The Importance of Madness as a Theme in Twelfth Night by...

The Importance of Madness as a Theme in Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare Madness is a very important theme that is present in the whole course of the play Twelfth Night. Firstly, we have Malvolio almost turning mad because of the cruel joke the other servants play on him. They make him think he is mad and they also make Olivia think he is mad because of the funny way in which he is acting. There is also the theme of mad love. Some examples of this are Orsino being madly in love with Olivia, Olivia being madly in love with Cesario/Viola and Viola falling madly in love with Orsino. This mad love makes Orsino mad from â€Å"a savage jealousy† when he realises Olivia’s love for Cesario/Viola. Another†¦show more content†¦Love and loving madly are quite important in Twelfth Night. The audience can see various examples of being madly in love throughout the play. Orsino’s â€Å"unconditional† love for Olivia is one of them. He claims to have his â€Å"desires like fell and cruel hounds† pursue him ever since he firs t saw her. He sends Cesario to â€Å"unfold the passion of [his] love† and â€Å"surprise her with discourse of [his] dear faith†. However, his love turns into â€Å"a savage jealousy† and mad anger and reaches a point where he says â€Å"I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love, to spite a raven’s heart within a dove† as he realises Olivia is in love with Cesario/Viola. This is another example of being madly in love. Olivia falls desperately in love with Cesario/Viola reaching a point where she declares â€Å"nor wit nor reason can my passion hide† which is quite an expression of mad love and even admits it is â€Å"a most extraordinary frenzy†. She becomes desperate for a hint of love from Cesario/Viola when she declares her love for him but he keeps on rejecting her as he is in love with Orsino. Viola’s love for Orsino is also a very strong love that touches madness. She â€Å"most jocund, apt and willingly,† to please Orsino â€Å"a thousand deaths would die† which shows how intense and maddening her love for himShow MoreRelatedThe Limitations Of Frye s Green World 1729 Words   |  7 PagesWhat are the limitations of Frye’s ‘Green World’ model as applied to ‘Twelfth Night’ by William Shakespeare? Twelfth Night was thought to be written in 1600-1. The play – known for adhering to a genre of romantic comedy by utilising pathos combined with humour – is listed under comedies in the First Folio of 1623 with another of Shakespeare’s works As You Like It. Twelfth Night adheres to Frye’s theory to some extent. The old world, one of repression, is conveyed through the puritanical beliefs ofRead MoreTwelfth Night- Literature Cape Unit !7125 Words   |  29 PagesTwelfth Night Criticism William Shakespeare and The Twelfth Night Known for his tragedies, comedies, sonnets and love stories, William Shakespeare is argued to be one of the best writers of his time. Throughout his plays, including The Twelfth Night, he uses disguise and deceit to fool the other characters to benefit another. Shakespeare was born in April of 1564 in the town Stratford-upon-Avon. Although the exact date of his birth is not known, historians traditionally celebrate it on the 23rdRead MoreThe Dramatic Importance of Act 1 Scenes 1 and 2 of William Shakespeares Twelfth Night4384 Words   |  18 PagesThe Dramatic Importance of Act 1 Scenes 1 and 2 of William Shakespeares Twelfth Night The title Twelfth Night seems to suggest that Shakespeare, who wrote the play around 1602, wanted it to be performed on the twelfth day after Christmas; the festival of the Epiphany. This day formally marked the end of the Christmas season, which at the time was celebrated as a special festival. In addition to eating, drinking and generally over indulging, the performance of plays wasRead MoreA Picatrix Miscellany52019 Words   |  209 PagesTrithemius in Book 2 of his notorious Steganographia (1500) and in his Antipalus Maleficiorum (c. 1500). One copy (British Library, Sloane manuscript 3679) passed down from Simon Forman (d. 1611) to Richard Napier (d. 1634) to Elias Ashmole (d. 1692) to William Lilly (d. 1681). E.M. Butler wrongly associates it with Gio. Peccatrix, (no doubt a pseudonym) who edited an Italian version of the Key of Solomon (British Library, Sloane manuscript 1307). Misled by some comments by Mathers and others, Dr. Butler

The Affects of Divorce on Youth Free Essays

In Canada, it is estimated that four in ten marriages end in divorce. Despite the â€Å"’til death do us part† vow couples participate in at the time of marriage, there were 69,600 separations in Canada in 2004 (Statistics Canada, 2004). It has also been determined that every one in two divorces involves children. We will write a custom essay sample on The Affects of Divorce on Youth or any similar topic only for you Order Now Although there have been many studies done which attempt to prove that children who experience parental divorce do have behavioral problems, fail to complete high school, and have emotional discrepancies, the effects of divorce on the overall outcome of a child is not detrimental to his or her development. Those who take the stance that divorce is a determining factor through their various studies have not taken a proper representative sample of cases from children nor considered other determining factors which could also lead to a child’s lack of well-being. Today a divorce is when a marriage is legally dissolved because the relationship is irretrievably broken. However, before the Divorce Act of 1968, divorces were increasingly difficult to obtain. In order to be granted one, the couple would have to meet at least one criteria of marital breakdown – they would have to be living apart for a year or longer, one of the spouses has to have committed an act of adultery, or one spouse has treated the other in a cruel way. The average Canadian family features parents who deal with a plethora of stressors. One of the main reasons for marriage dissatisfaction, however, is money. This problem is prevalent when a family does not have enough income to support its needs or wants. Pressure to fulfill these desires will create an unhappy relationship between everybody involved. Regardless, when parents separate, it can create a whole new distress in the child which can outweigh that of any economical situation the family could be facing. While parents toying with the idea of divorce may think that by legally separating, they could be risking their children’s overall happiness; by staying together they could be putting the child at greater risk of mental and emotional problems. Children who are witness to their parents constant fighting and conflicts are at higher risk of long-term distress (Jekielek, 1998). Divorce where there is little parental conflict will actually do a child less harm than no divorce with high parental conflict. The symptoms of being in an environment where there is high parental conflict is very similar to those seen in children of divorce; they can develop anxiety and aggression (Morrison and Corio, 1999), as well as behavioral problems in school such as antisocial behavior and difficulty concentrating (Amato and Sobolewski, 2001). Socialization of children is essential during school years. Children who are affected negatively during this time by parental conflict or divorce can create problems for the future by making them socially withdrawn. Poor social skills and shyness can force children into complications which have the potentiality to permanently damage their views and impact the formation of healthy relationships. There are three factors which account for much of the distress among children, and high parental conflict is the most determining factor. The second is a decline of living standards; this is where the child’s family has a low economic status and cannot fulfill the needs and basic wants of a child successfully. A child’s family can reach poverty if the mother or father who is granted custody does not earn enough money to support the child, due to the loss of complimenting income from the noncustodial parent or the fact that they cannot get a job because they had sacrificed their education and employment opportunities in order to care for the child. The third factor is the absence of the noncustodial parent. This is because the child loses a role-model who they look to for emotional and physical support (Resnick et al. , 1997), an issue which the social learning theory commends. The time with the noncustodial parent will eventually decrease with time, whereas the child’s relationship with his or her mother will increase (Amato and Booth, 1996). Whereas evidence in the past has supported findings that a child is well adapted, self confident and secure in who they are when they are raised in a two parent as opposed to single parent household, a child with divorced parents is said to suffer both mentally and emotionally. There are two propositions, one of which suggests that children who grow up in households where the two biological parents are not present will exhibit lower levels of well-being, and the other says that the adverse effects on youthful ell-being will be especially acute when the cause of parental absence is marital separation, divorce, or desertion. They often tend to develop behavioral problems and do less well in school than children of intact families (Demo, Fine, and Ganong, 2000). On top of that, they are more likely to engage in dangerous behavior such as substance and alcohol abuse. These damaging effects have the potential to last the child into adulthood. One study showed that almost half the children of divorced parents entered adulthood as worried, self-deprecating, and sometimes angry young men and women (Wallerstein, Lewis, and Blakeslee, 2000). They also tend to be less happy than a child with intact parents, and increasingly likely to suffer from health problems, depend on welfare, earn low income, and experience divorce themselves. Problems with marriage are thought to be prevalent in cases where a child’s parents have experienced divorce and can lead to an increase in divorces between them as well as an overall aversion to marriage (Anthony, 1974). Many of these adults continue to struggle with depression, anxiety, and overall feeling of dissatisfaction with their overall lives. These people will utilize more mental health services than will those who grew up with both parents (Amato and Sobolewski, 2001). Compared to children whose parents did not separate, children with divorced parents are more likely to drop out of high school, less likely to attend college, and complete fewer years of education overall. Some believe that this is due to the emotional disturbance which is caused in households where parental conflict is high, resulting in a poor sense of self in the child. Poor sense of self also leads to other relationship troubles including infidelity, reoccurring divorces, and remarriages and in extreme cases spousal and domestic abuse. It has also been found that those living in a single-parent household are associated with a greater risk of not completing high school (Deleire and Kalil, 2002). In one study, it shows that the proportion of children graduating from high school is the highest for children with no change in their family structure and lowest for children with three or more changes in their family structure. Relative to children in households that reported no change in marital status, children who experienced any type of change in family structure were less likely to graduate from high school. The odds of completing high school for children whose parents experienced parental divorce only were 61 percent lower than for children whose parents remained together. However, despite evidence which proves that divorce does cause an emotional disturbance within children, some analysts disagree. Despite the link between divorce and long-term negative consequences, this evidence is based on families who seek psychological counseling. These families are a small and unrepresentative minority of the population. Another discrepancy in this theory is that some analysts fail to ask whether factors other than divorce might be responsible for the long-term distress experienced by children of divorced parents. A re-analysis of 93 relevant studies showed that the overall effect of divorce on children’s well-being is not strong and is declining over time (Amato and Booth, 1991). Whereas some studies show a significant decrease of education completion, one study done across Canada, Australia, and the United States of America shows that divorce is not an educational â€Å"disaster†. Rather, it says that children whose parents divorce get approximately seven-tenths of a year less education than children from intact families. A divorce is not the determining factor in long-term distress in children; rather, it is a multitude of factors which complement each other in creating a child with various mental and emotional difficulties. Despite evidence supporting both sides of this argument, those who believe that studies which discredit the results which seem to support divorce as the major distress-causing agent of previous studies seem to be the most believable; this is because there is simply so much more to a divorce than the act of separation in itself. Determinants such as parental conflict, economic status, and the upbringing of the child all play major roles in providing distress in a child’s life. Although the argument of divorce causing some sort of problematic experiences in a child, which will last them into adulthood, is a strong one, one must remember all of the other agents which build up to a divorce when deciding whether or not a divorce is the sole detrimental attribute to a problematic childhood. ? How to cite The Affects of Divorce on Youth, Essay examples

Loud by Rihanna free essay sample

When we hear the name Rihanna, our brain usually switches over to a picture released by TMZ of a bloody and battered girl who had just gotten into a physical debacle with her then-beau Chris Brown; or you might think of a sweet little girl in a tiny black ensemble prancing around in the water, umbrella in tow, singing a hit that has stood the test of time and almost anyone older than 8 can sing all the words to. But after listening to Rihanna’s 5th album, Loud, all previous conceptions of this modern musical icon will be quickly forgotten. You’ll quickly forget the cheery pop princess you heard in Good Girl Gone Bad as she quickly pulls you in with â€Å"SM†, a slightly-naughty song that you’ll have blaring out of your speakers when your parents aren’t home. â€Å"What’s My Name?†, featuring other mega-start Drake, â€Å"Raining Men†, featuring Young Money vixen Nicki Minaj, and â€Å"Only Girl (In The World)† will also b e songs that you’ll be dying to sing into your hairbrush when you have the house to yourself. We will write a custom essay sample on Loud by Rihanna or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Loud isn’t just another overrated album full of club bangers that are void of emotion. â€Å"Complicated†, â€Å"Fading†, â€Å"California King Bed†, and â€Å"Love The Way You Lie, Pt II†, featuring hip hop god Eminem, will seem as though Ri-Ri picked our brains and made songs out of some of our worst and most intimate relationship problems. â€Å"Love The Way You Lie, Pt. II† is like â€Å"Love The Way You Lie† ‘s emotional twin brother. This beautiful ballad is sung entirely by Rihanna, until Eminem interjects at the end to throw in his own musically brilliant two cents. If you buy Loud on iTunes, you can get the piano version of â€Å"Love The Way You Lie, Pt. II† (which is basically the same as the original, only without Eminem) and the â€Å"Only Girl (In The World)† music video. I highly recommend this album to everyone. Songs from this album will definitely make you think more of Rihanna that just the girl who sung a catchy karaoke essential way back in 2007.

Long And Short Term Causes Of WWI free essay sample

Essay, Research Paper There were several long-run events that led to the eruption of World War One. The most outstanding factors include: patriotism, militarism, imperialism, the Balkan and Morocco crises, and the confederation system. Ironically, these things were either started in response to, or upheld because of, one of the other factors. The confederation system was one of the last factors to emerge before the war. Consequentially, the parts of this system to the beginning of the Great War have to be considered. Although the confederation system was a chief cause of the First World War, it arose because of several other factors, and did non do the war individual handedly. Patriotism, the love and support of one # 8217 ; s state, has ever existed. In this epoch, nevertheless, it was to take portion in the creative activity of one of the most celebrated wars in history. Since so much pride was devoted to states, it made the possibilities of peace between past challengers less likely. We will write a custom essay sample on Long And Short Term Causes Of WWI or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page It besides meant that most states, particularly the great powers, would instead contend a war than back down from a rival # 8217 ; s diplomatic aggravation. In consequence, patriotism was besides a lending factor to the confederation system. No state feels comfy being in a war entirely, and with the turning armed forcess in about every state, Alliess provided much comfort. The supreme nowadays of militarism, # 8220 ; a policy of aggressive military readiness # 8221 ; , in this period of clip gave all states great ground to experience the heavy weight of an oncoming war. Great Britain # 8217 ; s naval policy ( to ever be twice every bit large as the following two largest naval forcess put together ) , along with the predominate feeling of war provided states with a strong ground to seek and make an improbably strong military force. This led to an weaponries race, which made the at hand war seem inevitable. The military planning in some states besides caused an increased fright of war. Since military machines were being developed, each state was naming a general staff of experts. The greatest job with this was that there was a fright that # 8220 ; some head of staff, in order to keep the agenda on his # 8216 ; timetable # 8217 ; , might coerce an order of mobilisation and therefore precipitate war. # 8221 ; These two factors besides led, in portio n, to the confederation system. If two or more states are allied with each other so they have a better opportunity of get the better ofing their common enemy if war is declared. They besides have a higher chance of winning in a war on more than one forepart if they have confederations supplying support. Imperialism is defined as the control of one people by another politically, economic development, or the infliction of civilization on another group. This non merely played a big portion in the creative activity of the confederation system, but it besides created enemies for many states, which led to solid evidences for war. For test ple, Austria wanted to rule the Balkans in order to look into he propaganda coming from Serbia. Germany supported Austria in its Balkan policy because it wanted to work the rich resorts of Asia Minor, and had to hold a peaceable path through the Balkans to acquire at that place. In this manner, it led to the confederation of Germany and Austria when war was impending. Imperialism led states to hold conflicting national involvements, which besides led to war, as each state thought that they were right and wanted to change over other civilizations to be more like their ain. With patriotism, militarism, and imperialism all demoing big presences at the same period in clip, a solid land was formed for the confederation system to construct itself on. The Double Alliance between Germany and Austria was formed, the Ternary Alliance between Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy was created, and the Triple Entente was created between France, Russia, and Great Britain. Although the Triple Entente was non an official confederation, they all maintained a really close apprehension, and were viewed by many as a menace. The crises in Morocco and the Balkans had a lay waste toing consequence merely because these crises occurred one straight after another. The several crises in these parts followed by what is known as the # 8220 ; 3rd Balkan crisis # 8221 ; led to what most would state was the immediate cause of the war. It was what caused the most harm, perchance merely because it was following shortly after the first two. On June 28, 1914, the Black Hand, a Bosnian revolutionist, assassinated the inheritor to the Austrian throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand. As a signifier of revenge, Austria decided to stop the South Slav segregation, and issued an ultimatum: Austrian functionaries must be allowed to join forces in the probe and penalty of the bravos. Austria, with the support of Germany, so declared war against the Serbs, since they had refused the ultimatum. Then, on August 1, 1914, Germany demanded that Russia # 8217 ; s military mobilisation cease, and when Russia refused, Germany declared wa r. Russia so declared war on France, convinced that it would come in anyhow. Germany was ten devastated when Great Britain entered the war, excessively. As one state declared war on another all confederations were brought into the war, excessively, and the First World War shortly resulted. Therefore, the confederation system was holds the greatest duty for the jailbreak of a universe war. However, the confederation system might hold neer occurred had it non been for patriotism, militarism, and imperialism. Furthermore, the Morocco and Balkan crises did non straight do the war, but they were used as justification for the war to get down. Hence, many factors contributed to the formation of the confederation system, which led to feeling of tenseness between enemy states, and the 3rd Balkan crisis paved the manner for the war to get down.

How and Why to Comment in Your PHP Code

How and Why to Comment in Your PHP Code A comment in PHP code is a line that is not read as part of the program. Its only purpose is to be read by someone who is editing the code. So why use comments? To let others know what youre doing. If you are working with a group of people or plan on anyone else ever using your script, the comments tell the other programmers what you were doing in each step. This makes it much easier for them to work with and to edit your code if needed.To remind yourself what you did. Although you may just be writing a quick script for yourself and dont see the need for comments, go ahead and add them in anyway. Most programmers have experienced coming back to edit their own work a year or two later and having to figure out what they did. Comments can remind you of your thoughts when you wrote the code. There are several ways to add a comment in PHP code. The first is by using // to comment out a line. This one-line comment style only comments to the end of the line or the current code block, whichever comes first. Here is an example: ?php echo hello; //this is a comment echo there; ? If you have a single line comment, another option is to use a # sign. Here is an example of this method: ?php echo hello; #this is a comment echo there; ? If you have a longer, multi-line comment, the best way to comment is with /* and  */ before and after a lengthy comment. You can contain several lines of commenting inside a block. Here is an example: ?php echo hello; /* Using this method you can create a larger block of text and it will all be commented out */ echo there; ? Dont Mix Comments Although you can nest comments within comments in PHP, do so carefully. Not all of them nest equally well. PHP supports C, C and Unix shell-style comments. C style comments end at the first */ they encounter, so dont nest C style comments.   If you are working with PHP and HTML, be aware that HTML comments mean nothing to the PHP parser. They wont work as intended and are likely to execute some function. So, stay away from:   !Comment

Facts and Key Figures in the Battle of Gettysburg

Facts and Key Figures in the Battle of Gettysburg Dates July 1-3, 1863 Location Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Key Individuals Involved in the Battle of Gettysburg Union: Major General George G. Meade Confederate: General Robert E. Lee Outcome Union Victory, with 51,000 casualties total. Of those, 28,000 were Confederate soldiers. Overview of the Battle General Robert E. Lee had succeeded at the Battle of Chancellorsville and decided to push north in his Gettysburg campaign. He met the Union forces in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Lee concentrated his armys full strength against Major General George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac at the Gettysburg crossroads. On July 1, Lees forces moved on the Union forces in the town from both the west and the north. This drove the Union defenders through the streets of the city to Cemetery Hill. During the night, reinforcements arrived for both sides of the battle. On July 2, struck the Lee attempted to surround the Union army. First, he sent Longstreets and Hills divisions to strike the Union left flank at the Peach Orchard, Devil’s Den, the  Wheatfield, and the Round Tops. He then sent Ewells divisions against the Union right flank at Culp’s and East Cemetery Hills. By evening, the Union forces still held  Little Round Top  and had repulsed most of Ewell’s forces. During the morning of July 3, the Union struck back and were able to drive the Confederate infantry from their last toe-hold on Culp’s Hill. That  afternoon, after a short artillery bombardment, Lee decided to push the attack on the Union center on Cemetery Ridge. The Pickett-Pettigrew assault (more popularly, Pickett’s Charge) briefly struck through the Union line but was quickly repulsed with severe casualties. At the same time, Stuart’s cavalry tried to gain the Union rear, but his forces were also repulsed. On July 4, Lee began withdrawing his army toward Williamsport on the Potomac River. His train of wounded stretched more than fourteen miles. Significance of the Battle of Gettysburg The Battle of Gettysburg is seen as the turning point of the war. General Lee had  attempted and failed to invade the North. This was a move designed to remove pressure from Virginia and possibly emerge victorious so as to quickly end the war. The failure of Pickett’s Charge was the sign of the Souths loss. This loss for the Confederates was demoralizing. General Lee would never attempt another invasion of the North to this degree.

Answer 6 question about deaf culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Answer 6 question about deaf culture - Essay Example Moreover, they recognize the deaf as a minority from a linguistic and a cultural perspective. In addition, they also consider sign language as the first and natural language for application for Deaf people. The pre-lingual deaf is in reference to an individual born Deaf or someone who lost the sense of hearing before they began learning to speak. On the other hand, the post-lingual deaf is in reference to an individual who becomes deaf after acquiring a spoken language. In the book† Train Go Sorry,† the author describes two observations regarding the implications of being deaf before or after acquiring a spoken language. The first observation indicates that there are some educators and parents who believe that children who are prelingualy deaf will never be able to develop speech and language skills in comparison to the children who are postlingually Deaf. This eventually leads to social isolation and minimizes their chance of getting a decent job. For example, when the doctor recommended 17 year old James for a cochlear implant, the consequent evaluation and recommendation was not good for several reasons. The first reason being that James’s deafness was caused by b acterial meningitis when he was at five years of age. Furthermore, after one and half of years of suffering from the illness, the inner ear developed a bony growth which inhibited the insertion of electrodes. The second reason being that James had a significant amount of residual hearing that enable him to benefit from the use of hearing aids. In the regard, the implication drawn was James disqualification as a deserving candidate for cochlear implant surgery. In retrospect, the cochlear implant is not necessarily an appropriate option for everyone. The second observation is that some educators, doctors, and parents believe that cochlear implant will allow the

Compare the imagery in the following two poems Essay

Compare the imagery in the following two poems - Essay Example metry?† In the same manner, he also vividly provided us the fierceness of the tiger as he painted its image as â€Å"Burnt the fire of thine eyes?  / On what wings dare he aspire?† Blake also used metaphors in the succeeding line using metaphors such as â€Å"fire† to further describe the fierceness and power of the â€Å"Tyger†. Then Blake wrote with a certain degree of awe when he ascribed the â€Å"Tyger† as a mere creation of a Creator that he asked, â€Å"And what shoulder, & what art† have created it? He would like to ask the intelligence who made it because the Tyger is so fierce that it could turn against its maker evident with these lines â€Å"What the hammer? what the chain?   In what furnace was thy brain?  / What the anvil? what dread grasp  / Dare its deadly terrors clasp?† Finally, when his questions were already made about the tiger and its Creator, he wondered if its Creator was pleased to create the tiger with the question â€Å"Did he smile his work to see†. This poem more than its visual narration is more metaphysical in nature as it asked creation, God and His Wisdom. It used metaphors and vivid imagery for his point to be effectively conveyed to its readers. Unlike the â€Å"The Tyger† which has heavy metaphysical theme, Blake’s other poem entitled â€Å"Daffodils† is really a poem of appreciation for nature. As one would read through the poem, it was as if Blake is tour guiding the reader about the Daffodils when he â€Å"WANDERD lonely as a cloud / That floats on high oer vales and hills, / When all at once I saw a crowd, / A host, of golden daffodils; / Beside the lake, beneath the trees, / Fluttering and dancing in the breeze†. In reading these lines, the imagery is so alive that it was as if Blake himself had taken the reader â€Å"beside the lake and beneath the trees†. After being under the trees, Blake asked the reader to look up to the skies to see what he saw. It’s the â€Å"twinkle on the Milky Way† as it stretched throughout

The Black Death Essay Example for Free

The Black Death Essay A virulent plague strikes Europe in the 14th century in addition to its current over-population and malnutrition problems. Preconditions and Causes of the Plague 1. Nine-tenths of the people worked the land in the 14th century of Europe. 2. The 3 field system efficiently rose the production of crops however it was still not enough to meet the demands of the growing population. 3. Estimation shows the European population doubling within the years 1000 and 3000 outgrowing the food supply. 4. In addition to food shortage there was a shortage of jobs, and many Europeans faced extreme hunger conditions. 5. During 1315-1317 crop failures result in the largest famine of the Middle Ages. 6. Populated urban towns and areas, like the industrial towns of the Netherlands suffered the most under these conditions. 7. Overpopulation, economic depression, famine, and bad health coming together for decades surely weakened Europe’s population making it more susceptible to impending plague. 8. The Black Death was called so because of the black discoloration of the skin. It travelled from Asia to Europe through trade routes. 9. The fleas on rats held the plague and ships that travelled from the Black Sea to Europe were the likely cause of the plague spreading to Europe. 10. The Black Death first began appearing in Constantinople in 1346 and Sicily in 1347. Entering the ports of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa in 1348. From then on the plague began spreading through Spain and France and into north Europe. Regions off to the side of trade routes such as Bohemia remained unaffected by the plague. 11. The plague had much reappearance for decades after. Popular Remedies 1. The plague attacked the lungs of the victim while under it. Because it affected the lungs sneezing and wheezing easily passed it on from person to person. 2. Physicians at the time knew little of the body so basic fundamental procedures to prevent the disease failed. 3. Cotemporary physicians cannot explain the plague either and view it to be a catastrophe with no explanation and no defense. 4. Western Europe was greatly affected by an obsession with death and disease and caused a pessimism that lasted even after the plague had been over for years. 5. Some people believed the disease had come from a corruption in the atmosphere while others though it was caused by fumes that earthquakes released. 6. Many people believed a remedy was to wear an aromatic amulet. 7. Some believed a temperate life would be a remedy others gave into their passions; however others still chose flight and seclusion as the best medicine. 8. An extreme remedy believed by flagellants consisted of beating one’s self and that would bring on a divine intervention. The act of this was so socially disruptive and the blood spilled by this spread the disease even more, so the church finally banned these acts.

Drawing Down The Moon Essay -- essays research papers

Introduction   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I chose to read the book Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today, by Margot Adler, because I myself am a practicing Wiccan.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I began following this religion the summer before I entered high school. I have read many books on my religion, and I thought that this one would compliment the knowledge that I have on the subject.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I was raised a Roman Catholic, but I never felt truly comfortable with the teachings of the Catholic church. It always seemed a little off to me and I never felt like I belonged there. After I received the Sacrament of Confirmation, my parents stopped enforcing that I attend mass every Sunday. It made the transition a lot easier for me. Although, they did not and still do not approve of my religion, they understand that Catholicism is not for me.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When people hear that I am a â€Å"witch,† they automatically assume that I am either crazy, or a â€Å"devil worshipper.† Books such as Alder’s Drawing Down the Moon, are the only way to allow other people to realize that there are many facets to the term â€Å"Pagan.† They also make people realize that not all Pagan religions revolve around curses, crystal balls and sacrifices.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Although, I did not agree with everything that Margot Adler had to say, or with some of the interviews she chose to include in Drawing Down the Moon, I am happy that I chose to read it for my final paper. I do not feel that we cover enough about Pagan religions in our class, and this assignment gave me the opportunity to learn more about Pagan religions other than my own. Brief Summary   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In America today, there are a myriad of â€Å"occult† or â€Å"magickal† groups. Some of these groups are small with maybe only 5 or 6 members, some have hundreds. The groups that I am referring to call themselves Pagans or Neo-Pagans. There are a wide variety of Pagans and Neo-Pagans. They can be animists, polytheists, pantheists, monotheists, or a combination of any of these. There are also many different classifications of Witches, such as: Gothic, Classical, Familial, Immigrant, Ethnic and Feminist. Each group is very distinct and different from the next. They do however share a common set of values.   Ã‚   ... ...h to be able to answer in the future, are:  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  What makes Pagan religions so unappealing to people when the basis of the religion relies solely on however the practitioner interprets it?  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Why isn’t there more information available on them considering these religions are so old?  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Why don’t these religions have any solid dogma?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I think that this assignment was a very good learning experience. It gave us the chance to explore any area of religion that we wanted to know about or learn more about. We weren’t restrained to the more common religions that we discuss in depth in class. I enjoyed the fact that we had a large amount of freedom when choosing our topic. It is not good to always be told what to write about. Freedom of topics is always beneficial for the most creative fulfillment of any assignment. It gives the student a chance to work on something that they are truly interested in. This assignment definitely allowed me to further my knowledge in the areas of religion that I am interested in, rather than solely what is in a syllabus.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Drawing Down The Moon Essay -- essays research papers Introduction   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I chose to read the book Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today, by Margot Adler, because I myself am a practicing Wiccan.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I began following this religion the summer before I entered high school. I have read many books on my religion, and I thought that this one would compliment the knowledge that I have on the subject.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I was raised a Roman Catholic, but I never felt truly comfortable with the teachings of the Catholic church. It always seemed a little off to me and I never felt like I belonged there. After I received the Sacrament of Confirmation, my parents stopped enforcing that I attend mass every Sunday. It made the transition a lot easier for me. Although, they did not and still do not approve of my religion, they understand that Catholicism is not for me.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When people hear that I am a â€Å"witch,† they automatically assume that I am either crazy, or a â€Å"devil worshipper.† Books such as Alder’s Drawing Down the Moon, are the only way to allow other people to realize that there are many facets to the term â€Å"Pagan.† They also make people realize that not all Pagan religions revolve around curses, crystal balls and sacrifices.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Although, I did not agree with everything that Margot Adler had to say, or with some of the interviews she chose to include in Drawing Down the Moon, I am happy that I chose to read it for my final paper. I do not feel that we cover enough about Pagan religions in our class, and this assignment gave me the opportunity to learn more about Pagan religions other than my own. Brief Summary   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In America today, there are a myriad of â€Å"occult† or â€Å"magickal† groups. Some of these groups are small with maybe only 5 or 6 members, some have hundreds. The groups that I am referring to call themselves Pagans or Neo-Pagans. There are a wide variety of Pagans and Neo-Pagans. They can be animists, polytheists, pantheists, monotheists, or a combination of any of these. There are also many different classifications of Witches, such as: Gothic, Classical, Familial, Immigrant, Ethnic and Feminist. Each group is very distinct and different from the next. They do however share a common set of values.   Ã‚   ... ...h to be able to answer in the future, are:  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  What makes Pagan religions so unappealing to people when the basis of the religion relies solely on however the practitioner interprets it?  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Why isn’t there more information available on them considering these religions are so old?  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Why don’t these religions have any solid dogma?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I think that this assignment was a very good learning experience. It gave us the chance to explore any area of religion that we wanted to know about or learn more about. We weren’t restrained to the more common religions that we discuss in depth in class. I enjoyed the fact that we had a large amount of freedom when choosing our topic. It is not good to always be told what to write about. Freedom of topics is always beneficial for the most creative fulfillment of any assignment. It gives the student a chance to work on something that they are truly interested in. This assignment definitely allowed me to further my knowledge in the areas of religion that I am interested in, rather than solely what is in a syllabus.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  

Critically Evaluate the Three Theories of Personality

Critically evaluate the three theories of personality using examples from PE and Sport. The three theories of personality are; Trait Theory, Social Learning Theory and Interactionist Theory. All three have a different perspective of how each individual’s personality is formed. Trait theory suggests that personality is made up of certain stable and enduring characteristics which stay with a person from birth and do not change. They are inherited and passed down through genes from the individuals parents.Therefore the equation for this theory is, Behaviour = function of Personality or B = F (P). One strength of trait theory is that it can be easily measured through questionnaires, quizzes, interviews etc. The most well known questionnaire for trait theory is one designed by Eysenk. The questionnaire allowed Eysenk to calculate a number for the individual which he would then plot onto a graph and be able to label them into two dimensions; extrovert/introvert and neurotic/stable. However, this theory does not take into account the influence of the environment on personality.This theory can be put into context when looking at extroverts and introverts in sports. Extroverts tend to play in team sports, where they can be sociable, lively and are able to take some leadership. However, introverts generally prefer to take part in individual sports as they are more unsociable, shy and nervous. Social Learning Theory implies that personality is simply formed through life experiences and environmental influences. Therefore the equation for this is Behaviour = Function of personality (environment) or B=F(E).The fact that this theory, unlike Trait theory, takes into consideration the effect of the environment gives it an entirely different perspective. Despite this, the theory doesn’t give any thought to inherent traits and therefore is relatively simplistic as personality seems to all be down to the environment and a person’s experiences. To put this the ory into context, an example may be that a person who surfs might surf purely because they grew up by the coast. This shows the environment has had an effect on their choice of sport to take part in. The Interactionist Theory is the final theory of the three.It suggests that personality is formed through a combination of traits from birth e. g. funny and then these traits are developed and enhanced through life experiences. The equation therefore being B = F (PE). This theory is somewhat just a mix of both Trait theory and Social Learning theory to produce a new theory which contains aspects of both of these. It is this that makes it the most widely accepted theory used to explain behaviour in sport. Interactionist theory can be seen in sport when someone acts out of character to what they usually would.For example David Beckham, who is known for his gentle and shy nature, lashed out in a game against Argentina and received a red card for his actions. David Beckham does not typicall y react like this, and so we can see that his traits were heavily influenced upon by the environment which in this case was an opposing player. To conclude, all three theories are based on different perceptions and all come with their own strengths and weaknesses. The fact that they are theories reminds us that there isn’t one that is deemed to be correct, and that it is down to opinion to which one you choose to believe.

Middle School and Happiness Essay

Happiness comes in all shapes and sizes. What makes you happy may not make someone else happy. The idea of happiness may not be the same for any two people, or maybe not for anyone you come across with. Happiness is an emotion causes by thousands of things. It is an abstract idea that cannot be fully described. What makes you happy changes as you get older, you do not like the same things your whole life so it is normal that your interests start to change. Like mentioned before not everyone has the same interests and cannot feel happiness from the same things. From firsthand experience I can say that I am the perfect example of finding different happiness. They have changed from my years in elementary school, middle school, and high school. Let’s start with elementary school. When I was in elementary school what brought me happiness was having time to spend at my friend’s house after school. Because I lived far away from the school that I attended I didn’t really know anyone in my neighborhood. There were days though that my parents would let me go to a friend’s house and stay there for a few hours while they got out of work. I didn’t have to be at my grandma’s house bored so that made me really happy, and I had a lot of fun while I was there so that made it even better. Another thing that made me feel happiness was being able to go two days out of the week to band practice. I liked being able to play my instrument and making beautiful sound come out of something so little. Playing with the band was my thing I could not stop smiling and feeling all this joy inside as I played. When the director put his arms up and signaled us to start playing was so thrilling knowing that we were about to make beautiful music all together. I think back and see how simple things made me really happy as a child. Now let’s talk about middle school. While I was in middle school I was still in band and yes it still brought me happiness. The main thing that brought me happiness while I was in middle school was being a little more free from home and my parents. If I remember correctly it was seventh grade that I went to my first dance, you can imagine my excitement. When I was at the dance my friends and I were having a great time, we were laughing and  dancing the whole time. Because it was my first dance it was a very fun time, and it brought so much happiness to be able to share that experience with my friends. When I was in high school all of my interests changed and even now I have the same interests. I found my passion for singing so I auditioned to join the school choir and I made it. Being in choir class was the best thing that I did when I was in high school. The happiness that I felt when I walked into that class every day I have no words to describe it. To top it all off when I started to sing and hear the chords we would all make together gave me the chills. There was not a single day that passed where hearing myself and others around me sing was not magical. When I would have a bad day I waited for third period to talk into class grab my folder from my cubic and start to sing and just forget about everything. Music was my escape from being upset, it was the way for me to forget about what was going on in my life. The happiness I felt was so great, even now I turn to music for help and comfort. In conclusion, happiness is an abstract emotion that cannot be easily defined. Not everyone feels happiness in the exact same way or from the same things. But no matter where our happiness comes from we all feel it. We feel it as kids, as teenagers, and as adults. Even though what causes us happiness may change the characteristics of it do not. The smile, the giggle, and the butterflies in your stomach do not disappear. From firsthand experience I know that we all go through phases, but not matter how old we get, we are always going to be happy.

Brazil Economic Development and Conserve the Environment

Brazil Economic Development and Conserve the Environment Introduction Brazil is the second, fifth-largest country in the world geographically and in terms of population. In this view, Brazil epitomizes on the ongoing global tension pitying biodiversity preservation against sustainable agricultural practices and economic growth.Advertising We will write a custom critical writing sample on Brazil Economic Development and Conserve the Environment specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More According to current statistics, Brazil is a critical emerging economic power, which has a GDP of US$6040 billion and a GDP per capita of US$326.21 billion in 2004 (European Commission, 2007). The country’s environment is one of the richest in the world because of not only flora and fauna, but also because of its ecosystems, which contain an excess of 15 % of the plant and animal species known to botanists (Saxena, 2005). The country is the source of water, and also a water table of up to 12% of the available fr eshwater worldwide Brazil is also undoubtedly one of the leading producers of food and biofuels in Latin America and globally (Ferreira, Pardini, Metzger, Fonseca, Pompeu, Sparovek, Louzada, 2012). To maintain the trend of food production, the country should try to institute measures that aim at reducing the negative effects of poor farming methods, while improving farming practices. Therefore, this paper discusses how sustainable and productive agricultural practices can be used to promote economic development and conserve the environment, and thus prevent the occurrence of vicious cycle in Brazil. Component One Vicious cycle is an agricultural problem that is facing Brazil. Ascher and Healy (1990) used this concept to demonstrate the complex interrelationships among four critical facets of socio-physical production, which are economic production, distribution of income, natural resources, and the environment. Concerning the explanation of the relationship between economic develop ment and environmental conservation, it is clear that industrial production is the level, source, and composition of goods, and services generated by the economy at any point in time among the four facets of production. The four facets of production include functional distribution, size distribution among recipients of different levels of income, distribution of in-kind income such as government services or gratifications from an environmental quality, as well as regional income distribution.Advertising Looking for critical writing on environmental studies? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Available literature demonstrates that such facets of production have adverse impacts on biodiversity and the conservation of ecosystems in the country (Jain, 1998). Hence, the policymakers should incorporate environmental conservation measures into agricultural development to enhance optimization of agricultural production. Compone nt Two In spite of the issue of vicious cycle, Brazil is on the verge of achieving long-term economic development because of effective exploitation of natural resources. According to European Commission (2007), â€Å"the dense tropical rainforest of the Amazon, the important biomes of the Savannah-like Cerrado, the arid scrublands of the Caatinga, the Pampas, and the wetlands of the Pantanal† are some of the natural resources endowed to Brazil (p. 11). Given that agricultural exports comprise about 28% of total exports, the government has prioritized agriculture as an important economic activity. However, massive deforestation, use of pesticides, application of fertilizers, and use of other agricultural chemicals threatens productivity (Ferreira, et al., 2012, p. 536). On this basis, poor agricultural practices have the capacity to ignite and perpetuate vicious cycle. Component Three Additionally, it emerges that the urge to achieve sustained economic development has catapult ed policymakers into availing huge tracts of previously virgin land for cultivation aimed at increasing agricultural yield. Although a sizeable proportion of farmers are employing modern practices to increase acreage and agricultural output, many are still using poisonous pesticides and farming practices that contribute substantially to soil erosion and degradation. Vladas (2008) argues that policymakers in Brazil should realize that another vicious cycle between economic development and income distribution could occur in the near future as long as farmers in the North East regions of the country continue to use harmful farming practices. Consequently, one can suggest that a vicious cycle between economic development and environmental degradation has already startedAdvertising We will write a custom critical writing sample on Brazil Economic Development and Conserve the Environment specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Component Four In t he Brazilian context, it is evident that attempts by the government and other stakeholders to enhance the country’s economic development through agricultural expansion have continued to generate a multiple environmental externalities. The government should encourage farmers to employ environmental conservation practices such as reduction of biological diversity, prevention of soil erosion in rural farming areas, conservation of watershed and natural resources, and prevention of soil and habitat degradation. Farmers should also be included in the process of implementing the environment conservation policies and good farming methods since they are the prime stakeholders in the field of agriculture (Clement, 2005). Therefore, the country must introduce conservation measures and ensure their implementation by the farmers as well as other players in the agricultural industry. Vicious Cycle The way forward for environmental policymakers in Brazil, therefore, is to put in place stro ng institutional policies for managing resources and ensuring the long-term sustainability of the agricultural sector. Water (2008) argues that the government, in conjunction with relevant stakeholders, must act promptly to break the vicious cycle between economic development and environmental degradation by coming up with educational and awareness programs targeting farmers who use inferior farming methods to enhance their agricultural output. Additionally, it is imperative for the government to develop clear management objectives and implementation of existing policies effectively (Carneiro Danton, 2011). Development and implementation of appropriate agricultural policies are central to sustainability of productive agriculture and in prevention of the vicious cycle in agricultural sector. Conclusion For Brazil to achieve economic development, it has to embrace the policies of environmental conservation and implement them effectively. Since agriculture is the backbone of the count ry’s economy, it essential to improve productivity in a sustainable manner to support the livelihoods of farmers in Brazil.Advertising Looking for critical writing on environmental studies? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More It is noteworthy that the success of these environmental conservation measures is highly dependent on the extent to which stakeholders encourage farmers to practice good farming practices. Owing to laxity in the implementation of conservation policies results in the continuation of harmful and destructive methods of farming that are detrimental to the sustainability of the environment, and thus resulting in vicious cycle. References Ascher. W., Healy, R.G. (1990). Natural resource policymaking in developing countries: Environment, economic growth, and income distribution. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Carneiro, J., Danton, T. (2011). Agriculture and biodiversity in the Brazilian social Sciences: A possible state of the art scenario innovation. The European Journal of Social Science, 24(3), 225-246. Clement, A. (2005). The economics of a safe minimum standard of conservation. The  American Journal of Agriculture, 60(24), 10-18. European Commission (2007). Country strategy paper 2007-2013. Web. Ferreira, J., Pardini, R., Metzger, J.P., Fonseca, C.R., Pompeu, P.S., Sparovek, G., Louzada, J. (2012). Towards environmentally sustainable agriculture in Brazil: Challenges and opportunities for applied ecological research. Journal of Applied Ecology, 2(1), 1-23. Jain, C. (1998). Agricultural Intensification by Smallholders in the Western Brazilian Amazon. Journal of Regional Science, 15(2), 55-60. Saxena, D. (2005). Agricultural development in Uttah. The Geographer, 32(1), 20-28. Vladas, G. (2008). Conservation of Environment. Journal of Environmental Physiology  23(1), 21-32 Walter, C. (2008). Overview of India’s Agricultural Economy. Asia Pacific Development  Journal, 10(2), 15-20.

Summary of Sartres The Transcendence of the Ego

Summary of Sartres The Transcendence of the Ego The Transcendence of the Ego  is a philosophical essay published by  Jean Paul Sartre  in 1936. In it, he sets out his view that the self or ego is not itself something that one is aware of. The model of consciousness that Sartre  provides in this essay  may be outlined as follows. Consciousness is always intentional; that is, it is always and necessarily consciousness of something. The object of consciousness can be almost any kind of thing: a physical object, a proposition, a state of affairs, a recollected image or moodanything that consciousness can apprehend. This is the â€Å"principle of intentionality† that forms the starting point for Husserls phenomenology.   Sartre radicalizes this principle by asserting that consciousness is nothing but intentionality. This means conceiving of consciousness as a pure activity, and denying that there is any ego which lies within, behind or beneath consciousness as its source or necessary condition. The justification of this claim is one of Sartres main purposes in The Transcendence of the Ego. Sartre first distinguishes between two modes of consciousness: unreflecting consciousness and reflecting consciousness. Unreflecting consciousness is simply my usual consciousness of things other than consciousness itself: birds, bees, a piece of music, the meaning of a sentence, a recollected face, etc. According to Sartre consciousness simultaneously posits and grasps its objects. And he describes such consciousness as positional and as thetic. What he means by these terms is not entirely clear, but he seems to be referring to the fact that in my consciousness of anything there is both activity and passivity. Consciousness of an object is positional in that it posits the object: that is, it directs itself to the object (e.g. an apple, or a tree) and attends to it. It is â€Å"thetic† in that consciousness confronts its object as something given to it, or as something that has already been posited. Sartre also claims that consciousness, even when it is unreflecting, is always minimally conscious of itself. This mode of consciousness he describes as non-positional and non-thetic indicating that in this mode, consciousness does not posit itself as an object, nor is it confronted by itself. Rather, this irreducible self-awareness is taken to be an invariable quality of both unreflecting and reflecting consciousness. A reflecting consciousness is one that is positing itself as its object. Fundamentally, says Sartre, the reflecting consciousness and the consciousness that is the object of reflection (the reflected consciousness) are identical. Nevertheless, we can distinguish between them, at least in abstraction, and so talk about two consciousnesses here: the reflecting and the reflected.  Ã‚   His main purpose in analyzing self-consciousness is to show that self-reflection does not support the thesis that there is an ego situated within or behind consciousness. He first distinguishes two kinds of reflection: (1) reflection on an earlier state of consciousness that is recalled to mind by memory–so this earlier state now becomes an object of present consciousness; and (2) reflection in the immediate present where consciousness takes itself as it is now for its object. Retrospective reflection of the first kind, he argues, reveals only an unreflecting consciousness of objects along with the non-positional self-awareness that is an invariable feature of consciousness. It does not reveal the presence of an I within consciousness.  Reflection of the second kind, which is the kind that Descartes is engaged in when he asserts â€Å"I think, therefore I am,† might be thought more likely to reveal this I. Sartre denies this, however, arguing that the I that conscious ness is commonly thought to encounter here is, in fact, the product of reflection. In the second half of the essay, he offers his explanation of how this occurs. Brief Summary Briefly, his account runs as follows. Discrete moments of reflective consciousness are unified by being interpreted as emanating from my states, actions, and characteristics, all of which extend beyond the present moment of reflection. For example, my consciousness of detesting something now and my consciousness of detesting the same thing at some other moment are united by the idea that I hate that thinghatred being a state that persists beyond the moments of conscious detestation. Actions perform a similar function. Thus, when Descartes asserts I am now doubting his consciousness is not engaged in a pure reflection on itself as it is at the present instant. He is allowing an awareness that this present moment of doubt is part of an action that began earlier and will continue for some time to inform his reflection. The discrete moments of doubt are unified by the action, and this unity is expressed in the I which he includes in his assertion.   The ego, then, is not discovered in reflection but is created by it. It is not, however, an abstraction, or a mere idea. Rather, it is the concrete totality of my reflective states of consciousness, constituted by them in the way that a melody is constituted by discrete notes. We do, says Sartre, apprehend the ego out of the corner of our eye when we reflect; but if we try to focus on it and make it the object of consciousness it necessarily disappears, since it only comes into being through consciousness reflecting on itself (not on the ego, which is something else). The conclusion Sartre draws from his analysis of consciousness is that phenomenology has no reason to posit an ego within or behind consciousness. He claims, moreover, that his view of the ego as something that reflecting consciousness constructs, and which should, therefore, be regarded as just another object of consciousness that, like all other such objects, transcends consciousness, has marked advantages. In particular, it furnishes a refutation of solipsism (the idea that the world consists of me and the contents of my mind), helps us overcome skepticism regarding the existence of other minds, and lays down the basis for an existentialist philosophy that genuinely engages the real world of people and things.

Dostoyevskys Underground Man Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Dostoyevskys Underground Man - Essay Example Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man In the process of writing the novel, Dostoyevsky was much more concerned on remote ideals of European liberalism, because he did not believe in them anymore. In the beginning of his writing career, Dostoyevsky was a dreamer and an ideal romanticist. The ideas of utopian socialism inspired Dostoyevsky in his early writings. When he was in exile, these ideas vanished into thin air and he became more pragmatic and was focused not on the political principles, but on the ideas of an individual’s nature and the essence of a human being. The Irrationalism of the Underground Man Both the irrational and the rational exist in the human being. There is no need to discard the principles of irrationality, because it is another form of self-reflection. The Underground Man and his nature are close to any individual. A study of a disturbed mind and the existential nature of an individual was discussed by Dostoyevsky. The author managed to try his prey or the main characters of the novel in or der to show the limit of their rationality. Sometimes, in the situation of despair an individual becomes a piece of meat, which may be easily eaten by the stronger species. His heroes like being tortured and it is the way of their self-definition and self-expression. The same principles can be traced in existentialist philosophy, where individuals experience tortures in the name of tortures. It is a kind of exam for an inner world of an individual. The man’s irrational nature is dominant over his rational mind. In the Underground Man Dostoyevsky attacks human rationality, the ideas of materialism and utopianism. A man wants to gratify his self-will. The basic features of a hero of the Underground Man should be searched in his ability to be a typical, an ordinary man. Existentialists are focused on the nature of a man, his ability to proud of his inner emotions, both negative and positive. The way of an inner corruption is the means for self-analysis. The fundamental principle s of existentialism are reflected in the novel by Dostoyevsky. In order to comprehend his being, a man considers it more interesting, integrative and universal than outer world. Existentialists are not focused on logic, because actions taken by an individual are subjective and the responsibility for these actions is assigned for individuals only. There is more irrational in the actions of an individual and there is no point to consider human actions from the perspective of logic. The main character of the novel defines himself as a sick, depressed man and there is a need to find some remedy for him. Is there a need in it? That is really interesting question. The being, who is able to evaluate him critically, is the real individual. The main character of Dostoyevsky underlines his desire to identify him: â€Å"I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect†) (Dostoevsky 1). Thus, one of the mai n principles of existentialism works in the novel. The main character also claims that despair and suffering are the greatest enjoyment for him, because he may feel them acutely. He realizes his hopelessness and he enjoys having a chance to identify himself. Despair is a wide road for self-identification. In case the main character manages to define him, he would be able to understand the essence of his being and also the directions of his future

Can good leadership be taught Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Can good leadership be taught - Essay Example Knowledge can be gained, skills can be learnt but intelligence cannot be generated. A person needs to be intelligent and sharp in order to gain knowledge and utilize it. Leadership requires certain traits in a person.Leadership and managerial work are common observable facts that there are no general rules that creates leadership events or leadership methods, or for that issue great leaders. Managerial work and leadership are made cooperatively. Therefore, the only way to understand leadership correctly is the basic knowledge in group sciences. In simple words, managerial work is the process of describing and calculating the victory. A leader is the person who puts forward the plan, explains success, and confirms the capability of success. It is clear that a leader who assures these things will be more competent than other leader who desires to put the idea but refuses to accept any work in the managerial part (Clark, Clark & Albright, 1990). Hence, effective leader is the one who ha ve power over people and whose decisions are binding on others. Everyone possesses leadership potential. Effective Leadership can, & normally does, emerge from the inside. Effective leadership requires the leader to take the whole group along. It is not necessary to involve the whole group in decisions regarding the group’s success however; the members of group are ‘helpers’. These ‘helpers’, if motivated and encouraged to work together, may quicken the process of success. Motivation emerges with the feeling to improve the surroundings. An effective leader must know that motivation is the key to improve the group's performance and the chances of success. Motivation, however, is not easy. It requires continuous performance appraisal and strong communication skills. This is the point from where effective leadership enters. Effective leadership requires the leader to choose the tasks for the group. A leader may also take suggestions from other group members but it may end up in losing the actual aim of the group. Hence, an effective leader should keep a strict watch over the performance and path of the group if it is moving towards achieving its goals or not. All these techniques to keep the group together and to motivate them and decision making techniques can be taught (FBI, 2007). The difference among success and failure of a team or group can be determined by leadership. Leadership divides the achievers from the spectators. And

Case Study He Said, She Said Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

He Said, She Said - Case Study Example Presentation of the Key Facts It seems that Marie and Lenny have lived together for some time without Mike. The reason this seems this way is because Marie wants Mike to have a hands off approach in matters with Lenny. She is Mike’s fiancee but she does not allow him to have any real interaction about the discipline with Lenny. Lenny does whatever he pleases and in this particular instance, he defies his curfew. There could be many things going on with him until these wee hours of the morning. Marie does not seem to want to punish Lenny in any real way and this makes Mike very concerned with their relationship. As an example, in the present situation, Marie did not approach Lenny for the reason he was out until 2:45 am, but rather told him she was worried and that he should call if he is going to be out late. Her conflict style with Lenny seems to be very passive and one that seems to avoid conflict (Bragg, 2010). It seems that Marie does not want to make Lenny angry because h e is her child and the relationship with him is more important than discipline. Also, Lenny tells his mother he will do whatever she wants around the house as long as she allows him to stay out late. Mike on the other hand, sees where the situation is going and knows that Lenny needs discipline. He has a more assertive style but he seems to not show it because Marie will not let him.

The Decrease Leg Shaking Psychology Essay

The Decrease Leg Shaking Psychology Essay Anxiety is a normal emotion, and we all encounter anxiety in certain situations that causes us be anxious. When we are anxious, we would experience physical symptoms arising in response to anxiety ( Ginsburg, Riddle, Davies, 2006; Roth, Antony, Swinson, 1999), such as muscle tension and stomachache which affect our everyday lives, known as somatic symptoms (Ginsburg et al., 2006). Social anxiety is a disorder that happens when a person faces a social situation and reacts in response to fear or distress due to feelings of inadequacy and low self-worth (Bà ¶gels, 2006; Hofmann, 2007; Purdon, Antony, Monterio, Swinson, 2001). This happens to me when I am in certain social situation, I get social anxiety that I tend to shake my legs. For this behaviour modification program, I have chosen to decrease and control my leg-shaking behaviour. It has been bothering me and it has been causing irritation to certain people who were and are in my presence. The operational definition of leg-shaking is that for this program, I tested the effect of leg-shaking on my performance during the times when I was sitting down (which was when the leg-shaking behaviour almost always occurred). I needed to know exactly what sort of leg-shaking behaviour I was performing and how I should measure it. I needed to know what type of performance I am suggesting that leg-shaking behaviour affected, and how I should measure that. Furthermore, I needed to know the underlying causes and triggers of my leg-shaking behaviour, which I believe is triggered by anxiety that I usually experience, but not as much as before, in social situations. First and foremost, behaviour modification is defined as a technique of behaviour change that is based on the procedures of the principles of learning psychology to evaluate and determine a persons or any other organisms private and public actions and reactions in order to assist in improving ones everyday lifestyle (Martin Pear, 2011). Basically, behaviour modification is founded on the concepts of operant conditioning. It is a technique to improve an individuals behavior by changing the way a person acts to a particular situation or stimuli using positive and negative reinforcement. In result, it replaces an undesirable behavior to a more desirable behavior. There are rules to follow and that are critical when planning and engaging in a behaviour modification program. These includes rules of such as positive and negative reinforcement, ratio schedule, extinction, shaping, and schedules of reinforcement (Martin Pear, 2011). The following are brief definitions of some of the terms mentioned above: Positive reinforcement means that a particular stimulus that is given on the spot increases the likelihood of a particular response to occur another time (Martin Pear, 2011). Negative reinforcement means that a particular stimulus is being removed to increase a particular response or to keep a particular response in a current desired state (Martin Pear, 2011). Extinction is applied in operant conditioning, and it refers to the process of changing the state of a learned response by ensuring to no longer reinforcing that particular response (Martin Pear, 2011). There are pitfalls that occurs in the process of extinction which I discussed later in this paper. The process of shaping is the reinforcement of altering and controlling a learned response through the process of changing that response much closer to desired response, but not exactly (Martin Pear, 2011). In this program, I would be shaping my behaviour by alternating my leg-shaking behaviour to a more desired behaviour, which is sitting down with my feet firmly on the ground without shaking my legs. A schedule of reinforcement is a program that determines how and when the frequency of a response happening will be followed by a reinforcer (Martin Pear, 2011). The delivery of a reinforcer could depend on the frequency of a certain number of responses, the passage of time, the presence of certain stimuli, the occurrence of other responses of the animal, or any number of other things occurring (Martin Pear, 2011). There are different schedules of reinforcement, I will discuss very briefly about the important ones that I implemented in this behaviour modification program. One of the different schedules of reinforcement are the schedules of intermittent reinforcement. There are four different schedules of intermittent reinforcement which are differential reinforcement of low rates (abbreviated as DRL), differential reinforcement of zero responding (abbreviated as DRO), differential reinforcement of incompatible behaviour (abbreviated as DRI), and differential reinforcement of alternative behaviour (abbreviated as DRA) (Martin Pear, 2011). In this program, I used the DRO intervention. DRO means that reinforcement only occurs when a particular response does not happen at a time (Martin Pear, 2011). This particular response is being modified to another behaviour, and that behaviour would be reinforced instead (Martin Pear, 2011). Another schedule of reinforcement is ratio schedule which is defined as that reinforcement depends only on the number of responses a person or any other living thing has performed (Martin Pear, 2011). Reinforcement that depends on only some of the time are said to involve partial or intermittent reinforcement (Martin Pear, 2011). In interval schedules, responses are reinforced only if the responses occur after a certain amount of time has passed (Martin Pear, 2011). In fixed interval schedule (abbreviated FI), the set time is constant from one occasion to the next (Martin Pear, 2011). With a variable interval schedule (abbreviated VI), responses are reinforced if they occur after a variable interval since the beginning of the schedule cycle (Martin Pear, 2011).These are the rules of psychology of behaviour modification that I employed in the program. Since I applied the intermittent schedule, I did not use the continuous schedule as this involves reinforcing a response or a beha viour every time it happens (Martin Pear, 2011). Not many research have been done on the effects of leg-shaking behaviour on an individuals well-being and/or on the effects it may have on other individuals surrounding a person with leg-shaking behaviour. Not only the literature on leg-shaking behaviour is very limited, but case studies centering on the effects of this behaviour and on controlling or modifying the behaviour are limited as well. The following research can be used to identify early emotional and behavioural development, providing an opportunity for treatments for not only individuals my age, but for younger age groups as well- particularly in the early stage of emotional and behavioural development that are disruptive such as the leg-shaking behaviour. Bà ¶gels (2006) stated that individuals with social phobia (also known as social anxiety disorder) tend to have distressing feelings of not being accepted by others who are aware of the physical symptoms these individuals have. These physical symptoms, such as trembling, which closely relates to my leg-shaking behaviour, that these individuals present on account of distressing and unpleasant thoughts about themselves are causing difficulties for them and to others around them (Bà ¶gels, 2006). In Bà ¶gelss (2006) research, participants with social phobia, and who were within the age group of 17 to 65 were tested for their ability to decrease their tendency of attentive to their physical symptoms of anxiety. The purpose of this research was to determine whether if participants turn their attention to a task-oriented activity called task concentration training, would lessen their anxiety and diminish their physical symptoms of anxiety (Bà ¶gels, 2006). The results showed that the e xperiment was successful as participants diverted attention from their physical symptoms of anxiety to a task-oriented activity. The study of participants who were afraid of exhibiting the physical symptoms of anxiety support the notion that individuals from a wide range of age group, can modify these types of behaviour by focusing on work. However, it did not show whether individuals under the age of 17 can. In another study, a male participant who was 26 years at that time, and who suffered from mental developmental disability was studied (LeBlanc, Hagopian, Maglieri, 2000). It was made clear that even though this is a person with a mental developmental disability at adult age, (a person) can adapt ones behaviour by using or participating in a token economy (LeBlanc et al., 2000). The researchers employed the DRO intervals and schedule to reduce this mans socially unacceptable and undesirable behaviours (LeBlanc et al., 2006). The results showed that the treatment was effective as it decreased the occurrence of the participants socially unacceptable behaviour. The problems with LeBlanc et al.s (2000) research were not only there was one participant recruited for this study and that he had developmental disabilities; but the behaviour that has been modified had to do with his inappropriate social interactions. Even though this may not precisely relates to my topic, I chose for my literature review in research because my leg-shaking behaviour has been affecting the way I interact with others who has been noticing this. This may continue to affect me and others if I did not attempt to change this. Thus, this leg-shaking behaviour is considered socially inappropriate. In addition to this note, I also used the same reinforcement in my program. The first purpose of this research was to investigate whether when a persons leg-shaking behaviour caused by anxiety creates difficulties in ones lifestyle and/or get in the way of others around this person. The second purpose was to investigate whether if and when a person learns how to control and decrease the occurrence of this leg-shaking behaviour by alleviating and improving the internalizing and externalizing state of a person aids in overall well-being and aids in not causing disturbance to others. How I Selected My Target Behaviour and Why its Appropriate for this Assignment Two other behaviours I was considering working on, but decided to work on my leg-shaking behavior instead were to increase my piano playing practice, and to exercise more. They were appropriate for the assignment, but they were not realistic for me to work on this semester. I am rarely home, therefore the probability of cooking and healthier food was very slim during the time. However, the probability of exercising during the time was moderately likely to occur, but I did not perceive this behaviour to be as vital to change as my leg-shaking behavior. I wanted to work to change a behaviour that is not only affecting me and others, but that it is also more simple and more doable to work on during the past months. Moreover, these other two behaviors are both common behaviour that I believe most people use for a project similar to this behaviour modification program. Controlling Antecedents of Pre-Program Behaviour The root of my habit most likely started and had to do with a social situation I was facing when I was very young. I was extremely shy. I had social anxiety. My fear of being in any social situations or interactions made me so nervous that it could be the main trigger of my shaking legs. Pre-Program Behaviour Level In this section, I will describe how I observed my behaviour. During the process of this observation, I found that I had habitual thoughts that momentarily flash through my mind. Here my task was to replace these habitual thoughts or bad thinking habits with good thinking habits. By doing so, I would create new thoughts that became my new habitual thoughts. These thoughts came from my feelings of anxiety, particularly in social situation or stressed situation. I counted to keep anxiety in check so that it would not encourage my old habitual negative thoughts. The reason is that my habitual thoughts affected the way I saw myself in a significant way in situation, and still do a little. If I did not change my thinking, my old habitual thoughts will continue to perpetuate my leg-shaking behaviour. Controlling Consequences of Pre-Program Behaviour Not controlling my leg- shaking behaviour is rewarded with being able to only concentrate while studying or listening to lectures or doing other things when sitting down. This allows me to not think about monitoring my leg-shaking constantly and to freely express my inner feelings of anxiety by letting my subconscious behaviour takes over. By detaching myself from observing and being mindless of my leg-shaking behaviour elicited by feelings of anxiety and overgeneralizing. In psychological terms this process is called positive reinforcement for a behaviour such as leg-shaking. I shake my leg and in return get rewarded by getting away with behaving any way I want when I am feeling anxious, stressed, or nervous. The way positive reinforcement works is that once I get rewarded for my leg-shaking behaviour I am more likely to do it again. My Self-Modification Program For my self-modification program, since I planned on changing my thinking patterns in order to prevent me at least from shaking my legs too often, then I rewarded myself with a sensible reward. The sensible reward was that once I have controlled my leg-shaking behavior, I could listen to music. I had to earn a privilege to be able to listen to a song or songs longer as listening to music is very rewarding for me. This applied to the token economy as I was using minutes of listening to music as a reward for not shaking my legs when I am anxious in a social situation. I kept track of minutes on a sheet. I started with two hours of listening to music per day. I normally did not listen to 2 hours of music straight, but this was doable. I cannot really hear the music without headphone so I asked one of my family members to take away my headphone from me for the day and then give it back to me sometime after 10 at night. I lost a minute of listening to music when I failed to control my leg-shaking behaviour. At the end of the day, I listened to the amount of time I have earned to listen to music provided that I have any minutes left. Whenever I got sidetracked by my work and other distractions, then for every leg-shaking behaviour I do, I subtracted one minute of listening to music. In addition to this note, l laid out a plan, including making notes of the crucial moments that I was less likely and most likely to shake my legs unconsciously on account of feeling anxious, stressed, or nervous. I prepared for my crucial moments by turning to helpful sources of influence, a friend and a family member. Then I planned on beginning deliberate practice by placing myself to a tempting situation. In short, my goal was to experience the desire but not to give in shaking my leg to express my feelings of anxiety outwardly. My Program in Action This was the part when I employed deliberate practice especially practice for crucial moments. I broke the steps into small pieces, and practice each step in short intervals. I also got immediate feedback at times against a clear standard, and evaluated my progress. I learned to be prepare for setbacks and I was also prepared for them some of the times. As mentioned earlier, the specific and measurable behaviour I have been monitoring was to attempt to eliminate my leg-shaking behaviour. From the start of the program, I measured the occurrence to anxiety, as well as the intensity and frequency of anxiety as my anxiety have been triggering my leg-shaking behaviour to be present. Moreover, I have been observing and keeping track of my thinking errors that normally preceded my leg-shaking behaviour. I also have been monitoring my improvement in controlling and diminishing my leg-shaking behaviour by engaging in how often I subconsciously performed leg-shaking behaviour and by decreasing the frequency and intensity of my anxiety so that my leg-shaking behaviour will dissolve after the program ends. I have been employing intermittent reinforcement in my program. Continuous reinforcement would not work as I found that I had not always been aware of when I shook my legs in certain situations. The unexpected surprise I learned was that I even shook my legs when I was not in social situation. I shook my legs when I worked on my school assignments. Because of this, I started to encounter pitfalls. The pitfalls I have encountered throughout this program were that I frequently thought of excuses to avoid treating my leg-shaking behaviour. At times in class or in any social situation, I fell into my thinking traps and engaged in these thinking patterns which resulted in my habitual leg-shaking behaviour. Evaluation of My Program Referring to the level of the behaviour pre-program and during the program (see Figure 1 in the Appendix), my attempt to decrease my tendency to shake my leg did not work in the beginning of the program due to the effects of delay of reward. But it did worked later on after the first month I started the program. When it came to the use of reward in the program, the important component in the reward is the interval between the behaviour and the reward. I found that when the delay of receiving reward increased, it did not reward the desired behaviour as much as I wanted it to. Therefore, such delays in receiving rewards was not effective in altering a behaviour. This kind of applied to the use of punishment to decrease a behaviour. If the interval between the undesirable behaviour and punishment is delayed, then the punishment would not be effective in suppressing such behaviour (Martin Pear). Therefore, I should make notes that in the future my desired behaviour should be rewarded immediately. If this does not work, then another change I might make is to use punishment instead when I shake my legs. Ending the Program; Future Plans Although I am done with the behaviour modification program, I plan on continuing to manage my leg-shaking behaviour, which, again, happens when I get anxious. I will try to slowly stop myself from depending on the program to keep my leg-shaking behaviour under control. I will keep a long-term perspective to improve my behaviour and to improve myself. I plan on practising not only self control, but self-care as I tend to encounter stress or period of anxiety in the face of difficult situations such as speaking up in class as I am shy. I will help myself feel at ease during periods of stress by attempting to use what I learned from the behaviour techniques and exercises this semester. Even though I will not depend on the exercises and techniques I have applied in my program, I believe I still need regular exposure to anxiety-provoking situations in order to stay in condition. I believe this will help me over the long term to keep myself habituated to the experiences that I learned from in situations I found were and still are a little anxiety-provoking. Discussion and Conclusion What I learned from this experience was that my obsessive thoughts and compulsive leg-shaking behaviour did not make sense. These thinking patterns that I fell into when I am nervous, stressed, sad, or depressed were generally believable, and negative, and they made my life more challenging than they needed to be. Even though I did not fully believe my obsessive thoughts, I found that I frequently engaged in my leg-shaking behaviour to get the obsessive thoughts to stop. I overestimated the probability of risk that if something could go wrong, it will go wrong. I am guilty of overgeneralizing things. So I held back many times from putting myself in certain situation that meant no harm to me or anyone, and naturally I slipped into my leg-shaking behaviour. When I triggered one of my old habitual thoughts, I corrected it with the positive one so that these positive thoughts became my new habitual thoughts. Even though I am done with this behavioural modification program for the course, I still need to thoroughly weave this fact into my memory whenever my leg-shaking behaviour strikes. This way, I will be able to weave this fact into my conscious control to pull the plug on my tendency to worry and to overgeneralize which triggers leg-shaking behaviour. I know that the more I practice this new behaviour, the more likely I will do it in the future so that I do not return to my former state of leg-shaking behaviour. A higher decrease in behaviour level as shown in the appendix results when I held back from overgeneralizing or from inviting pessimistic thoughts that triggered my leg-shaking in social situation. My new behaviour improved significantly after I was concentrating on changing thought patterns. This supports the notion that focusing on another activity (such as partaking in token economy or that is task-oriented) can aid in decreasing a behaviour that is bothersome (Bà ¶gels, 2006; LeBlanc et al., 2000). References Bà ¶gels, S. M. (2006). Task concentration training versus applied relaxation, in combination with cognitive therapy, for social phobia patients with fear of blushing, trembling, and sweating. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(8), 1199-1210. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2005.08.010 Ginsburg, G. S., Riddle, M. A., Davies, M. (2006). Somatic symptoms in children and adolescents with anxiety disorders.Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry,  45(10), 1179-1187. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/01.chi.0000231974.43966.6e Hofmann, S. G. (2007). Cognitive factors that maintain social anxiety disorder: A comprehensive model and its treatment implications.  Cognitive Behaviour Therapy,  36(4), 193-209. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16506070701421313 LeBlanc, L. A., Hagopian, L. P., Maglieri, K. A. (2000). Use of a token economy to eliminate excessive inappropriate social behavior in an adult with developmental disabilities. Behavioral Interventions, 15(2), 135-143. doi: 3.0.CO;2-3 TARGET=_blank>http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-078X(200004/06)15:23.0.CO;2-3 Purdon, C., Antony, M., Monteiro, S., Swinson, R. P. (2001). Social anxiety in college students.  Journal of Anxiety Disorders,15(3), 203-215. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0887-6185(01)00059-7 Roth, D., Antony, M. M., Swinson, R. P. (2001). Interpretations for anxiety symptoms in social phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 39(2), 129-138. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(99)00159-X

Anorexia and Bulimia :: Eating Disorders, Anorexia, Bulimia Nervosa

Why does food become a deadly enemy for some people? Well, society continues to send the message to young women and even to a small number young men (more and more men are becoming victims of eating disorders these days) that to be happy and successful one must be thin, which causes them to starv and/or binge and purge themselves in an attempt to gain what the media considers an ideal figure. The media is full of "toothpick" thin models, in which women desire to be like. Women often need to be in the feel of being in control, it is an ongoing battle they encounter with perfection. Bulimia nervosa is a disorder with psychological, and physiological effects. It is an eating disorder, common especially among young women of normal weight, that is characterized by episodic binge eating. Bingeing is defined as the rapid consumption of a large amount of food, often a bulimic person will eat more in two hours than a normal person would consume in an entire day. Binges are often followed by feelings of guilt, shame, loss of control, anxiety and depression. These negative feelings, especially anxiety and shame lead to bulimic behaviors, such as purging. The most common purging behavior is vomiting, which is a way to dispose of the calories and fat taken in that causes weight gain orally. The other way of diposing calories and fat are the use of laxatives, it is not as common as vomiting. There is more pain caused to the anus when using laxitives, then there is pain to the throat when vomiting, thats why laxatives are a less common way and vomiting is a more common way. Exact causes of bulimia nervousa are unknown even though in studies there is some evidence that an occurring brain chemical may influence eating behaviors, because it is in connection to the regulation of food intake. Growing/constant peer pressure is also a big help of causing bulimia, as well as low self-esteem. Young women with an older sister, mom, or even friend that has an eating disorder is ten times more likely to develop one herself, than any other child on their own. There are psychological factors of body dissatisfaction, self-esteem (as said before), perfectionism and abuse-associated with bulimia nervosa and women. While perfectionism and abuse have been risk factors in the models of bulimia, body dissatisfaction and low self-esteem seem to contribute more to bulimic behavior.

“Epistle to Miss Blount, with the Works of Voiture” Essay

In this early epistle, first published in 1712 as â€Å"To a Young Lady, with the Works of Voiture,† Pope addresses his friend Teresa Blount through the work and name of the early seventeenth century French poet and letter-writer Vincent de Voiture. In this indirect address of a female friend facing an uncertain marriage market, Pope resurrects a writer renowned for his raillery and charm in order to demonstrate the capacity of language to supersede its historical and social context. As a female member of a once powerful Catholic family, Teresa Blount’s only career choice was to marry within an aristocratic Catholic community in decline. Through the mediating space of Voiture’s work, Pope invites Teresa, as well as the reading public, to engage in a literary practice that hastens the arrival of a political community within the confining space of the private sphere. Since Pope re-published this epistle in 1735 as an address to Teresa’s younger sister Patty, it seems clear that he always had a broader public in mind when he made his call for the perversion of the private sphere through language. In the course of this epistle’s double address, Pope evacuates himself as the author by joining the Blount sisters and a larger community of readers. While every letter may imply a wider audience in addition to an individual addressee, Pope’s epistle takes the unification of these two audiences as its subject. In the process, Pope uncovers the potential for an epistolary community to persist beyond the boundaries of the present. From the perspective of this epistle, the subordination of women represents a literary problem whose solution lies in the opening this exclusion provides into an epistolary community that exists only at the margins of early eighteenth century English life. Although it is not clear whether Pope ever sent this epistle to Teresa Blount, its epistolary form demands that one read it as a part of an important female practice in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century  England. While men of this era â€Å"lived gregariously, in the company of their fellows in the coffee houses and inns of the city,† women, particularly unmarried ones, were confined largely to the private or domestic sphere.[1] In coffee houses, inns, and workplaces, men of equal or at least friendly classes had the ability to freely socialize with one another. As objects on the marriage market, it was not considered respectable or pragmatic for women to participate in these â€Å"centers of social exchange† (Perry 69). According to the diary of an early eighteenth century man, whom Ruth Perry quotes in her study of epistolary fiction, women who appear in public loose value on the marriage market since men inevitably â€Å"grow tired and weary† of their â€Å"beauty or other less qualifications† (Perry 69). Without access to the social sphere of life, women turned to writing letters â€Å"which were at once a way of being involved with the world while keeping it at a respectable arm’s length† (Perry 69). In addition to providing a way to privately manage courtship, letters allowed women to constitute a community of acquaintances and friends. With the establishment of the national Post Office in 1660 and the improvement of its service in the latter half of the century, letters became a reliable means for women to overcome the physical absence of friends imposed upon them by custom. The epistolary form of Pope’s poem situates it within a practice that was not only acceptable but encouraged among women of the period. When Pope composed his â€Å"Epistle to a Young Lady, with the work of Voiture† in 1710, he wrote from the perspective of a man feminized by disease and emasculated by anti-Catholic laws. Although the epistle was considered more publicly oriented than a letter in prose and was practiced frequently by writers of both genders, Pope’s marginal status as a physically disabled Catholic suggests the relevance of the female tradition of letter writing to his published epistles. Despite his sometimes virulent attacks on women, most notably in the later epistle â€Å"Of the Character of Women,† Pope’s Catholicism and chronic ill health â€Å"combined to bar [him] from the full enjoyment of the privileges reserved for men in his society.†[2] The exclusion of Catholics from owning property, attending university, or holding public office limited Pope’s access to the public sphere. Unlike other English Catholics, Pope could not escape this â€Å"internal exile† through retiring to rural family life (Rumbold 4). Pope suffered from Pott’s disease, a tubercular infection of  the bone that rendered him, at least in his own mind, physi cally unfit for marriage. â€Å"Less than five feet tall and deformed by a curvature of the spine, he [Pope] was acutely conscious of being ‘that little Alexander the women laugh at’† and refused offers of marriage on more than one occasion (Rumbold 4). In a letter to the Blount sisters in 1717, Pope reports that his friend Lord Harcourt proposed that he marry a relative of his in financial need. Pope declined the offer since he â€Å"did not care to force so fine a woman to give the finishing stroke to all my deformities, by the last mark of a beast, horns.†[3] Pope’s sense of his monstrous appearance highlights the importance of his epistles and letters to women since they represented a form of friendship freed from the immediate concerns of the body. In these written addresses to women, Pope develops a literary practice that exploits the poetic possibilities in his limited position within both the public and domestic spheres of English society. His epistle to Teresa Blount is an attempt to exemplify the strategy that he proposes in heroic couplets to negotiate a subordinate social position through language. After discussing the work and life of Voiture in the first stanza, Pope transitions into a discussion of liter ary genres as distinct styles of being. In the only rhyme break of the poem, Pope speaks of his life: â€Å"Let mine, an innocent gay farce appear, / And more diverting still than regular† (lines 25-26).[4] The break in rhyme between â€Å"appear† and â€Å"regular† playfully marks a departure from the metric structure of the poem in order to reinforce the narrator’s hope that his life appear â€Å"more diverting than regular.† Through hoping that his life â€Å"appear† as â€Å"an innocent gay farce,† Pope introduces a conception of life as a construction that one always performs before a public. Rather than being inherently â€Å"an innocent gay farce,† Pope’s narrator seeks to fabricate this appearance for an audience that will presumably be entertained. As a dramatic form whose â€Å"sole object is to excite laughter,† the narrator’s desire to style himself as an â€Å"innocent gay farce† manifests Pope’s need to control the laug hter that his body elicits.[5] Pope’s conception of life as a poetic object in the second stanza of his poem provides a context for the struggling Blount sisters and the public to understand the notion that the subjection of women is a literary problem. Pope opens his third stanza with the couplet, â€Å"Too much your sex is by their forms confined, / Severe to all, but most to  womankind† (lines 31-32). The smooth transition from discussing life in terms of genre to the subjection of â€Å"womankind† obscures the profoundly radical nature of the notion that a limitation of â€Å"forms† constitutes this state of subjection. Given the context of this couplet, the plural noun â€Å"forms† signifies both the rules of social propriety and the standards of a particular literary genre. The following line, â€Å"Custom, grown blind with age, must be your guide,† completes the effacement of the distinction between these two connotations of form (line 33). â€Å"Custom† simultaneously describes a literary and social confinement that is â€Å"severe to all, but most to womankind.† Pope’s discussion of these â€Å"formal†¦chains† within verse form suggests that his epistle seeks to exemplify a strategy for living within this state of confinement (line 42). In declaring his desire to shape his self according to the rules of â€Å"an i nnocent gay farce,† Pope provides a model for responding to the confining â€Å"forms† of a repressive society. With the personal pronoun â€Å"your† in the phrase â€Å"your sex,† Pope directly engages both his addressee and the public who reads their seemingly intimate exchange. The pronoun â€Å"Your† marks a shift in the poem from the more abstract portrait of Voiture and the narrator’s imitation of his form of life to the more immediate subject of the reader’s fate. Through introducing this personal pronoun in its possessive form, Pope posits a common sense of belonging among its audience to a particular â€Å"sex.† Since the poem culminates in a triumphant â€Å"our,† the phrase â€Å"your sex† at the opening of the third stanza reveals the developing constitution of a community defined in part by its confinement. The caesura in the second line of this couplet, â€Å"Severe to all, but most to Womankind,† emphasizes the increasingly level of specificity in Pope’s imagining of this community. While â€Å"all† may be readers and imitators of Voiture, only a particular sex, â€Å"your sex,† suffer the most from â€Å"severe† forms. The emergence of Pope’s audience as a subject of the poem through the possessive pronoun â€Å"your† raises the question of election which the second line of this couplet appears to answer. The third stanza of Pope’s epistle culminates in a call for this elected audience to reject the role of â€Å"virtuous wife† and embrace a retired community that preserves the â€Å"free innocence of life† through its poetic practice (line 46 and 45). After his transformation of the audience into a part of the poem, the emotional intensity of the stanza  builds into the exclamatory couplet: â€Å"Ah quit not the free Innocence of Life! / For the dull glory of Wife!† (lines 45-46).[6] Pope uses â€Å"innocence† in the first stanza to describe Voiture’s â€Å"wisely careless† and â€Å"innocently gay life† (line 11). In the second stanza, Pope vows to imitate Voiture in constructing a life that appears as â€Å"an innocent gay farce† (line 25). The word â€Å"Innocence† returns in the third stanza in the form an appeal to the reader not to abandon a state of paradise that they already inhabit. The construction â€Å"quit not† situates the reader within a state of purity analogous to the biblical vision of a Garden of Eden. Through opposing this state of moral purity to the â€Å"dull Glory of a virtuous Wife,† Pope suggests that a â€Å"virtuous† life is a confining form made necessary by pride. â€Å"Made slaves by honor,† women pursue the position of wife to achieve the status of virtue bestowed upon them by a patriarchal English society (line 36). The crucial negation â€Å"quit not† implores the female reader to withdrawal from her virtuous and honorable position in society in order to realize â€Å"the free innocence of life† within an epistolary community of friends. Following the emotional climax of the exclamatory couplet, Pope offers a more subdued and prescriptive image of a state of Epicurean retirement. With extensive knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman poetry, Pope is certainly aware that his portrait of a retired life of ease invokes the Horatian notion of otium as well as the related legacy of the Epicurean garden. In response to the tyranny of marriag e, Pope’s speaker advises the reader, â€Å"Nor let false shows, or empty titles please: / Aim not at joy, but rest content with ease† (lines 47-48). A comma marks the caesura in each line after the fourth syllable, which creates a sense of equivalence between the two negations â€Å"Nor let false shows† and â€Å"Aim not at joy.† This equivalence associates â€Å"joy† with the â€Å"false shows† that lead women to unknowingly contribute to their own servitude in their stubborn pursuit of fame. The narrator asks the reader to â€Å"rest content with ease,† or a more stable sense of pleasure founded on a withdrawal from rather than a fulfillment of physical desire. Pope’s conception of a virtuous withdrawal from a life of servitude echoes Epicurus’ advice to his younger friend Menoeceus to reject the â€Å"pleasure of the profligate† and embrace the â€Å"simple life† in which â€Å"the body is free from pain and the mind from anxiety.†[7] In the absence of pain and anxiety, Menoeceus can seek to cultivate a stable  and just experience of pleasure that Epicurus terms ataraxia. Pope’s injunction to â€Å"rest content† expresses the foundation of this state of â€Å"ease† in a withdrawal from the social position of a â€Å"virtuous wife.† In asking his reader to â€Å"rest† or â€Å"remain† within a state of â€Å"free innocence,† Pope reveals the exemplary function of a poem that must show how one accesses this already existing freedom of life. Since Pope makes his appeal for a retired life of ease in a published epistle in heroic couplet form, it appears that his conception of a withdrawn community is not entirely separate from the political sphere. Although he primarily discusses Pope’s later, satiric epistles, William Dowling’s argument that Augustan poets politicize the private sphere through their epistolary practice in fact holds most true in Pope’s early epistles to ladies.[8] â€Å"In a world threatened by fragmentation and alienation,† Dowling explains, Pope resurrects the memory of an innocent community â€Å"by writing not merely epistles but verse epistles, poems in which the isolation symbolized by epistolary solitude is then opposed and redeemed by verse as an institutionalized mode of public utterance† (Dowling 11). From a state of solitude intensified by his status as a physically disabled Catholic, Pope provides his friend an example of how to engage with the public without becoming subjected to it. The formal structure of his epistle â€Å"redeems† his solitude by inscribing the reading public or the â€Å"epistolary audience† as a â€Å"presence† within a private letter to a friend (Dowling 12). While the formal structure of the â€Å"Epistle to Miss Blount, with the Works of Voiture† undoubtedly addresses a public audience, it interpellates this audience not necessarily as members of a pre-capitalist â€Å"traditional society,† as Dowling believes, but rather as potential constituents of an always possible epistolary community (Dowling 15). As a result of his overly rigid conception of the opposition between â€Å"solipsism† and â€Å"community,† Dowling fails to appreciate that the solitary withdrawal from which Pope writes acts as a condition of his imagined or interpellated community’s possibility. In his epistle to Miss Blount, Pope appeals to the public through his advice to a young lady troubled by her precarious position within the marriage market. He implores her to reject  the role of â€Å"virtuous wife,† which would subject her to a â€Å"tyrant† and obstruct the constitution of literary friendships (lines 46 and 40). Pope’s portrait of Pamela, a young woman who succeeds in the marriage market, in the fourth stanza of this epistle depicts the stifling confinement of marriage as an obstacle to any form of literary self-fashioning. Through the fulfillment of her â€Å"prayers,† Pamela is cursed with the â€Å"false shows† and â€Å"empty titles† o f a successful young woman (lines 49 and 47). Pope emphasizes the paradoxical nature of her accomplishment in the following couplet: â€Å"She glares in balls, front-boxes, and the Ring, / A vain, unquiet, glittering, wretched thing!† (lines 53-54). Pamela’s status as a married upper-class woman allows her to appear at dances, plays, and the fashionable â€Å"ring† in Hyde Park without any damage to her reputation. The verb â€Å"glares† establishes the importance of vision to a couplet that culminates in transforming Pamela into a purely physical or seen object. Through gaining her right to see and be seen in public places of entertainment, Pamela unknowingly submits to her own objectification. By the second line of the couplet, Pamela no longer â€Å"glares.† The list of adjectives, â€Å"vain, unquiet, glittering, and wretched,† appears to simultaneously describe the public venues identified in the first line and the â€Å"thing† that concludes the second. As the wife of a wealthy man, Pamela exists within these public spaces as an â€Å"Ornament,† or a â€Å"proud declaration† of her husband’s ability to â€Å"maintain† her in a state of idleness (Rumbold 1). Although each of these arenas should offer the opportunity for reciprocal gazing, it seems that the power of the male gaze in the public sphere transforms the once glaring Pamela into nothing more than a â€Å"wretched thing.† Without the capacity to look, and hence interpret the world, Pamela looses her ability to fashion herself as a subject. The cautionary tale of Pamela who fails to follow Pope’s strategy of simultaneous withdrawal and engagement with the world would have been immediately relevant to Teresa Blount, the poem’s original addressee. Pope composed the â€Å"Epistle to a Young Lady, with the Work of Voiture† in the same year that Teresa’s father died and it â€Å"became clear that the [Blount] estate could not meet the obligations laid in his will†¦Ã¢â‚¬  for his daughters’ dowries (Rumbold 60). Within a Catholic community that â€Å"felt its persecution most keenly in financial terms,† Teresa’s lack of a dowry that reflected her family noble’s heritage limited  her marriage prospects to men from less dignified backgrounds (Rumbold 58). During this period, Teresa and her sister Patty participated in an epistolary game with fellow Catholic aristocrats that was modeled on the Rambouillet salon of early seventeenth century Paris. In letters inspire d by the charming raillery of Voiture, who was one of the most well-known members of this salon, the eligible children of a persecuted aristocracy practiced the art of courtship. Pope’s portrait of a young woman â€Å"cursed† by the fulfillment of her â€Å"prayers† undoubtedly pleased Teresa since she had only remote odds of succeeding in her game of courtship. As a â€Å"landless cripple,† Pope was not a part of this game and thus had a sense of isolation from the marriage market in which some of his friends were actively engaged (Rumbold 53). In her analysis of Pope’s â€Å"Epistle to Miss Blount,† Valerie Rumbold suggests that it was â€Å"tempting† or desirable for Pope to undermine the â€Å"vested interests of more fortunate men† with his scathing critique of marriage (53). While this may indeed have been true, it appears rather cynical to allow this to be the primary means of interpreting his call for a community constituted by a new form of human relations. In the fifth stanza of the poem, Pope conceptualizes the poetic practice that will bring this community of friends into existence as â€Å" good humour† (line 61). Pope reconfigures â€Å"good humour,† which was conventionally understood at the time as exhibiting a proper form of behavior or disposition, into a literary practice of establishing friendships through letters. If the reader falls victim to the marriage god Hymen, the speaker advises: â€Å"Good humour teaches charms to last, / Still makes new conquests, and maintains the past† (lines 61-62). After warning his audience not to trust its â€Å"now resistless charms,† Pope posits â€Å"good humour† as a means to â€Å"teach† or train charms â€Å"to last† (line 59). When read out of context, this conception of â€Å"good humour† may appear as practical advice for a wife who needs to establish a lasting relationship with her spouse. Within the context of a poem framed by an invocation of a dead author, Pope’s reconfiguration of â€Å"good humour† must be read as form of writing that creates a certain temporal confusion. The adverb â€Å"Still† that begins the second line of this couplet emphasizes the lasting quality of writing, which continually establishes friendships with new readers. The new â€Å"conquests† of good humou r occur within the present as a result of its  preservation in language. Following the dictates of â€Å"good humour,† Pope gives space to the past in order to allow it to become the present. Through resurrecting the past in the name of Vincent de Voiture, Pope exemplifies the practice of â€Å"good humour† through which he hopes to constitute a new community of friends. The couplet that follows the discussion of the necessity of good humour in marriage marks an abrupt departure from what may have appeared as practical advice for a young married woman. Pope begins the next stanza, â€Å"Thus Voiture’s early care still shone the same, / and Monthausier was only changed in name† (lines 69-70). The adverb â€Å"thus† equates the preceding conception of â€Å"good humour† as the only means to secure a relationship with Voiture’s epistolary love for his married friend. With the continuity between these two stanzas, Pope seeks to accentuate the literary quality of â€Å"good humour.† Voiture’s â€Å"early care† refers to his life-long devotion, much of it expressed in letters, to the daughter of the noble Madame de Rambouillet. As an untitled son of a wealthy wine merchant and therefore a part of the bourgeoisie, it was not possible for Voiture to publicly consummate his love for Julie de Rambouillet. When Julie finally consented to marry an eligible long-time admirer, the Duc de Monthausier, at the age of thirty-two, she left behind a devastated Voiture with whom she maintained an active epistolary friendship until his death in 1648. The publication of an English translation of Voiture’s Familiar and Courtly Letters in 1696 and again in 1700 created a sensation in England that gave new life to the epistolary relation of these two lovers.[9] Pope gives space to the life of Voiture by first invoking his past love and then allowing him to love again in the perpetually innocent and living field of language. After Julie de Rambouillet becomes the property of the Duc de Monthausier, Voiture’s love or â€Å"early care still shone the same† because he had established a literary bond with the object of his devotion. In the second couplet of this stanza, Pope shifts to a present tense and a plural subject to describe the reanimation of this epistolary love: â€Å"By this, ev’n now they live, ev’n now they charm, / Their wit still sparkling and their flames still warm† (lines 71-72). Pope marks his shift from Voiture’s past with the â€Å"By this,† which allows Voiture’s letters to â€Å"make new conquests† in the name of a loving community in the present. The repetitive construction of the first line of  the couplet emphasizes the presence of these lovers in the present. Pope’s hospitality to the names and hence memory of these lovers allows them to â€Å"live† and â€Å"charm† in the present. The repetition of â€Å"still† in the second line of the couplet reinforces the sense that the â€Å"care† and â€Å"charm† these lovers exhibited constituted â€Å"good humour.† The â€Å"still† attributed to â€Å"good humour† returns to depict the continual warmth and â€Å"sparkling† wit that allows this epistolary love to not only live again, but also expand within the community of the present. In hosting the name of Voiture within his epistle to Miss Blount, Pope exemplifies a form of literary friendship that both preserves and promotes a poetic community. The exemplary nature of Pope’s epistle consists in resurrecting and joining this community rather than unearthing Voiture as an exemplum of epistolary love. From the perspective of Pope’s epistle, Voiture’s letters demonstrate a misplaced desire to physically possess Julie de Rambouillet. In one of his translated letters to Julie, Voiture demonstrates his complete lack of ease with the desperate plea: â€Å"Do not think that our love is a whit the more private, for the pains we take to conceal it; the Dejection which is visible in my Countenance, speaks plainer than anybody can do. Let us then lay aside Discretion which cost us so dear, and give me, after Dinner, an opportunity of seeing you, if you would have me live † (70). Since Voiture confesses in another letter to Julie that â€Å"all my words [to her] will bear a double construction,† his threat of publicly disclosing their illicit love affair should be as at once playful and menacing (70). According to the logic of Pope’s epistle to Miss Blount, the problem with this plea is not the intensity of its passion, but rather the use it makes of the letter form. In her study of the development of epistolary fiction, Ruth Perry notes that letters always gesture elsewhere because â€Å"the climactic events† they discuss remain â€Å"beyond words† (86). While Voiture uses this attribute of letters in hopes of provoking a physical encounter with his loved object, Pope employs his epistle as a means of constituting a community made possible by the physical absence of its members. The impossibility of Voiture’s love for Julie and its resulting confinement within the field of letters explains why Pope chooses to address Miss Blount and the broader public through the work of this slighted lover. As a bourgeoisie man with â€Å"a stature three inches below the middle one,† Voiture was restricted, perhaps against his own intentions, to practicing the â€Å"good humour† of an epistolary lover (21). Through appealing to the internal audience of first Teresa and then Patty Blount with the work of Voiture, Pope interpellates them as his epistolary lovers in the mold of Julie de Rambouillet. In a letter written only a few years after the original composition of the â€Å"Epistle to a Young Lady, with the Work of Voiture,† Pope asks the unmarried Betty Marriot to â€Å"Cast your eyes upon Paper, Madam, there you may look innocently.†[10] Rather than seeking to provoke a physical consummation of his passion, Pope implores Betty to indul ge in a love restricted to the boundaries of the page. In his epistle to the Blounts, Pope further abstracts himself from his addressee by offering the â€Å"lines† of Voiture as a mediating space in which epistolary lovers can meet. The opening couplet of Pope’s â€Å"Epistle to Miss Blount, with the Works of Voiture† evacuates his self through a reanimation of the â€Å"lines† and life of Voiture. Pope immediately shifts the attention of the reader away from his relationship to the addressee: â€Å"In these gay thoughts the loves and graces shine, / And all the writer lives in every line† (lines 1-2). The preposition â€Å"in† begins the poem through establishing its location â€Å"in† the thoughts stimulated by the work of an author shared by the Pope and his audience. As a widely read writer of letters, Voiture represented an institutional figure that Pope draws on to situate his poem within a space that is irreducible to either writer or reader. Since the â€Å"loves and graces shine† in â€Å"the gay thoughts† that Voiture continues to inspire, this opening couplet configures the entire poem as an effect of Voiture’s work. â€Å"All the writer lives in every line† refers therefore to both the widely published work of Voiture and the particular verse epistle to follow. The association of light with the verb â€Å"shine† communicates a sense of vitality that Pope reinforces with the verb â€Å"breathe† that concludes his opening stanza. In the final couplet of his opening stanza, Pope emphasizes the always  potentially living nature of language by situating his epistle within the experience of reading and thus living with Voiture. The impetus for Pope’s conception of an epistolary community lies in the transformation of â€Å"death† into â€Å"breathe† in the following couplet: â€Å"The smiles and loves had died in Voiture’s death, / But that for ever in his lines they breathe† (lines 19-20). Voiture â€Å"played the trifle, life, away† through an epistolary practice that enabled his charms to exist within a linguistic space that is always potentially living (line 12). Pope establishes a number of breaks in the awkwardly constructed final line of this stanza to isolate and hence highlight â€Å"they breathe.† Since Voiture consecrated his love in letters, it can forever be reanimated by the admiring breath of later readers. In the final stanza of his epistle, Pope returns to the communal experience of reading Voiture in order to triumphantly reveal the power of his loving community in letters. Pope concludes his â€Å"Epistle to Miss Blount, with the Work of Voiture† with a corporeal conception of reading that appeals to his double audience to join an abstracted or retired community of readers. The affective exchange between Voiture and â€Å"you† in one of Pope’s final couplets offers an image of reading that threatens to dissolve the very category of the reader. Pope writes, â€Å"Pleased, while with smiles his happy lines you view, / And finds a fairer Rambouillet in you† (lines 75-76). Miss Blount, or any other reader, physically reflects the â€Å"happy lines of Voiture† with â€Å"smiles† that mark her material participation in the continuing existence of these â€Å"lines.† Through hosting the work of Voiture within his own epistle, Pope enables it to assume agency within the present. Voiture’s charming good humour returns to interpellate Miss Blount and the broader epistolary audience as a â€Å"fairer Rambouillet.† While Voiture’s desire to possess Julie had obstructed the complete transformation of his love into language, his â€Å"ghost† capitalizes on the distance of death to find an even more innocent love in the eternally available present (line 74). In identifying Voiture’s present reader as a â€Å"fairer† or more innocent object of his devotion, Pope crystallizes the paradoxical logic of an epistle that measures hope by the amount of distance it can establish from the present. Pope relinquishes ownership over his self in order to provide his guest, Voiture, with a space to breathe within the crowded field of language. Through this act of self-effacement, Pope exemplifies the poetic process through which one transforms oneself into a member of an epistolary community. In the final couplet of his poem, Pope announces the coming of a new community of friends: â€Å"And dead as living, ‘tis our author’s pride, / Still to charm those who charm the world beside† (lines 79-80). The shift from the pronoun â€Å"you† in the previous couplet to the collective â€Å"our† marks the accomplishment of his interpellation of a new epistolary community. His interpellation of both Miss Blount and the broader public as readers of Voiture acts as the condition of this community’s possibility since it is guaranteed by a collective ownership over the language of the past. As readers of the same â€Å"happy† lines, these interpellated or called for individuals share an affective bond that allows them to claim a collective ownership over Voiture. Once the interpellated individual acknowledges his claim for Voiture’s always living â€Å"charm,† he can demonstrate this responsibility through the literary practice of good humour. The â€Å"fairer Rambouillet† thus â€Å"charm[s] the world beside† in recognition of the past which she simultaneously honors and perpetuates in her own epistolary production within the present. Pope surrenders all claims to his self in the â€Å"Epistle to Miss Blount, with the Work of Voiture† in recognition of his place within a community founded by its hospitable relationship to the past. The address of first Teresa and then Patty Blount with this epistle represents an act of friendship that asks these unmarried women to realize the poetic potential within their exclusion from the centers of social life in early eighteenth century England. With his acknowledgement of the presence of a broader reading public, Pope seeks to begin the process of constituting a community in which he can join the Blount sisters as a loving friend. As a community made possible by the confining forms of a fragmented and patriarchal society, Pope’s vision of an epistolary collective necessarily resides at the very margins of life. ———————– [1] Perry, Ruth. Women, Letters, and the Novel, New York: AMS Press, 1980: page 69. [2] Rumbold, Valerie. Women’s Place in Pope’s World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989: page 2. [3] Pope, Alexander. â€Å"Letter to Teresa and Martha Blount,† Alexander Pope: the Major Works, ed. Pat Rogers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006): page 151. [4] Pope, Alexander. â€Å"Epistle to Miss Blount, with the Works of Voiture,† Alexander Pope: the Major Works, ed. Pat Rogers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006): pages 46-48. All citations refer to this edition unless otherwise noted. [5] Oxford English Dictionary. â€Å"Farce,† Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. [6] Pope, Alexander. â€Å"Epistle to Miss Blount, with the Works of Voiture,† Alexander Pope: Minor Poems, Twickenham Edition, ed. Norman Ault and John Butt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954): pages 62-65. Although they both claim to have incorporated the 1735 revisions, there is a discrepancy in this couplet between the epistle in the â€Å"Minor Poems† collection and the â€Å"Major Works of Pope.† I have quoted the former in deference to its greater authority and my preference for it. [7] Epicurus. â€Å"Letter to Menoeceus,† Letters, Principal Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings, trans. Russell M. Greer (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1964): page 57. [8] Dowling, William. The Epistolary Moment: the Poetics of the Eighteenth-Century Verse Epistle, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. [9] Voiture, Vincent. Familiar and courtly letters written by Monsieur Voiture to persons of the greatest honour, wit, and quality of both sexes in the court of France, trans. Mr. Dryden and Mr. Dennis (London: Printed for Sam Briscoe, 1700). [10] Pope, Alexander. â€Å"Letter to Miss Marriot,† The Correspondence of Alexander Pope: Volume 1, ed. George Sherburn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956): page 205-206. Quoted by Rumbold, page 50.