The thesis examines the historical and contemporary engagements of philosophical anarchism in the selected writings of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Dambudzo Marechera in a bid to establish an anarchic poetics that emerges between them. Both use poetry and prose to express opposition to values and relations characterising authoritarian societies while also expressing alternative social, political and personal values. The unusual pairing of two writers who wrote and lived in very different times inevitably prompts an enquiry into the various trajectories of philosophical anarchism, Romanticism and postcoloniality in world literature. The aim is to blur the stereotypical nature of writers and writings from specific regions of the world and instead argue for an interliterary and intertextuality tradition as the new critical idiom. This thesis also analyses the social functioning of poetry and fiction in social reform and political revolution. Juxtaposing the perspectives of and writings from different spatio- temporal and cultural locations is necessary to emphasise the continuity of ideas, the evolution of theory and philosophy and the historical interconnectedness of humanity as explained by Edward Said's notion of 'contrapuntal juxtaposition.' The writings of Shelley and Marechera do raise important questions about society and the state and continue to address serious political issues. As will be demonstrated, the literature of Shelley and Marechera is not static, it grows and develops with each new reading, it is continually changing, and for this reason it is essentially moving. This study contributes to the fields of literary anarchist theory, postcolonialism as well as Romantic studies by extending a conceptual bridge between the political and literary histories of ideas in which Shelley and Marechera are both ambassadors.

The thesis seeks to demonstrate that Conrad does not fit at all into the manly-heroic tradition which his work is often approached as belonging to. By tracing the entwining of masculine and homoerotic imagery in his major and minor works, as well as in the often neglected late novels, it is possible to discover ample evidence to suggest that he would be more accurately- if somewhat shockingly for critical tradition placed in the tradition of homosexual literature. Appended to the main body of the thesis is a glossary of homosexual codewords- words that were widely understood to refer to what was then the otherwise unmentionable crime of homosexuality from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This glossary is drawn both from the homosexual prose and poetry of the era, as well as from what evidence we have of wider public usages in contemporary newspapers, court-reports, diaries, letters, etc. At present, there is no recognition of, or collation of, the vast majority of these words in any dictionary of historical or sexual slang.

This thesis examines how and why the English clown emerged and declined by focusing on jest-books and comic actors such as Tarlton, Kemp and Armin. The jest-book, Tarlton’s Jests is the key publication in the development of jester-clowns in Renaissance drama. This account traces the authoring, editing, and printing of jest-book publications, along with the transmission of their copy-texts to clarify the dissemination of theories of clownery. The thesis explores the English clown tradition based on the presences of Kemp and Armin, who in their writing practices link the development of clowning in print to the theatre stage. This study then offers a critical analysis of the influence of jesting heroes on comic characters in play-texts from Shakespeare to Dekker and Heywood. By considering the rich resources of jests appropriated by these playwrights, the various forms of the clowns’ development are clarified. The tradition and characteristics of the English clown resulted from a unique cultural synergy: the connection between the stage clowning of the time and its underlying theories. This interaction between societal change and the resultant cultural products is considered as an achievement of the Early Modern interdependence between print and performance.

The first part of this thesis offers an analysis of Elizabethan poetical treatises, such as Philip Sidney’s Apology for Poetry, in terms of Michel Foucault’s discursive formations, and the ways in which they were instrumental in redefining the sixteenth century literary terrain of poetry, prose, drama, poetics and literary criticism. It examines the role of contributory factors such as the Puritan attack, Renaissance humanism, the Ramist reform of logic and rhetoric, increased levels of literacy and printing. It explores conflicting definitions of poetry in the early modern period and its changing role and function, and the appropriation of significant elements from other discourses, notably rhetoric, arguing that this process constituted part of the wider reorganisation of contemporary knowledges. The second part of the thesis is concerned with the work and practice of the writer George Gascoigne, author of the first poetical treatise in English and his importance as an Elizabethan poet.

This thesis proposes that the character of Grendel’s mother in Beowulf is a manifestation of a mythic type, derived from studies of European goddess figures and named here as the Woman in the Water. This myth takes the form of an inherent association between femininity and water, and connotes the binary oppositions of birth and death, creativity and destruction, and the overarching themes of chaos and transience. By examining the imagery in Beowulf and its contemporary literature, this thesis studies the figure of Grendel’s mother in the context of this myth, looking at how the nature of motherhood and the element of water combine to form a powerful symbolic image emblematising the transience of life. These images are interpreted within a psychoanalytical framework as well as a mythic contextual one, providing the myth with an analogue in the human subconscious; that of the abject mother, a figure which represents the inevitable return of life to the void of the womb. The thesis concludes by demonstrating how the entire poem can be read with the character of Grendel’s mother and the battle against transience in mind, and how it complements the poem’s overall theme and structure.

This thesis investigates Lyly's ironic use of traditional images, character types, plot situations, and forms of expression to suggest that Euphues was conceived in a spirit of extravagance. Part One examines the irony in Lyly's drama. His technique is based upon the principle of contrast, the part always to be considered in the light of its context. The integration of the songs supports their claim to Lyly's authorship. Sometimes the play is 'framed' by pertinent prologue and epilogue, confirming the effect of context. Lyly's court comedies aroused and complimented Queen Elizabeth but also contained a hidden element of instruction and request. Part Two suggests that Euphues was an ironic exhibition of false wit, sophistry, and rhetorical artifice intended to test the reader's power to discriminate substance from style. Lyly remains uncommitted to the style and the attitudes of Euphues. Part Three offers further evidence of Lyly's subtlety in wording and his skill in other-statement. A tradition of ironic euphuism is traced through Gascoigne, Pettie, Lyly and Shakespeare. The conclusion summarises the motives of the ironist.

<p>Syfte: </p><p>Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur intern kommunikation används som strategiskt verktyg i norska IKEAs Corporate Social Responsibility arbete.</p><p>Metod: </p><p>I studien har kvalitativ metod tillämpats. Det empiriska materialet har samlats in genom personliga intervjuer. Dels med personal som ansvarar för kommunikationen av CSR och dels med personal som har andra arbetsuppgifter, exempelvis försäljning och kassaarbete. Materialet har kompletterats med observationer på varuhuset och och studium av styrdokument.</p><p>Slutsatser: </p><p>Personalen är överlag positiv till IKEAs CSR-arbete men har olika attityder till CSR, alla håller inte med de ansvariga för CSR om att både samhället och IKEA tjänar på att IKEA tar ansvar. Den viktigaste informationskanalen för internkommunikation av CSR tycks vara event marketing och kampanjer. Främst de kampanjer som riktar sig externt, till kunder och konsumenter. Anledningen till detta är att en majoritet av personalen till störst del befinner sig i varuhuset, och kommer därför i kontakt med samma material som IKEAs kunder. De flesta är nöjda med hur CSR kommuniceras. Denna tillfredsställelse tycks inte ha något samband med hur mycket personalen de facto vet om IKEAs CSR-arbete. Detta kan ha att göra med att personalen intresserar sig för ämnet i väldigt varierande grad. Miljöskäl används i mycket liten utsträckning i kontakt med kunder, exempelvis som försäljningsargument. En bidragande orsak till detta kan vara att personalen aldrig får frågor om sådant, och upplever att kunderna inte bryr sig om CSR.</p>

Abstract Modernism tends to be criticised, internationally, as politically conservative. The objection is often valid, although the charge says little about the quality of artistic achievement involved. This article argues that the alliance between Modernism and political conservatism is by no means a necessary one, and that there are instances where modernist vision has been used to convey substantive political insight, effective social critique and solid resistance. To illustrate the contrast,the article juxtaposes the abstract Modernism associated with Ben Nicholson and World War 2, with a neglected strain of South African railway poetry which uses modernist techniques to effect a powerful critique of South Africa’s apartheid dispensation. The article sustains a distinction between universalising modernist art that requires ethical work from its audiences to achieve artistic completion, and art in which modernist vision performs the requisite ethical work within its own formal constraints. Four very different South African railway poems, by Dennis Brutus, John Hendrickse, Alan Paton, and Leonard Koza, are examined and contextualised to demonstrate ways in which a modernist vision has been used to portray the social disruptions caused by apartheid. Modernist techniques are used to turn railway experience into a metonym for massive social disruption,without betraying the social reality of the transport technology involved.

Reconfiguration systems use the partial reconfiguration characteristic of FPGA to dynamically load different bitstreams into different partial reconfiguration regions without affecting other active circuit areas. The hardware must provide two functions to support dynamic reconfiguration. First, the FPGA must support the partial reconfiguration function. Many Xilinx FPGAs such as Virtex-II and Virtex-IV have supported the function. Second, the FPGA must provide a way to load a partial bitstream into a specific region during the runtime. This can be achieved through the Xilinx Internal Configuration Access Port (ICAP). However, the functions mentioned above are not sufficient for constructing a dynamic self-reconfiguration system. In this paper, we describe the design flow and the related hardware support for constructing such a system based on the aforementioned hardware functions. We have also implemented the system and the hardware support. In our system, partial bitstreams that were stored in the external flash memory can be loaded into one of the four reconfiguration regions on demand. Moreover, a static module in the system is used for communication between the processor (i.e., Microblaze) and the dynamically-loaded hardware. The static module communicates with Microblaze via FSL (Fast Simplex Link), and communicates with all the dynamically-loaded hardware modules via a uniform interface defined by us. According to the experimental results, configuring a floating-point square-root bitstream via ICAP requires only 0.696 second, which is acceptable in common cases.

Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur intern kommunikation används som strategiskt verktyg i norska IKEAs Corporate Social Responsibility arbete. Metod: I studien har kvalitativ metod tillämpats. Det empiriska materialet har samlats in genom personliga intervjuer. Dels med personal som ansvarar för kommunikationen av CSR och dels med personal som har andra arbetsuppgifter, exempelvis försäljning och kassaarbete. Materialet har kompletterats med observationer på varuhuset och och studium av styrdokument. Slutsatser: Personalen är överlag positiv till IKEAs CSR-arbete men har olika attityder till CSR, alla håller inte med de ansvariga för CSR om att både samhället och IKEA tjänar på att IKEA tar ansvar. Den viktigaste informationskanalen för internkommunikation av CSR tycks vara event marketing och kampanjer. Främst de kampanjer som riktar sig externt, till kunder och konsumenter. Anledningen till detta är att en majoritet av personalen till störst del befinner sig i varuhuset, och kommer därför i kontakt med samma material som IKEAs kunder. De flesta är nöjda med hur CSR kommuniceras. Denna tillfredsställelse tycks inte ha något samband med hur mycket personalen de facto vet om IKEAs CSR-arbete. Detta kan ha att göra med att personalen intresserar sig för ämnet i väldigt varierande grad. Miljöskäl används i mycket liten utsträckning i kontakt med kunder, exempelvis som försäljningsargument. En bidragande orsak till detta kan vara att personalen aldrig får frågor om sådant, och upplever att kunderna inte bryr sig om CSR.