Author(s):

William M. Gorvine

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Early Life ◽

Religious Life ◽

Primary Teacher ◽

Close Reading ◽

Composite Image ◽

Key Issues ◽

The Relationship ◽

Power And Authority

Chapter 2 shifts its focus from key issues behind the biographical works to address the narrative presentation of Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen’s early life. It draws upon the saintly themes of The Pleasure Garden of Wish-Fulfilling Trees and the detailed chronicles of The Strand of Jewels to produce a new, composite image. Taking up his birth, childhood, and entry into religious life, and his relationship with his primary teacher and his assumption of monastic vows, this chapter begins to trace the arc of Shardza’s religious career as it emerges from these two sources. A close reading of these sources, which vary significantly by length, organization, and style, reveals how they render very different accounts of Shardza’s childhood, with implications for the life to follow. In the process, this chapter interrogates the relationship between tantric and monastic sources of religious power and authority in the biographical milieu of nineteenth-century Kham.

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Calligraphic Africa

Philological Encounters ◽

10.1163/24519197-00000011 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 1 (1-4) ◽

pp. 199-224 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Shamil Jeppie

Keyword(s):

Close Reading ◽

Key Issues ◽

Multiple Levels ◽

The Many ◽

The Way

Is it possible to productively bring together two seemingly exclusive ideas: Africa and philology? This essay presents a case for working at multiple levels and numerous sites in bridging these apparently disparate realms. Indeed, there is already a tradition of philological study about and on the continent that reveal the many different trajectories of Islamic scholarship in particular. While surveying this field, which has advanced substantially in recent decades, it also suggests that there are key issues that require examination such as the question of the archive and the collection, their constitution and movement. Philology, no matter how it is conceived, rests on the availability of texts and therefore the histories of the way texts come to accumulate in certain places and are discovered or recovered at specific moments is part of the project of the philological encounter. We thus have to be mindful of the histories and practices before, in, and after the practice of deep, close reading.

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Probing vacancies and structural distortions at individual defects in ceramics using EELS

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100165859 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 54 ◽

pp. 678-679

Author(s):

D. J. Wallis ◽

N. D. Browning

Keyword(s):

Structural Information ◽

Core Loss ◽

Nearest Neighbors ◽

Ceramic Materials ◽

Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope ◽

Real Space ◽

Atomic Scale ◽

Structure Property ◽

Scanning Transmission ◽

Key Issues

In electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), the near-edge region of a core-loss edge contains information on high-order atomic correlations. These correlations give details of the 3-D atomic structure which can be elucidated using multiple-scattering (MS) theory. MS calculations use real space clusters making them ideal for use in low-symmetry systems such as defects and interfaces. When coupled with the atomic spatial resolution capabilities of the scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), there therefore exists the ability to obtain 3-D structural information from individual atomic scale structures. For ceramic materials where the structure-property relationships are dominated by defects and interfaces, this methodology can provide unique information on key issues such as like-ion repulsion and the presence of vacancies, impurities and structural distortion.An example of the use of MS-theory is shown in fig 1, where an experimental oxygen K-edge from SrTiO3 is compared to full MS-calculations for successive shells (a shell consists of neighboring atoms, so that 1 shell includes only nearest neighbors, 2 shells includes first and second-nearest neighbors, and so on).

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