In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the duel of honor functioned as a formal recourse to attacks on a gentleman's reputation. Concurrently, many notable literary figures such as Samuel Johnson, William Gifford, Thomas Moore, and Lord Byron were involved in literary disputes featuring duels or the threat of physical violence, a pattern indicating a connection between authorship and dueling. This study explicitly examines this connection, particularly as it relates to social acceptance, the gentrification of authorship, and the business of publishing. The act of publishing, putting one's work into the public sphere for consumption as well as critique, created an acute sensitivity to issues of honor because publishing automatically broadcast insults or accusations of dishonorable conduct to the reading public. This study requires a grounded discussion of complex, interconnected concepts, specifically: masculine identity, social hierarchy, and violence; satire; dueling; and authorship. Discussion moves from a foundational concern with violence and the assertion of social status, to the relationship between status and honor, to specific modes of defending honor, and finally to the attempt to establish authorship as an honorable profession. Although each of these quarrels exhibits physical violence or the threat of physical violence, these examples also exhibit verbal violence through satiric assaults or an exchange of verbal attacks and parries. As professional writers struggled to overcome the stereotype of the literary hack and gain social respectability, dueling, with either lead or paper bullets, became a way for authors to defend and maintain the fragile social status they had gained. / Master of Arts

Student Number : 0009509E - MA research report - School of Arts - Faculty of Humanities / This research report examines the phenomenon of Ossianic poetry and its widespread, if not always palpable, impact on the cultural life of Europe. This ‘trace’ of Ossian extends to several piano compositions of Robert Schumann. Divided into three sections, the first of these describes and explains the genesis of the poems, their possible political background and their wide-ranging influence throughout Europe and even North America, despite the scathing exposé of James Macpherson written by Dr. Samuel Johnson. For one-and a-half centuries the poems continued to kindle the imaginations of artists, writers and musicians in works that either directly cite Ossian or Ossianic characters in their titles or texts or are virtual clones of this spurious but popular body of literature. Section B, ‘Interlude’, deals specifically with aspects of the life of Robert Schumann and engages in a hermeneutic reading of many of his musical compositions. Referring to the Derridean concept of arche-writing and ‘the trace’ as well as the Foucauldian theory of polysemia (1969: 123), the report offers a number of alternative interpretations of standard repertoire. Section C highlights four works; Exercices (Variationen über einem thema von Beethoven), Op. Post, Phantasie in C major, Op. 17, Waldszenen, Op. 82 and Gesänge der Frühe, Op. 133. It also touches on a number of other works that reveal his conscious and unconscious awareness of Ossianic imagery and narrative.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes special report study entitled: Public routes and spatial design. Includes bibliographical references.

Zugl.: Düsseldorf, Universiẗat, Diss., 2003.

Thesis (M.Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes special report study entitled : Public routes and spatial design. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

No description available.

M.A. (Politics) / What is democracy? In the second half of the twentieth century the term, which may relate either to a form of government or a form of society, has become much used and, in the writer's opinion, misused. Indeed, Macpherson believes there is "a good deal of muddle about democracy" (Macpherson 1972:1). At the start of the century's last decade this process appears to have accelerated as the term has become ever more topical, encouraged hugely as the process is by the predominance of mass media communication. The writer considers that democracy is not only a topical term but an important concept, for students of politics as well as for the pub Li.c at large. It is a term which surely requires better understanding of its meaning if the concepts and principles to which it relates are to be valued and appreciated appropriately. At the beginning of his enquiries, which result in this dissertation, the writer assumes "democracy" to mean a form of government Which ensures an equal say in its direct control for all citizens of sound mind. Franchise qualifications should provide for a reasonable minimum age but must disregard any other differences, such as sex, race or religion. This dissertation is undertaken in an endeavour to clear away some of the confusion, or "muddle", which exists regarding democracy. The writer anticipates that elucidation will enhance not. only the possibility of wider understanding but also prospects for meeting the need for concerted, tenacious and widespread efforts to obtain meaningful improvement in levels of democratization. The writings of two prominent political theorists, Robert Allen Dahl and Crawford Brough Macpherson, will be examined to ascertain and compare their views on democracy, with the subsidiary objectives of clarifying the meaning of democracy and ascertaining whether real democracy exists in any sizeable political system. It is the writer's hypothesis that although the basic conceptions of democracy found in the writings of Dahl and Macpherson indicate major differences, certain similarities have been perceived: and that these similarities will prove valuable in stabilizing the meaning of democracy, and in establishing to what extent (if any) true, that is direct, democracy exists.

This diploma thesis reflects theories of C. B. Macpherson. It is concerned about his visions of democracy as a one-class society, which is formed by constituing liberalism into class divided society. Text pays attention to writters, whose inspired Macpherson, and also aims to analyse other theories of liberal democratic writters who are concerned about problematic of democracy and private property. The most important part of this thesis deals with main critics of Macphersons and his important concepts such as net transfer of power, differencing between the consumer ethics or developmental ethics and so on. After analysing these texts thesis tries the defensibility of Macphersons theory and also evaluates usefulness of this theory for these days. key words: liberal democracy, capitalism, development of human powers, socialism, net transfer of powers, Macpherson

Ce travail concerne la réalisation concrète en calcul formel d'algorithmes abstraits issus de publications récentes. Il comporte deux parties distinctes mais cependant issues du m(ê)me monde : l'action d'un groupe de Lie, sur une variété ou un espace vectoriel. La première partie traite de l'implémentation de la réduction d'un graphe de Goresky-Kottwitz-MacPherson. Ce graphe est l'analogue combinatoire d'une variété symplectique compacte connexe soumise à une action hamiltonienne d'un tore compact. La seconde partie est consacrée à l'implémentation du calcul de deux coefficients intervenant lors de l'action d'un groupe de Lie semi-simple complexe sur un espace vectoriel de dimension finie : la multiplicité d'un poids dans une représentation irréductible de dimension finie (nombre de Kostka) et les coefficients de décomposition du produit tensoriel de deux représentations irréductibles de dimension finie (coefficients de Littlewood-Richardson).

This thesis investigates the representation of social reality that can be reflected by folk belief and the supernatural within mythic worlds created in epic poetry. Although the society, itself, can be regarded as the creator of its own myth, it may still be subjected to the impact of the synthesized mythic world, and this study seeks to address the roles of the society in the shaping of such mythic worlds. The research is inspired by an innovative approach, using James Macpherson’s Ossian (1760-63) and Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala (1835-49) as epic models that benefit from mythical traditions. Through the examination and the comparison of these two epic collections, both of which seem to have a close association with social reformation and restructuring, the study explores the universality of human nature. It also reveals the extent mythic worlds may exhibit the ‘realities’ of their source-societies and how mythical tradition may become a reflection of a society’s transforming past modes of thinking. Moreover, the study devotes special attention to the influence of mythic heritage on national awakening and the construction of national identities. The research treats Macpherson as the re-inventor of Gaelic oral tradition with his Ossian, where he portrays a Romanticized image of a gallant past according to the norms of the eighteenth century. Therefore, the mythic world of the epic can be seen as a combination of an ancient heroic past and the aesthetic refinement of a polished age. In this framework, as the product of a society going through a transition period from traditional to modern, Ossian seems to reflect the society’s changing world-view, both celebrating, and mourning for a culture on the verge of extinction. Focusing on the Kalevala, the study analyzes its portrayal of Finnish folk belief. The Kalevala, like Ossian, is an attempt to recover ancient tradition, which seems to revolve around supernatural and divine elements, with hopes to establish a common social reality. It is an expression of Finnish language, belief and culture, whose production was prompted by the looming Finnish nationalism. Therefore, the evolving mode of thought represented in the mythic world of Kalevalaic poems, is expected and favoured by the society, enabling the epic to encourage a social reformation.