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<p> The core of Swift's Tale of a Tub is an allegorical narrative that recounts in miniature the history of the Christian Church. ln the tailorworship and Aeolist sections of his account, however, Swift temporarily suspends the narrative and describes a comprehensive systems of belief founded in each case on a single, all-important but absurd principle: the tailor-worshippers venerate clothes and the Aeolists, wind. This shift in technique is an important indication of Swift's aim in the Tale. Despite their essentially digressive nature, these two sections haves a close relation to the narrative and are obviously intended to comment on it. The most useful approach to an understanding of this shift of technique is by reference to the genre known as the padoxical enconium which was ideally suited for a satirical treatment of the philosophical issues that Swift was dealing with in the Tale. </p> <p> Swift's main target in the Tale is generally acknowledged to be 'modernism.' The combined evidence of the Tale, The Battle of the Books and The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit shows that Swift visualized the ancients-moderns controversy less as a contest between the merits of the learning of two different epochs far removed in time than as an eternally recurring struggle between a philosophic casr of thought (modernism) that would more accurately be called 'progressive rationalism' and the traditional Christian humanism to which Swift himself gave allegiance. Swift's main objection to modernism was that it tended to promote fashionable ideas to an importance far above their worth merely on grounds of novelty, to the detriment of what is of permanent value in human affairs. The typical modern reduction of experience to a naively simple scheme is the central is the central preoccupation of the 'Digression of Madness'. </p> <p> In order to refute not just individual modern thinkers but modernism in general, Swift turned the paradoxical econium into a brilliant burlesque device. Because it characteristically elevates to a position of importance something generally considered base or insignificant, the paradoxical enconium is a humorous, far-fetched counterpart to the kind of reductive logic that modernism attempts in all seriousness. The tailor-worship system is at once a paradoxical enconium of clothes and a modern philosophical system. At the same time, since it has no direct historical equivalent, the tailor-worship stands outside time as a permanent diagnosis of all such kinds of thinking. Both the Aoelist and tailor-worship systems are timeless paradigms of reductive thought that transcend the historical limitations of the examples they parody. For purpose of constructing such paradigms the paradoxical encomium was ideally adapted in a way that the allegorical narrative, with its point-forpoint correspondence with historical events, was not. </p> <p> Swift makes further use of the paradoxical encomium in the 'Digression on Madness', in which he humourously places the most reductive thinkers of history within a reductive framework of his own devising. At the centre of this digression, however, he presents a more engaging paradox: in the most famous passage of the Tale he contrives to prove the superiority of credulity to both reason and the abuse of reason. The terms in which he does so are more than just a practical example of the dangers of rhetoric: they are an inverted restatement of the terms of the ancients-moderns controversy, a warning that modernism at its most extreme is truly insane, and an implicit vindiciation of the values of Christian humanism. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

An analysis of both the placement and the philosophical connections between The Tale of Melibee and The Parson’s Tale suggests that a highly individual spiritual philosophy is being presented within The Canterbury Tales. This philosophy is exemplified via an analysis of both the role of The Tale of Melibee within the work, and the manner in which it is historically developed. The highest form of individual spirituality is revealed within The Tale of Melibee, through the spiritual developments occurring within the character Melibeus and his wife Prudence. This development serves to unify the exemplified extremes of satire and spirituality presented throughout the work, as well as to illustrate the manner in which the individual human being develops his or her own individual spirituality through an active engagement with life, which in turn promotes a unity of the aforementioned extremes.

This paper explores the extent to which the female characters in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales exercise any degree of narrative agency. Using both literary and historical approaches, this paper specifically discusses the cases of three of Chaucer’s women: Virginia, Griselda, and the Wife of Bath.

Transcription Activator-Like Effectors (TALEs) can be used as adaptable DNAbinding modules to create site-specific chimeric nucleases or synthetic transcriptional regulators. The central repeat domain mediates specific DNA binding via hypervariable repeat di-residues (RVDs). This DNA-Binding Domain can be engineered to bind preferentially to any user-selected DNA sequence if engineered appropriately. Therefore, TALEs and their derivatives have become indispensable molecular tools in site-specific manipulation of genes and genomes. This thesis revolves around two problems: in silico design and improved binding site prediction of TALEs. In the first part, a study is shown where TALEs are successfully designed in silico and validated in laboratory to yield the anticipated effects on selected genes. Software is developed to accompany the process of designing and prediction of binding sites. I expanded the functionality of the software to be used as a more generic set of tools for the design, target and offtarget searching. Part two contributes a method and associated toolkit developed to allow users to design in silico optimized synthetic TALEs with user-defined specificities for various experimental purposes. This method is based on a mutual relationship of three consecutive tandem repeats in the DNA-binding domain. This approach revealed positional and compositional bias behind the binding of TALEs to DNA. In conclusion, I developed methods, approaches, and software to enhance the functionality of synthetic TALEs, which should improve understanding of TALEs biology and will further advance genome-engineering applications in various organisms and cell types.

This thesis examines Chaucer's "The Man of Law's Tale" from the "Canterbury Tales," and includes a comparison of the narrative treatment of Chaucer's, Gower's and Trivet's tales of Constance.

Šiame darbe buvo analizuojami literatūriniai sapnai, remiantis analitiniu, interpretaciniu, naratologiniu, kino teorijos, V. Proppo „Pasakos morfologijos, C. G. Jungo archetipų teorijos interpretaciniais tyrinėjimo metodais. Tyrinėjimo šaltiniai – šiuolaikiniai romanai: norvegės H. Wassmo bei lietuvio L. Gutausko „Septintas susitikimas“ ir „Vilko dantų karoliai“. Šių autorių veikalai pasirinkti dėl juose sutinkamų sapnų parankumo šio darbo tyrinėjimo analizei. Darbe siekta remiantis Prince’o ir Jungo pasiūlytomis technikomis analizuoti literatūrinius sapnus, juos siejant, taikant jiems kinui būdingas sąvokas, sampratas, teorijas siejant sapnus su mitais bei pasakomis. Šiam tikslui pasiekti darbe buvo atliekami tokie uždaviniai: teoriškai formuluota sapno kaip naratyvo samprata, ieškota kino naratyvo principų sapne. Taip pat bandyta atpažinti sapne pasireiškiančius pasakos ar sakmės siužetus ir motyvus, rasti sąsajas tarp mito ir sapno, ieškota archetipinių vaizdinių sapnuose. Toks darbo objektas pasirinktas ne atsitiktinai: svarbus aspektas, kuris skatina rašytojus integruoti sapnus į kūrinio meninę realybę – tai troškimas artikuliuoti komplikuotas šiuolaikinio subjekto patirtis, susijusias su „tiesos“ pažinimu ir jos perteikimu. Įterpti į tekstą sapnai veikia kaip intertekstas, perkoduojantis siunčiamą pranešimą kita „kalba“. Atkodavus sapną, jo reikšmė gali būti vartojama kūrinio prasmės įtaigai stiprinti. Pats literatūrinis sapnas, jį ypač mėgstančių rašytojų kūryboje... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / In this work in nonintegration way the literary dreams were analyzed, according to analytical, interpretational, narathological, theoretical instruments, offered by Russian formalism, C. G. Jung’s theory of archetypes. The sources of research – 8 literary dreams of Herbjørg Wassmo‘s novel „Septintasis susitikimas“ and Leonardas Gutauskas‘ first part of „Vilko dantų karoliai“. The literary dream itself in the creation of its admirers or when it becomes a basis of the composition structure of creation, constantly attracts the attention of people in literature. So the choice of such an object also determines its topicality in the contemporary scientific world. The works of these authors are chosen due to handiness of dreams for the research analysis of this work. In this work it was tryed, according to technics, offered by Prince and Jung, to analyse the literary dreams, by relating it, applying cinematic concepts, conceptions, theories, relating dreams with myths and fairy-tales. To archieve this goal there were formulated such tasks: to theoreticaly formulate the conception of dream, as narrative, to look for the principles of cinematic narrative in the dream, to recognize the plots and motives of fairy-tale and saga, which come through it, to find the relations between the myth and dream, to look for an archetypical visuals in the dreams. Such an object of work was chosen nonaccidentally: the important aspect, which encourages writers to integrate dreams in artistical reality... [to full text]

Cette thèse étudie les ressorts de l’indétermination générique dans les proses poétiques du symbolisme et du modernisme hispanophone, de 1885 à 1914. L’indéfinition et l’hybridité génériques se manifestent d’abord dans les représentations des formes et des genres, transparaissant dans les discours des écrivains et des critiques. La redéfinition du poétique entraîne la perception d’un continuum entre les formes et entre les genres. La chanson poétique et narrative symboliste et les recueils hétéroclites, associant différentes formes et différents genres illustrent ces phénomènes. Dans ce contexte, le genre du poème en prose tend à se confondre avec un genre limitrophe comme le conte. Cette indéfinition générique s’observe dans les textes, à travers différentes voies de poétisation du récit : la discontinuité, le statisme et la répétition, qui permettent d’explorer d’autres modes de représentation du temps, et de jouer sur l’ambiguïté référentielle. / This thesis seeks to examine the mechanisms of generic indetermination in the poetic prose of francophone symbolists and hispanic modernists from 1885 to 1914. Generic indetermination and hybridity tend to appear at first in representations of forms and genres, and in the discourse of writers and critics. The new definition of the poetic category leads to the perception of a continuum between different forms and genres. The narrative poetic symbolist song and the heterogeneous collections mixing different types are an example of this tendency. In this case, the genre of prose poem tends to merge with contiguous genres such as the tale. The absence of generic definition may be observed in discontinuity, immobility and repetition which allow the exploration of other modes of time representation and the play on referential ambiguity.

English women writers of the eighteenth century manifested enthusiasm for a form best described as a framed-novelle sequence, that is, a form in which conversations between characters/narrators are interspersed with embedded narratives. This thesis argues that the framed-novelle, with its distinctive juxtaposition of narrative and critical conversation facilitated feminine intervention in the period’s political, social, and literary debates. It demonstrates that Delarivier Manley, Jane Barker, Eliza Haywood, Sarah Scott, Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier used the framed-novelle sequence to develop a feminine but nonetheless authoritative socio-critical voice which allowed them not only to intervene in contemporary literary debates about the risks and rewards of reading fictions (especially with regards to the wider significance of the feminocentric and apparently trivial matter of amatory, romantic tales)but also to construct timely argument about the effect of fictional exemplarity on readers. Consideration of the literary and cultural contexts of the framed-novelle’s production, specifically its relation to other forms of narrative sequences such as the oriental tale and the fairy tale collection and to the period’s ideals of sociable conversation and critical practice also allows this thesis to identify the framed-novelle’s importance within the larger field of eighteenth-century literary development. Through close readings in each main chapter of an earlier and later framed-novelle by each author, this thesis explores the distinctiveness and internal cohesion of the framed-novelle as a subgenre, while also recognizing the particularity of each writer’s protofeminist perspective on their accumulation of feminocentric tales.

Delta-Notch signaling is crucial for development of nearly every tissue in metazoans. Signals received by the Notch receptor influence transcription of select target genes that ultimately restrict the developmental fate of the signal receiving cell with respect to its neighbors. The Notch pathway also functions in contexts of abnormal proliferation and differentiation, e.g. cancer and inflammation. Therefore, understanding the regulation of signaling through the Notch receptor protein at the cellular and molecular level is of great significance. In this dissertation, I investigated three ways in which Notch signaling is regulated, namely (1) proteolysis of the Delta ligand; (2) endocytosis of the Delta ligand; and (3) proteolysis of the Notch receptor.. The Delta protein has three functions. First, Delta is a ligand for Notch when bound to it from an adjacent cell. Second, Delta is an inhibitor of Notch when coexpressed with it in the same cell. Third, Delta is hypothesized to be a receptor and, upon binding to Notch, signals to nucleus. Delta undergoes proteolysis by ADAM proteases and there are two contradictory models for the role of Delta cleavage: (1) cleavage disables Delta function; and (2) cleavage activates Delta function. Overall, the results presented in this dissertation strengthen the first model and weaken the second one. Consistent with the first model, we showed that preventing Delta cleavage strengthens its ligand function. As well, when co-expressed in the same with Notch, Delta cleavage is upregulated therefore disabling Delta function as inhibitor of Notch. In contrast to the second model, we showed that Delta proteolysis does not follow a previously established pattern of cleavages typical of cell surface proteins that are activated by proteolysis. Delta also undergoes endocytosis. Two general models have emerged that are again contradictory: (1) endocytosis downregulates cell surface expression of Delta and therefore diminishes its ability to bind Notch; (2) endocytosis of Delta invokes activation of Notch signaling. Overall, our results strengthen the first model and weaken the second one. In support of the first model, we first demonstrated that Notch activation shows a linear relationship to the amount of Delta ligand present on the cell surface and that subsequent inhibition of cell surface expression of Delta leads to its loss of function. In contrast to the second model, we showed that endocytosis of Delta is not required to activate Notch. We also resolved that earlier evidence in support for this model stemmed from misinterpretations of the properties of a Delta mutant protein. Proteolysis of Notch activates the signaling cascade. Binding of Delta to Notch was previously regarded as a requisite regulatory step to invoke receptor proteolysis. We identified the ability of Kuzbanian and TACE, ADAM proteases that cleave Notch in response to Delta stimulation, to activate Notch in a ligand-independent manner. Altogether, our results demonstrate that proteolysis and endocytosis of Delta are independent mechanisms that act to downregulate Delta function and are therefore an important means of attenuating the Notch signal. Alternatively, we find a novel means of enhancing Notch signals in specific contexts, namely through ligand-independent Notch activation by the ADAMs Kuzbanian and TACE. With respect to the latter observation, Kuzbanian and TACE expression is known to be elevated in several human diseases, and thus predicts that engagement of Notch signaling is a contributing factor in these pathologies.