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All the biographical accounts of David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan, are slight, and often very unsympathetic. Most have relied for factual information on his obituary, published in volume 99 of The Gentleman's Magazine. Malicious and distorted comments, particularly by Sir Walter Scott, have been responsible for the growth of a legend about Buchan's eccentricity, although the charge of absurd conduct was lodged against him in his own lifetime. It is interesting to note that a tradesman in Galashiels, near Buchan's former residence at Dryburgh Abbey, was found to talk about Buchan's patriotism, but at much greater length about his oddities, as recently as 1962. Those who could have given posterity a fair assessment of Buchan did not do so, and the way was left open for those who saw him only as vain and self-seeking. He was unlucky in living in the neighbourhood of Scott's house, Abbotsford, and because of this he has never had his due, even in the Border Country where he spent almost half his life. The cult of Scott flourishes there, but to Buchan there is no memorial. Whereas Abbotsford is much sought after, and is still in the possession of Scott's descendants, Dryburgh Abbey passed from Buchan's family and was given to the nation. Scott would probably have been amused had he known that the time would come when visitors to the Abbey would seek out his grave whilst that of Buchan goes unnoticed.

One of the most controversial wars in contemporary history, both in terms of the ideological powers behind it and its continued struggle for over 60 years, is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The most recent outburst of the conflict, commonly known as the Gaza War, has attracted extensive global media coverage. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, the thesis incorporates an extensive content analysis, to chart patterns and regularities within a large corpus of four broadcast media (namely BBC Arabic, BBC World, Al-Jazeera Arabic and Al-Jazeera English). It then integrates a more interpretative discourse analysis, to investigate the cultural ideas evoked linguistically and, to a lesser extent, visually throughout the coverage. Assuming a qualitative stance, it also draws upon focus groups conducted in Jordan and England to examine the public s knowledge and understandings of the events on the ground, in addition to their evaluation of both organisations levels of objectivity and impartiality. To allow for a comparative dimension, the thesis develops two frames of analysis that systematically looks at two recurring themes and scrutinises their discursive strategies and functions in the construction of meaning and ideology. These include Provocation, which examines questions of responsibility and culpability; and Proportionality which embraces matters of legitimacy and authority in relation to the humanitarian aspect of the war. The findings indicate that the actions of a protagonist may be deemed legitimate with regard to provocation, but illegitimate with regard to their proportionality. The peculiar circumstances of the war pushed the media in the direction of greater separation from the predominant ideologies ensued by the Israeli Army. It suggests that both networks lack a coherent discursive strategy at the level of the lexical in their reporting of Gaza. The empirical findings also confirm that meanings devised by viewers are pertinent to their behaviours, attitudes and beliefs. This conceptualisation formulated three readings shaped by political, cultural and social formations: an oppositional (counter-hegemonic) reading, a dominant reading and a subliminal (sub-conscious) reading.

Cette thèse de doctorat étudie l'interprétation calculatoire des preuves de la logique classique. Elle présente trois calculs reflétant trois approches différentes de la question. <br /><br /> Cette thèse est donc composée de trois parties. <br /><br /> La première partie introduit le *X calcul, dont les termes représentent des preuves dans le calcul des séquents classique. Les règles de réduction du *X calcul capture la plupart des caractéristiques de l'élimination des coupures du calcul des séquents. Ce calcul introduit des termes permettant une<br />implémentation implicite de l'effacement et de la duplication. Pour autant que nous sachions, c'est le premier tel calcul pour la logique classique. <br /><br /> La deuxième partie étudie la possibilité de représenter les calculs classiques au moyen de diagrammes. Nous présentons le dX calcul, qui est le calcul diagrammatique de la logique classique, et dont les diagrammes sont issus des<br />*X-termes. La différence principale réside dans le fait que dX fonctionne à un niveau supérieur d'abstraction. Il capture l'essence des preuves du calcul des séquents ainsi que l'essence de l'élimination classique des coupures. <br /><br /> La troisième partie relie les deux premières. Elle présente le $copy;X calcul qui est une version unidimensionnelle du calcul par diagramme. Nous commencons par le *X, où nous identifions explicitement les termes qui doivent l'être. Ceux-ci<br />sont les termes qui encodent les preuves des séquents qui sont équivalentes modulo permutation de règles d'inférence indépendantes. Ces termes ont également la même représentation par diagramme. Une telle identification induit une relation de congruence sur les termes. La relation de réduction est définie modulo la congruence, et les règles de réduction correspondent à celle du dX calcul.

The problem in this thesis was originally motivated by problems presented with documents of Early England Data Set (DEEDS). The central problem with these medieval documents is the lack of methods to assign accurate dates to those documents which bear no date. With the problems of the DEEDS documents in mind, we present two methods to impute missing features of texts. In the first method, we suggest a new class of metrics for measuring distances between texts. We then show how to combine the distances between the texts using statistical smoothing. This method can be adapted to settings where the features of the texts are ordered or unordered categoricals (as in the case of, for example, authorship assignment problems). In the second method, we estimate the probability of occurrences of words in texts using nonparametric regression techniques of local polynomial fitting with kernel weight to generalized linear models. We combine the estimated probability of occurrences of words of a text to estimate the probability of occurrence of a text as a function of its feature -- the feature in this case being the date in which the text is written. The application and results of our methods to the DEEDS documents are presented.

Active and engaged citizens are the backbone of a strong democracy and a vibrant civil society. Yet recent trends of low electoral turnout in Europe and decreasing levels of civic engagement have called into question the legitimacy of governments and the stability of democracy in the long term, particularly in Europe. Against the background of such developments this research sets out to provide a comparative study of civic engagement and analyse the variations in civic engagement between countries. The study is mainly based on the analysis of the European Social Survey 2002, covering 35,000 individuals from 19 European countries and applies advanced statistical modelling techniques including Multiple Correspondence Analysis MCA) and Multi-level modelling. Although there is a good deal of research examining civic engagement using individual level data or aggregate level data, very few studies have combined both approaches. This study addresses this gap and applies multi-level modelling to examine the relative importance of an individual’s socio-demographic characteristics and his/her country in determining levels and types of civic engagement. Thus, it has the advantage of identifying whether civic engagement is significantly affected by country characteristics or the converse, whether a person’s characteristics (age, education, social class etc.) are all that is needed in order to account for the variations in civic engagement. The innovative application of MCA to explore indicators of civic engagement has led to the identification of three dimensions of civic engagement; political activities, political consumerism and associational involvement. Moreover, by projecting all activities on a two-dimensional map it become evident that citizens who tend to carry out ‘individual’ types of political consumerism such as ‘buycotting’, boycotting and signing petitions are also more likely to be involved in New Social Movement organisations. These significant results shed new light on activities usually regarded as ‘individualistic’ type of activities and suggest viewing them in the context of a wider array of collective actions. Furthermore, in addition to the standard contextual measures such as economic development, welfare regime, income inequality, and levels of democracy, this study introduced two innovative policy measures. To consider the impact of government policies on levels of civic engagement measures of governments’ support of the voluntary sector and civic education at school (comparing the education policies of 19 European countries from 1945-2002) were developed. The results confirmed the importance of both individual level characteristics as well as country level characteristics in explaining civic engagement in Europe. However, differences between countries were reduced to a greater degree when contextual factors were introduced. Particularly the welfare state, showed the greatest effect. This implies that socio-economic conditions and in particular social policy and the degree to which it reproduces egalitarian structures determine to a great extent citizen involvement. In other words the results of this study suggest that the national context matters and that governments can and do shape the nature and levels of civic engagement.

The majority of the letters from Lord Milton quoted are copies which he kept of his more important communications. His main correspondent was the Earl of Ilay (1706), 3rd Duke of Argyll (1743). The Argyll papers at Inveraray Castle are unavailable. Ilay's papers apart from estate material are not at Inveraray, however, being included in his English estate and going to his mistress Mrs Anne Williams or Shireburn, then to her son by him, William Williams or Campbell, and then to the latter's son Archibald Campbell, who gave William Coxe access to them for his Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole (1798). After that these papers were lost (Sir Lewis Namier having failed to trace them in recent times) and might, if found, be disappointing in one respect, the injunction of Milton to Ilay being to burn his (Milton's) letters. Fortunately Ilay's letters to Milton are preserved in the latter's vast archives (the bulk of the Saltoun Papers at the National Library of Scotland). It is evident that Milton systematically stored every scrap of paper addressed to him. Milton is correctly described as plain Andrew Fletcher before he took the judicial title of Milton from part of his uncle's and father's estate of Salton (there already being a Lord Salton, in the Scots peerage). And his proper title during the centre of his career was, according to the usage of the time, &quot;the Lord Justice Clerk&quot;, the designation of Milton not then applying. For simplicity's sake, however, he is referred to throughout as Milton. Similarly Ilay is always referred to as Ilay rather than Argyll to avoid confusing him with his brother the 2nd Duke of Argyll. And the 18th century spelling of Salton is preferred to the preciously antique form of Saltoun now prevailing. I am greatly indebted to Professor R. H. Campbell for his valuable advice and unstinting encouragement, and to Mrs Margaret Anderson, Dr Anand Chitnis, Dr Derek Dow, Dr Alastair Durie, Mrs Rita Hemphill, Mr Murdo MacDonald, Mr Michael Moss, Dr Alexander Murdoch, Miss Chris Robertson, Mr John Simpson, Miss Veronica Stokes, Mr Arnott Wilson, the Secretaries of the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Bank of Scotland and the staff of the National Library of Scotland and the Scottish Record Office for their generous help and cooperation.

Ma recherche vise, d’une part, à appréhender le phénomène de la publication des correspondances des « poilus » (les soldats français de la Première Guerre mondiale) et d’autre part, à déterminer leur rôle dans la mémoire collective de la Grande Guerre. Précédé d’un bilan historiographique, mon travail se divise en trois chapitres autour de trois thèmes principaux, la correspondance, l’édition et la mémoire. Le premier chapitre met en contexte la production des lettres et identifie les facteurs l’influençant. Le deuxième chapitre se penche sur les buts éditoriaux des publications de correspondances et sur leur transformation au fil des époques. Finalement, le dernier chapitre analyse la place de ces publications dans le cadre de la commémoration de la Grande Guerre. La recherche va au-delà de l’analyse des lettres et s’intéresse davantage aux desseins éditoriaux des recueils. Les sources utilisées sont des ouvrages collectifs publiant des lettres de poilus, édités entre 1922 (La dernière lettre) et 2006 (Paroles de Verdun). / My research aims to address the phenomenon of the publication of the “poilus” correspondences (French soldiers of the First World War) and to determine their role in the collective memory of the Great War. Preceded by a historiographic review, my work is divided into three chapters around three main themes, correspondences, publishing and memory. The first chapter puts into context the production of letters and identifies the factors influencing it. The second chapter considers the leading goals of publishing correspondences and their transformation over time. Finally, the last chapter analyzes the need for these publications for commemoration of the Great War. Research goes beyond the analysis of letters and focuses on the leading intentions of the editions. The sources used are anthologies of the “poilus” letters, published between 1922 (La dernière lettre) and 2006 (Paroles de Verdun).

The focus of this thesis is the life of the family of the Austrian state chancelor Clemens Metternich as evidenced in letters addressed to him by his son Viktor. The thesis also provides an overview of the life of the family of Franz Georg Metternich, father of Klemens Metternich, and a comparison of the two families. An outline of the lineage is included as well. The centerpoint of the work is a thorough analysis of the aforementioned correspondence and a subsequent assembly of Viktor Metternich's biography and portfolio. This man proves to be an interesting historical figure, despite having been so far mostly overlooked in scientific works.

This thesis deals with reception of Scandinavian decadent literature in the Czech literary milieu on the background of European culture and philosophy in the late 19th century, the cultural homogeneity of European fin-de-siècle literature being stressed. The Scandinavian literature is in this thesis recognized to be an element of importance for the Czech periodicals (the main emphasis is placed on the periodical Moderní revue) as well as publishing houses. The thesis deals more thoroughly with Scandinavian men of letters such as Ola Hansson, August Strindberg, Georg Brandes, Herman Bang, Arne Garborg and considers their impact on the Czech literary ground. The personal contact amongst the European literary personas of the decadent epoch is of certain importance to the thesis.