Apocalyptic Visions and Revisions of the End in the Writings

Apocalyptic literature demonstrates an obsession with time. This chapter suggests that the elaborate descriptions and predictions of world history found in apocalypses produced an intrinsic need within apocalyptic communities for textual revision. Since apocalypses are framed as revelations, it was no simple matter to change them. Apocalyptic communities developed the practice of revelatory exegesis in order to revise failed prophecies and revitalize them for the contemporary events and concerns. This chapter analyzes Daniel 9 and 12, 4 Ezra, 4QApocryphon of Jeremiah, and 1QPesher Habakkuk in order to highlight how apocalyptic writers and communities used revelatory exegesis to revise failed prophecies.

Revising real world tax management speak - a study of reader response

In Denmark, as in many other countries, there are extensive efforts to revise texts that emanate from public authorities to make them easier to understand and more appropriate for an audience of lay citizens (a development akin to the campaign for plain English). Such efforts focus mainly on practice and not on evidence derived from research. Furthermore, insofar as the effects of revisions of texts from public authorities and private businesses have been tested by research, the revisions under examination have been conducted by researchers or at least for research purposes. This study takes a different approach by focusing on textual revisions made ‘at-source’ by employees at the Danish Tax Authority and independently of any research project. Taking as its point of departure the communicative goals laid down by the Authority, the main question addressed in this article is whether three ‘at-source’ textual versions vary in respect of their recipients’ levels of comprehension and perceptions. Three different versions of a letter from the Danish Tax Authority (an unrevised version and two versions that had been revised in different ways) were distributed at random. Each respondent read one version and then answered aquestionnaire about his/her level of comprehension and about his/her perceptions of the letter. A total of 714 questionnaires were collected. The analysis shows that the revised letter versions are, in fact, easier to understand, that the perceptions of these versions do vary, and that the variations are in accordance with the communicative goals of the Authority. However, the results also indicate that there is room for further improvement and they may suggest that the textual revision practices that are applied – or at least held up as ideal – by Danish authorities are not as effective as sometimes assumed.

Progressivism and the Disenchanted Constitution

This chapter begins by recovering the basic social democratic critique of the Constitution during the Progressive era, especially in the context of worries about the incompatibility between Tocquevillian myths and industrial realities. It then works through the political disagreement among Progressives over whether citizens needed to engage in a formal act of wholesale textual revision and even refounding. Both sides agreed that the 1787 framework had to be fundamentally altered, but internal and external critics reached different conclusions about whether change could be achieved without explicit rupture and whether surface constitutional fidelity would necessarily reproduce exceptionalist tropes. Finally, the chapter focuses on lessons for the present—especially on how Progressive-era critics press Americans to disenthrall themselves and to conceive of the Constitution instrumentally, to judge questions of constitutional support not by expectations of national fulfillment or on aspirational desires for the text, but instead by debates over political utility and effective freedom.

Análisis microgenético de la producción y revisión textual de dos alumnas de primaria

El presente artículo muestra el análisis del proceso de producción y revisión textual en pantalla que realizan dos alumnas de sexto grado de una escuela primaria rural veracruzana. Se utiliza la microgénesis situada como herramienta de análisis de las interacciones generadas entre las participantes durante una tarea de escritura. Los resultados permiten abundar en la comprensión de las dificultades que conlleva escribir y revisar textos propios para quienes comienzan su trayectoria como usuarios de la lengua escrita. Estos escritores requieren varias miradas al texto, de la interacción con pares y con un adulto mediador y de la lectura en voz alta (propia y ajena) para hacer correcciones. Además, se presentan algunas de las complicaciones para los docentes de educación básica. La función de acompañantes del proceso les exige el uso de herramientas didácticas, lingüísticas y psicológicas para construir formas de intervención ajustadas a las necesidades de los alumnos.AbstractThe text below shows the analysis of the production process and textual revision on-screen that perform two sixth-grade students from a rural elementary school located in Veracruz. It has used the microgenetic approach as a tool for analyzing the interactions generated among the participants during the writing task. The results allow us to understand the writer’s difficulties in writing and revising their own texts to those who begin their path as users of the written language. These writers need to make several texts reviews, to interact with pairs and adults, and also the reading aloud (own or others) to make the corrections. Besides, this article presents some of the elementary school teacher’s complications that can be involved in the process. The function as partners of this process requires the use of didactic, linguistic and psychological tools to create ways to intervention adjusted to the student´s needs.Recibido: 08 de mayo de 2014Aceptado: 21 de noviembre de 2014

Textual Revision and the Historicity of the Self: Some Factual Inaccuracies in The Prelude

Reading Wordsworth’s Prelude implicates us immediately in the politics of autobiographical writing — which deliberately elides, to use Felicity Nussbaum’s words, “the subject’s fragmentations and discontinuities.” But at the same time, one cannot help suspecting that the seemingly reasonable expectation of factual correctness in autobiography can also mask a deep denial of these essential fragmentations and discontinuities in the name of truth. Wordsworth’s revisions of the Prelude afford an insightful means of understanding these issues: here the imperatives of narrative self-constitution far outweigh the imperatives of literal facts. But the misdating of crucial events — such as the composition of the Glad Preamble — do not detract from its validity as autobiographical writing, but rather gives evidence of the self-problematising nature of origins. In fact, the interest in works such as the Prelude lies not in how closely they adhere to historical particularities, but how tenaciously their metaphoric transcendence resists reduction back to these historical particularities. Romantic subjectivity makes no clear distinction between self and the outer world of phenomena — and also it seems between self and self. This becomes abundantly clear in Wordsworth’s appropriation of Dorothy’s experience. In the Prelude this process is traceable eminently through the process of textual revisions as the present study argues.