This study shows in Twain's Joan a mosaic work of French history and American folk humor. It points to Twain as an unacknowledged historian and scholar who, despite his biases and misgivings from his previous books and from his sources, fashioned Joan's story for an American audience while he stayed abroad in Florence and Paris with his family. The study focuses upon the historical and literary merits of Twain's Joan through a detailed analysis of Twain's notations in his French and English sources (Berkeley). It shows that Twain as Louis de Conte, chronicler and minstrel, faithfully retold Joan's story from his sources. Twain's Joan of Arc represents the literary, historical, and religious achievement of an unacknowledged American scholar who showed an outstanding youth of character, integrity, and purity.Throughout the narrative in his book, Twain reflected Joan's page and secretary Louis de Conte as his persona in the dual role of chronicler and minstrel. Twain extended another dual role to his second narrator, the Paladin as entertainer and troubadour. Early in the story, Twain as Conte brought out the events of the Hundred Years' War which led to the betrayal of the French nation and the exile of the French Dauphin by the Treaty of Troyes. Conte retold these events as chronicler and minstrel from Gower and Sepet, notations at Berkeley. Other sources such as Fabre, Sepet, Wallon among others were either used or consulted. The study points and according to his notations in these sources. It is in his dual role that Conte narrated Joan's mission from her household to Vaucouleurs, Chinon, Orleans, Rheims, and St. Denis--covering Books I and II, from Chabannes's book and occasionally from Sepet's with key episodes from Michelet's Joan, according to Twain's notations at Berkeley.Conte retold the events at Chinon, Orleans, Patay, and Paris among others as a chronicler of history, but as minstrel he interwove the narrative with humor or sorrow in a rhythmic pattern of repetitions that imitated the style of the Chansons de Geste. The pattern is noticeable in the narration of the battle scenes at Orleans, Jargeau, and Patay, including the repetition of Joan's wounds in each encounter. Moreover, Twain as the Paladin reflected the minstrel of the Chansons de Geste who entertained the townspeople of Orleans with yarns substituted for the boastful French "gabs" used by knights to boost up their morale on the eve of battles. Twain later raised the role of the Paladin to a troubadour of Joan's era who praised the heroine in a lyrical poem, or Rondeaux, in the style of Charles d'Orleans, a poet of that era.This study shows that Twain used several French and English sources for Book III in which he dealt chiefly with the trial and death of Joan. Twain used three significant sources for the trial at Rouen; namely, Gower, Msgr. Ricard, and Michelet--according to the out Michelet's biases and misgivings. Hence the study mentions the out, however, that when there seemed to be a debatable viewpoint between Msgr. Ricard and Michelet, Twain favored Michelet as the final arbitrator. The study refers the serious reader or scholar to the critic Gustave Rudler who in his works on Michelet's Joan has pointed two different versions of Michelet's Joan, one written when Michelet was sympathetic towards the Church and the other (1873) as he turned anticlerical. Twain used the 1873 edition with its biases!The study points out that at the outset of the trial at Rouen Twain did not condemn the whole Catholic Hierarchy. Twain as Conte, chronicler and minstrel, merely caricatured evil men in Church positions who sought power and wealth first even at the expense of an innocent young girl. Conte showed that Joan at Rouen was a victim in the hands of the unscrupulous Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who--according to Gower--had been bribed with the office of Archbishop of Rouen by Cardinal Winchester of England with the stipulation that Cauchon obtained from the trial Joan's excommunication as a witch and her death at the stake. Twain as Conte reflected well established traditions in French history and official documents in which Pierre Cauchon has been held as the main culprit, for he alone had the power to save or condemn Joan, according to Regine Pernoud-a reputable modern French historian. Conte as minstrel could hardly miss the opportunity of inventing puns based upon the French connotation of the man's name, because Cauchon indeed had shown himself an evil man. Moreover, ever since the Trial of Rehabilitation or retrial of Joan of Arc, Bishop Cauchon has been upheld by at least two Popes in their condemnation of that man. Instead, the Popes have honored Joan as a saint!The study shows that Twain held in contempt the French King and his courtiers, the French Clergy, and the French nation for having abandoned their national heroine to the enemy without even attempting to raise a ransom for her deliverance! Twain as Conte also questioned the "real motives" for the King's endeavors towards the Retrial of Joan since he had forgotten the maid for twenty years. Despite Twain's biases in several parts of the book, the study shows Twain's Joan as a serious work of an unacknowledged scholar for a virtuous youth--St. Joan of Arc!

Paper making involves three fabrics: forming, pressing, and drying. The forming fabric is responsible for sheet forming, the initial dewatering of a low concentration pulp suspension into a wet sheet of paper. In the process of forming, topographical and hydrodynamic marks can be transferred from the drainage media (the forming fabric) to the sheet produced. An experimental investigation of a model forming fabric was performed to identify the geometric parameters having the largest influence on hydrodynamic wire mark. The data were also compared with the numerical simulations of Huang. To simplify the problem, justifiable engineering simplifications were made. The second phase (the fibres) was removed and the machine-direction filaments were neglected. This reduced the problem to investigation of flow through a bank of dissimilar cylinders. It was desired to find the most important geometrical parameter to reduce flow non-uniformity in the paper side flow field. Particle image velocimetry, pressure drop and flow visualization tests were conducted to investigate the flow through the array of cylinders. It was found that with a cylinder surface separation of 0.75$\times$ the paper side cylinder diameter the pressure drop tended toward the sum of the rows, and the paper side flow field was nearly identical to the paper side row only flow field, regardless of the backing side cylinder dimensions and configuration. It was seen that when the pressure drop through the bank of cylinders was equal to the sum of the rows' pressure drops the paper side flow field was the same as the paper side row only flow field. As such, pressure drop can act as an indication of when the machine side row will not affect the paper side flow field.

Paper making involves three fabrics: forming, pressing, and drying. The forming fabric is responsible for sheet forming, the initial dewatering of a low concentration pulp suspension into a wet sheet of paper. In the process of forming, topographical and hydrodynamic marks can be transferred from the drainage media (the forming fabric) to the sheet produced. An experimental investigation of a model forming fabric was performed to identify the geometric parameters having the largest influence on hydrodynamic wire mark. The data were also compared with the numerical simulations of Huang. To simplify the problem, justifiable engineering simplifications were made. The second phase (the fibres) was removed and the machine-direction filaments were neglected. This reduced the problem to investigation of flow through a bank of dissimilar cylinders. It was desired to find the most important geometrical parameter to reduce flow non-uniformity in the paper side flow field. Particle image velocimetry, pressure drop and flow visualization tests were conducted to investigate the flow through the array of cylinders. It was found that with a cylinder surface separation of 0.75$\times$ the paper side cylinder diameter the pressure drop tended toward the sum of the rows, and the paper side flow field was nearly identical to the paper side row only flow field, regardless of the backing side cylinder dimensions and configuration. It was seen that when the pressure drop through the bank of cylinders was equal to the sum of the rows' pressure drops the paper side flow field was the same as the paper side row only flow field. As such, pressure drop can act as an indication of when the machine side row will not affect the paper side flow field.

The purpose of this paper is to study underground Mark Six, which is among the most popular activities in Taiwan. Although it involves complicated financial transaction and lots of people, the deriving debt has no legal status according to principle ¡§the gamble debt is illegal¡¨ proscribed in Taiwanese civil law. This thesis focuses on how this system operates without the assurance of the legal system, which is widely believed as the foundation of modern property right. This Data were collected by in-depth interview and participant observation, including 23 interviewers in three main roles and other related actors, gamblers, brokers, bankers, and then, observing the transaction details of underground Mark Six in the illegal casino to analyze the issue specifically. This study identities three major mechanisms that maintain the operation of underground Mark Six: social Network, violence and risk Management. First, the definition of Social network is the relationship construction under the illegal Mark Six transaction. Trust and reputation, derived from the social network, protect transaction safety as a normative force. Next, the mechanism of violence is the transaction progress which judges in underworld way. Also, the mechanism of violence has the technique of evasion of law. Third, the mechanism of risk management is by different layers' actors to work on, and therefore, these actors cause the variation of transaction rule, method and restriction. In order to avoid debt quarrel, for instance, gamblers in lower layer usually decrease the risks by separating the creditor's right to different uplinks.For the brokers in the middle layer, they use a specific transaction record to insure the transaction execution. What's more is that the bankers in the top layer would control the signed Mark Six number for some specific number to prevent a horrible ¡§Hot Pack¡¨ result. I also find that recently Underground Mark Six is toward network technology, gathering with the traditional manual operation. These two executions so called ¡§Computer Operation¡¨ and ¡§Paper Operation.¡¨ Computer operation, moreover, is toward to be an institutionalization franchise, leading the Underground Mark Six to a technology operation, especially for account and managing risk.

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Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 53-54). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (doctoral)--Göteborgs universitet, 1996. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement and English abstract inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 311-332).

This project considers the objective and material manifestations of invention, as well as the subjective processes (creative and mechanical) that invention signifies, in order to examine the historical, aesthetic, and ideological roles that invention plays within American literature. I argue that invention calls attention to a paradox within American culture that literary texts are especially adept at revealing: the newness that invention fetishizes often contains a violent underside, which American literary authors both depict and complicate. In chapter 1 I establish the project's foundation--how invention became such a culturally prominent mode of action, and how inventions came to symbolize the march of American "progress." I treat the rhetoric of invention as a text which can be close-read for what it reveals about the role of American artifice in the nation's self-conception.In chapter two I argue that Herman Melville's Typee delivers a series of inventive counter-narratives that disarm the stereotypes that support colonization, and that deflate the sense of superiority that propelled Western colonialism. Using the rhetoric of invention against itself, including its portrayal of patents and intellectual property as necessary regulative mechanisms in the advancement of technology and industry, Typee undermines this logic by tapping into the subversive potential of invention as a creative force.Chapter two examines the various historical, aesthetic and disciplinary roles played by a specific American invention: the world's first automatic weapon. Arguing that its power to subdue crowds was due more to its cultural status than its actual use, I examine the paradox presented by a weapon like the Gatling gun and its depiction in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee: that its elegant appearance and functionality, as well as the latency of the threat it posed, was a power that operated by taking advantage of aesthetic perception. The project's final chapter investigates the poetry and prose of Ezra Pound and Mina Loy for the enthusiasm it registers for, as Pound phrased it, "Machine Art." I argue that the formal invention that drove modernism cannot be divorced from the prominence of mechanical invention that American industry made prominent through the turn of the century.

By studying volcanoes on Venus, Mark Jellinek is advancing the science of predicting volcanic activity on earth.

Who was Fulvia? Was she the politically aggressive and dominating wife of Mark Antony as Cicero and Plutarch describe her? Or was she a loyal mother and wife, as Asconius and Appian suggest? These contrasting accounts in the ancient sources warrant further investigation. This thesis seeks to explore the nature of Fulvia’s role in history to the extent that the evidence permits. Fulvia is most famous for her activities during Antony’s consulship (44 BC) and his brother Lucius Antonius’ struggle against C. Octavian in the Perusine War (41-40 BC). But there is a discrepancy among the authors as to what extent she was actually involved. Cicero, Octavian and Antony, who were all key players in events, provide their own particular versions of what occurred. Later authors, such as Appian and Dio, may have been influenced by these earlier, hostile accounts of Fulvia. This is the first study in English to make use of all the available evidence, both literary and material, pertaining to Fulvia. Modern scholarship has a tendency to concentrate almost exclusively on events towards the end of Fulvia’s life, in particular the Perusine War, about which the evidence is much more abundant in later sources such as Appian and Dio. However, to do this ignores the importance of her earlier activities which, if studied more fully, can help to explain her later actions in the 40’s BC. This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first provides an introduction to the topic and a biography of Fulvia. The second is a review of the modern scholarship on Fulvia. The third focuses on the contemporary sources, both the literary evidence from Cicero, Cornelius Nepos and Martial, as well as the surviving material evidence, namely the sling bullets found at Perusia and a series of coins that may depict Fulvia in the guise of Victoria. The fourth is a discussion of those authors born after Fulvia’s death in 40 BC, of whom the most important are Plutarch, Appian, and Dio. The fifth provides a conclusion to the thesis, and returns to the questions posed above in light of the analysis of the sources provided throughout the thesis. It concludes that Fulvia played a significant role in events, particularly from Antony’s consulship onwards, and that her actions were deliberate and politically motivated. Moreover, while these actions were done on her husbands’ behalf, she nevertheless exhibited a remarkable degree of independence. / Thesis (Master, Classics) -- Queen's University, 2007-12-17 15:08:34.021