No description available.

This thesis analyses the figure of Arthur, in a period spanning the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, when that figure became increasingly protean and multifaceted, and the audience for the Arthurian legend grew in both size and variety. It argues that many authors wrote through Arthur, as well as about Arthur, using the figure to understand and test their own ideas about ideals (e.g. of manliness, kingship, or heroism) as well as problems (such as war, despotism, or ungodliness). This thesis analyses Arthur by considering him as a 'type', using a definition of the term that highlights a paradox: a type, in a scientific sense, is both perfect (an exemplary model) and normal (common enough to be representative). When applied to Arthur, it means that he is both a perfect, or near perfect, example, but is also to some extent a 'normal' human being. Different authors analysed in this thesis emphasise different aspects of the figure, according to whether they focus on Arthur's perfection or his normality. Other meanings of the word 'type' are also applied when relevant: the idea is not to force all versions of Arthur into a single or definitive category, but to retain the complexity of how Arthur is characterised and written about in texts. The ultimate aim of this thesis is to put the figure of Arthur into critical focus, and explain why he has been returned to so often in history.

This chapter reviews the literature examining interventions to reduce indoor tanning (IT). The first objective was to highlight programs that show promise for large scale dissemination. The second objective was to promote criteria and standards for future intervention research efforts. The scope of interest for this review includes universal (for everyone in the population), selective (for those in the population who are at a greater risk), and indicated (for those who already are experiencing conditions that identify them as at risk) programs. The evaluation of the interventions resulted in three levels of evidence: (1) most promising, (2) emerging, and (3) mixed. For an intervention to be considered “most promising”, it was required that ten criteria be met through examination of research findings in published reports consistent with Flay and colleagues (Prev Sci 6(3):151–175, 2005). Interventions that were classified as “emerging” met most of the criteria. Finally, interventions classified as “mixed” did not reach threshold on more than two criteria that were deemed critical. The results revealed that there was very limited research on IT interventions that meet all the evaluation criteria. Only one intervention approach met all of the criteria (Appearance Booklet) (Hillhouse and Turrisi, Behav Med 25(4):395–409, 2002; Hillhouse et al., Cancer 113(11):3257–3266, 2008). Although the number of published papers in the IT area has increased dramatically over the past decade, these efforts have yet to translate into rigorously conducted intervention trials. The review points to important issues that need to be addressed in future research on the prevention of IT. Keywords

Generic transformation of the castaway novel is made evident by the various ways in which the narrative boundaries that separate fiction from reality and history, the past from the present, and the rational from the irrational, are reconfigured in Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before (1994), J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2002). The dissolution of boundaries reflects the dominant shift that has occurred in the castaway novel from the 18th century literary context to the present postmodern, postcolonial context. In this regard, the narrative utilizes various narratological strategies, the most significant being intertextuality, metafiction, historiographical metafiction, allegory, irony, and the carnivalesque. These narratological strategies rewrite, revise, and recontextualize those generic conventions that perpetuated the culture of masculinity and conquest that defines colonialism and the traditional castaway novel epitomized by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). From a postcolonial perspective, the castaway’s state of being reflects on the condition of the colonized as well as the colonizer: his/her experience of displacement is similar to colonized peoples’ separation from their cultural, spiritual and personal identities; simultaneously, processes of appropriation, adaptation and control of space resemble colonization, thereby revealing the constructed nature of colonial space. As such, space is fundamental to individual orientation and social adaptation and consequently, metaphorically and metonymically linked to identity. In the selected postmodernist and postcolonial texts, the movement from the position of castaway to colonist as originally manifested in Robinson Crusoe is therefore reinterpreted and recontextualized. The postmodernist and postcolonial contexts resist fixed and one-dimensional representations of identity, as well as the appropriation and domination of space, that characterize shipwreck literature from pre-colonial and colonial periods. Rationalist notions of history, reality and truth as empirically definable concepts are also contested. The castaway identity is often characterized by feelings of physical and spiritual displacement and estrangement that can be paralleled to postmodernist themes of existential confusion and anxiety. / Thesis (PhD (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013

Generic transformation of the castaway novel is made evident by the various ways in which the narrative boundaries that separate fiction from reality and history, the past from the present, and the rational from the irrational, are reconfigured in Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before (1994), J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2002). The dissolution of boundaries reflects the dominant shift that has occurred in the castaway novel from the 18th century literary context to the present postmodern, postcolonial context. In this regard, the narrative utilizes various narratological strategies, the most significant being intertextuality, metafiction, historiographical metafiction, allegory, irony, and the carnivalesque. These narratological strategies rewrite, revise, and recontextualize those generic conventions that perpetuated the culture of masculinity and conquest that defines colonialism and the traditional castaway novel epitomized by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). From a postcolonial perspective, the castaway’s state of being reflects on the condition of the colonized as well as the colonizer: his/her experience of displacement is similar to colonized peoples’ separation from their cultural, spiritual and personal identities; simultaneously, processes of appropriation, adaptation and control of space resemble colonization, thereby revealing the constructed nature of colonial space. As such, space is fundamental to individual orientation and social adaptation and consequently, metaphorically and metonymically linked to identity. In the selected postmodernist and postcolonial texts, the movement from the position of castaway to colonist as originally manifested in Robinson Crusoe is therefore reinterpreted and recontextualized. The postmodernist and postcolonial contexts resist fixed and one-dimensional representations of identity, as well as the appropriation and domination of space, that characterize shipwreck literature from pre-colonial and colonial periods. Rationalist notions of history, reality and truth as empirically definable concepts are also contested. The castaway identity is often characterized by feelings of physical and spiritual displacement and estrangement that can be paralleled to postmodernist themes of existential confusion and anxiety. / Thesis (PhD (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013

The study of early cross-linguistic diplomatic epistolography was first introduced in Brownlees' (2012) comparative study of Italian and English personal newsletters. Given the field’s young age and the strong need for both further research and the retrieving of new, untranscribed and unanalysed data, the present study set out to help move this field forward by examining, at both a textual superstructure and semantic macrostructural level, two sets of unchartered diplomatic newsletters which representatives at foreign courts despatched back to their respective home countries. The first set of original manuscripts comprises periodical newsletters which Baron Christer Bonde, the Swedish ambassador-extraordinary to England, wrote to Charles X, King of Sweden, between 1655-6, whereas the second set consists of letters sent in 1680 by John Robinson, England’s chargé d’affaires in Sweden, to Sir Leoline Jenkins, Secretary of State for the Northern Department of England. The analysis has shown that whereas the textual superstructures of the two diplomats’ correspondences remain similarly robust, the instantiating semantic macrostructures display not only stylistic and compositional, but also narrative, variation.

No description available.

Already regarded as one of the top teams in Negro League baseball, the Kansas City Monarchs became known as a powerhouse unit in the 1930s and 40s. They rolled into towns with lights, amazing athletes, and competitive play. They won championship after championship during these years as Kansas City baseball fans strongly supported them. As they became an integral part of the city, the Monarchs' success, open-seating policy, and jazzy home openers fostered a large following of mixed-race fans. The local black newspaper, the Kansas City Call, held them up on a pedestal, while sportswriters for the mainstream Kansas City Star/Times downplayed the Monarchs' accomplishments and influence in the community. This thesis focuses on the relationship the Call had with the best team in black baseball through the context of its treatment of games, players, league officials, and team owners, as well as other patterns and tactics. Analysis of the Star/Times coverage is also considered to show variances in coverage between one city's race-divided newspapers. Negro League baseball and the African American newspapers that covered the teams grew out of and illustrated the segregation laws and prejudices feelings that existed in the United States during most of the twentieth century. Over time, especially when the sports world moved into the post-integration period, the Call's bolstering of the Monarchs deteriorated as the paper's promotion of democracy steered its sportswriters away from a baseball organization that symbolized segregation. The different types of coverage by the Call throughout the twenty-year study can be described as all-out promotion, balance, and abandonment. In the 1950s nostalgia and conflict existed, as the Call's sportswriters became torn on how to cover a team that was once the pride of the black community, but now represented inequality. In an attempt to remedy this torment, the Call tried to convince black baseball officials to remove the “Negro League” stigma by signing players of all races in order to mirror the more democratic Major Leagues. The white press, meanwhile, ignored the bigger issues of black baseball as one Negro League team after another died in the 1950s. The Star/Times peripheral coverage of the Monarchs provides context to the social issues and discriminatory practices at play in Missouri. As this thesis outlines the coverage of the Monarchs through the Black and White newspapers of Kansas City, previous research is substantiated and challenged to provide a fuller account of Jim Crow's effects.

Объектом исследования является тревожность. Предметом исследования стала связь изменений показателей уровня тревожности в результате предтестовой беседы со стратегией прохождения СПФИ. Магистерская диссертация состоит из введения, трех глав, заключения, списка литературы (61 источник) и приложения. Объем магистерской диссертации 99 страница, на которых размещены 16 рисунков и 16 таблиц. Во введении раскрывается актуальность проблемы исследования, разработанность проблематики, ставятся цель и задачи исследования, определяются объект и предмет исследования, формулируются основная и дополнительные гипотезы, указываются методы и эмпирическая база, а также этапы проведения исследования, научная новизна, теоретическая и практическая значимость работы. Первая глава включает в себя обзор иностранной и отечественной литературы по методу специального психофизиологического исследования с применением полиграфа. Представленные разделы посвящены описанию метода СПФИ и роли предтестовой беседы в СПФИ. Выводы по первой главе представляют собой обобщение по изучению теоретического материала. Во второй главе описаны представления о тревожности в психологии и обозначены методы диагностики тревожности в психологии. В выводах по второй главе обобщён материал по данной тематике. Третья глава посвящена эмпирической части исследования. В ней представлено описание организации и методов проведенного исследования и результатов, полученных по всем использованным методикам и методам: специальное психофизиологическое исследование с использованием полиграфа (СПФИ); метафорические ассоциативные карты (МАК); шкала ситуативной тревожности Спилбергера-Ханина; 10-и бальная шкала самооценки тревожности; измерение вегетативных показателей на основе данных тонометра. Также в главе представлен сравнительный анализ Манна Уитни и корреляционный анализ результатов исследования. Выводы по главе 3 включают в себя основные результаты эмпирического исследования. В заключении в обобщенном виде изложены результаты теоретической и эмпирической частей работы, а также выводы по выдвинутым гипотезам и обоснована практическая значимость исследования. / The object of the study is anxiety. The subject of the study was the relationship of changes in anxiety level indicators as a result of a pre-test conversation with the strategy of passing the SPFI. The master's thesis consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion, a list of references (61 sources) and an appendix. The volume of the master's thesis is 99 pages, which contain 16 figures and 16 tables. The introduction reveals the relevance of the research problem, the elaboration of the problem, sets the purpose and objectives of the study, defines the object and subject of the study, formulates the main and additional hypotheses, specifies the methods and empirical base, as well as the stages of research, scientific novelty, theoretical and practical significance of the work. The first chapter includes a review of foreign and domestic literature on the method of special psychophysiological research using a polygraph. The presented sections are devoted to the description of the SPFI method and the role of the pre-test conversation in the SPFI. The conclusions of the first chapter are a generalization of the study of theoretical material. The second chapter describes the concepts of anxiety in psychology and identifies methods for diagnosing anxiety in psychology. The conclusions of the second chapter summarize the material on this topic. The third chapter is devoted to the empirical part of the study. It describes the organization and methods of the study and the results obtained by all the methods and methods used: a special psychophysiological study using a polygraph (SPFI); metaphorical associative maps (MAC); the Spielberger-Khanin situational anxiety scale; a 10-point scale of self-assessment of anxiety; measurement of vegetative indicators based on tonometer data. The chapter also presents a comparative analysis of Mann Whitney and a correlation analysis of the results of the study. The conclusions of Chapter 3 include the main results of an empirical study. In conclusion, the results of the theoretical and empirical parts of the work are summarized, as well as conclusions on the hypotheses put forward and the practical significance of the study is substantiated.