Leigh Marie Braswell and Tanya Khovanova
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691164038
- eISBN:
- 9781400881338
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691164038.003.0016
- Subject:
- Mathematics, History of Mathematics
This chapter examines the problem of the “Cookie Monster number.” In 2002, Cookie Monster® appeared in the book The Inquisitive Problem Solver by Vaderlind, Guy, and Larson, where the hungry monster ...
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This chapter examines the problem of the “Cookie Monster number.” In 2002, Cookie Monster® appeared in the book The Inquisitive Problem Solver by Vaderlind, Guy, and Larson, where the hungry monster wants to empty a set of jars filled with various numbers of cookies. The Cookie Monster number is the minimum number of moves Cookie Monster must use to empty all the jars. The chapter analyzes this problem by first introducing known general algorithms and known bounds for the Cookie Monster number. It then explicitly finds the Cookie Monster number for jars containing cookies in the Fibonacci, Tribonacci, n-nacci, and Super-n-nacci sequences. The chapter also constructs sequences of k jars such that their Cookie Monster numbers are asymptotically rk, where r is any real number, 0 ≤ r ≤ 1.Less
This chapter examines the problem of the “Cookie Monster number.” In 2002, Cookie Monster® appeared in the book The Inquisitive Problem Solver by Vaderlind, Guy, and Larson, where the hungry monster wants to empty a set of jars filled with various numbers of cookies. The Cookie Monster number is the minimum number of moves Cookie Monster must use to empty all the jars. The chapter analyzes this problem by first introducing known general algorithms and known bounds for the Cookie Monster number. It then explicitly finds the Cookie Monster number for jars containing cookies in the Fibonacci, Tribonacci, n-nacci, and Super-n-nacci sequences. The chapter also constructs sequences of k jars such that their Cookie Monster numbers are asymptotically rk, where r is any real number, 0 ≤ r ≤ 1.
Mary Shelley
David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262533287
- eISBN:
- 9780262340267
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262533287.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has endured in the popular imagination for two hundred years. Begun as a ghost story by an intellectually and socially precocious eighteen-year-old author during a cold ...
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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has endured in the popular imagination for two hundred years. Begun as a ghost story by an intellectually and socially precocious eighteen-year-old author during a cold and rainy summer on the shores of Lake Geneva, the dramatic tale of Victor Frankenstein and his stitched-together creature can be read as the ultimate parable of scientific hubris. Victor, “the modern Prometheus,” tried to do what he perhaps should have left to Nature: create life. Although the novel is most often discussed in literary-historical terms—as a seminal example of romanticism or as a groundbreaking early work of science fiction—Mary Shelley was keenly aware of contemporary scientific developments and incorporated them into her story. In our era of synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and climate engineering, this edition of Frankenstein will resonate forcefully for readers with a background or interest in science and engineering, and anyone intrigued by the fundamental questions of creativity and responsibility. This edition of Frankenstein pairs the original 1818 version of the manuscript—meticulously line-edited and amended by Charles E. Robinson, one of the world’s preeminent authorities on the text—with annotations and essays by leading scholars exploring the social and ethical aspects of scientific creativity raised by this remarkable story. The result is a unique and accessible edition of one of the most thought-provoking and influential novels ever written. Essays by Elizabeth Bear, Cory Doctorow, Heather E. Douglas, Josephine Johnston, Kate MacCord, Jane Maienschein, Anne K. Mellor, Alfred NordmannLess
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has endured in the popular imagination for two hundred years. Begun as a ghost story by an intellectually and socially precocious eighteen-year-old author during a cold and rainy summer on the shores of Lake Geneva, the dramatic tale of Victor Frankenstein and his stitched-together creature can be read as the ultimate parable of scientific hubris. Victor, “the modern Prometheus,” tried to do what he perhaps should have left to Nature: create life. Although the novel is most often discussed in literary-historical terms—as a seminal example of romanticism or as a groundbreaking early work of science fiction—Mary Shelley was keenly aware of contemporary scientific developments and incorporated them into her story. In our era of synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and climate engineering, this edition of Frankenstein will resonate forcefully for readers with a background or interest in science and engineering, and anyone intrigued by the fundamental questions of creativity and responsibility. This edition of Frankenstein pairs the original 1818 version of the manuscript—meticulously line-edited and amended by Charles E. Robinson, one of the world’s preeminent authorities on the text—with annotations and essays by leading scholars exploring the social and ethical aspects of scientific creativity raised by this remarkable story. The result is a unique and accessible edition of one of the most thought-provoking and influential novels ever written. Essays by Elizabeth Bear, Cory Doctorow, Heather E. Douglas, Josephine Johnston, Kate MacCord, Jane Maienschein, Anne K. Mellor, Alfred Nordmann
Jonathan Betts
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198568025
- eISBN:
- 9780191718144
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198568025.003.16
- Subject:
- Physics, History of Physics
This chapter details Rupert's investigation of the Loch Ness monster. In the Spring of 1933 rumours had begun of sightings of a large creature, apparently of unknown species, living in Loch Ness. ...
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This chapter details Rupert's investigation of the Loch Ness monster. In the Spring of 1933 rumours had begun of sightings of a large creature, apparently of unknown species, living in Loch Ness. Having published The Case for the Sea Serpent just over 2 years before, Gould soon got to hear of this and needless to say was intrigued by the descriptions, sounding, as they did, remarkably ‘Serpentine’. Rupert personally went to Scotland to investigate Loch Ness. The results of his research were summarized in the book entitled, The Loch Ness Monster and Others, released in June 1934.Less
This chapter details Rupert's investigation of the Loch Ness monster. In the Spring of 1933 rumours had begun of sightings of a large creature, apparently of unknown species, living in Loch Ness. Having published The Case for the Sea Serpent just over 2 years before, Gould soon got to hear of this and needless to say was intrigued by the descriptions, sounding, as they did, remarkably ‘Serpentine’. Rupert personally went to Scotland to investigate Loch Ness. The results of his research were summarized in the book entitled, The Loch Ness Monster and Others, released in June 1934.
J. P. Telotte
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381830
- eISBN:
- 9781781382363
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381830.003.0011
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter analyzes the intersection of cult and science fiction (sf) cinema, focusing on Robot Monster (1953). It argues that sf films have developed a cult reputation and following not only ...
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This chapter analyzes the intersection of cult and science fiction (sf) cinema, focusing on Robot Monster (1953). It argues that sf films have developed a cult reputation and following not only because they are bad films or in some way ‘paracinematic’ but rather because, either intentionally or not, they seem to tap into a double character that, for better or worse, quite often marks the sf film: that ability to seem by turns quite serious, conventional, and compelling, but also more than a bit strained, unserious, even absurd, especially in instances when their special effects become dated and appreciably less appreciated, that is, through a kind of slippage that can make viewers overly conscious of how these works function as films and/or as generic texts, and thus of the special effects' own relationship to these texts. But that is only one connection and, indeed, even without such ‘slippage’, many sf films often seem to be in negotiation between the serious and the strained, to verge on the cult, and this potential kinship says much about both the science fictional and the cult.Less
This chapter analyzes the intersection of cult and science fiction (sf) cinema, focusing on Robot Monster (1953). It argues that sf films have developed a cult reputation and following not only because they are bad films or in some way ‘paracinematic’ but rather because, either intentionally or not, they seem to tap into a double character that, for better or worse, quite often marks the sf film: that ability to seem by turns quite serious, conventional, and compelling, but also more than a bit strained, unserious, even absurd, especially in instances when their special effects become dated and appreciably less appreciated, that is, through a kind of slippage that can make viewers overly conscious of how these works function as films and/or as generic texts, and thus of the special effects' own relationship to these texts. But that is only one connection and, indeed, even without such ‘slippage’, many sf films often seem to be in negotiation between the serious and the strained, to verge on the cult, and this potential kinship says much about both the science fictional and the cult.
Rodney F. Hill
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381830
- eISBN:
- 9781781382363
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381830.003.0012
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter analyzes Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Bride of the Monster (aka, Bride of the Atom, 1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1956, released 1959), and Glen or Glenda? (1953). While known primarily for ...
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This chapter analyzes Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Bride of the Monster (aka, Bride of the Atom, 1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1956, released 1959), and Glen or Glenda? (1953). While known primarily for their cult status, these films abound in science fiction (sf) iconography and thematics — with their flying saucers and intergalactic intelligences, mad scientists and mutant creatures, and ruminations on the use of advanced technology. Cult films also challenge the distinctions between innovation and ‘badness’, between high and low culture, between acceptable and forbidden subject matter. As a result, our experience of the cult is frequently marked by confusion: a confusion not only of categories, but also of response. In Wood's case, he may be regarded as a misunderstood auteur (even, perhaps, an accidental artist of the avant-garde), or dismissed as one of the ‘worst’ directors of all time.Less
This chapter analyzes Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Bride of the Monster (aka, Bride of the Atom, 1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1956, released 1959), and Glen or Glenda? (1953). While known primarily for their cult status, these films abound in science fiction (sf) iconography and thematics — with their flying saucers and intergalactic intelligences, mad scientists and mutant creatures, and ruminations on the use of advanced technology. Cult films also challenge the distinctions between innovation and ‘badness’, between high and low culture, between acceptable and forbidden subject matter. As a result, our experience of the cult is frequently marked by confusion: a confusion not only of categories, but also of response. In Wood's case, he may be regarded as a misunderstood auteur (even, perhaps, an accidental artist of the avant-garde), or dismissed as one of the ‘worst’ directors of all time.
Jonathan Betts
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198568025
- eISBN:
- 9780191718144
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198568025.001.0001
- Subject:
- Physics, History of Physics
This is the story of Rupert T. Gould (1890-1948), the polymath and horologist. A remarkable man, Lt Cmdr Gould made important contributions in an extraordinary range of subject areas throughout his ...
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This is the story of Rupert T. Gould (1890-1948), the polymath and horologist. A remarkable man, Lt Cmdr Gould made important contributions in an extraordinary range of subject areas throughout his relatively short and dramatically troubled life. From antique clocks to scientific mysteries, from typewriters to the first systematic study of the Loch Ness Monster, Gould studied and published on them all. With the title ‘The Stargazer’, Gould was an early broadcaster on the BBC's Children's Hour when, with his encyclopaedic knowledge, he became known as The Man Who Knew Everything. Not surprisingly, he was also part of that elite group on BBC radio who formed The Brains Trust, giving on-the-spot answers to all manner of wide ranging and difficult questions. With his wide learning and photographic memory, Gould awed a national audience, becoming one of the era's radio celebrities. During the 1920s Gould restored the complex and highly significant marine timekeepers constructed by John Harrison (1693-1776), and wrote the unsurpassed classic, The Marine Chronometer, its History and Development. Today he is virtually unknown, his horological contributions scarcely mentioned in Dava Sobel's bestseller Longitude. The TV version of Longitude, in which Jeremy Irons played Rupert Gould, did at least introduce Rupert's name to a wider public. Gould suffered terrible bouts of depression, resulting in a number of nervous breakdowns. These, coupled with his obsessive and pedantic nature, led to a scandalously-reported separation from his wife and cost him his family, his home, his job, and his closest friends.Less
This is the story of Rupert T. Gould (1890-1948), the polymath and horologist. A remarkable man, Lt Cmdr Gould made important contributions in an extraordinary range of subject areas throughout his relatively short and dramatically troubled life. From antique clocks to scientific mysteries, from typewriters to the first systematic study of the Loch Ness Monster, Gould studied and published on them all. With the title ‘The Stargazer’, Gould was an early broadcaster on the BBC's Children's Hour when, with his encyclopaedic knowledge, he became known as The Man Who Knew Everything. Not surprisingly, he was also part of that elite group on BBC radio who formed The Brains Trust, giving on-the-spot answers to all manner of wide ranging and difficult questions. With his wide learning and photographic memory, Gould awed a national audience, becoming one of the era's radio celebrities. During the 1920s Gould restored the complex and highly significant marine timekeepers constructed by John Harrison (1693-1776), and wrote the unsurpassed classic, The Marine Chronometer, its History and Development. Today he is virtually unknown, his horological contributions scarcely mentioned in Dava Sobel's bestseller Longitude. The TV version of Longitude, in which Jeremy Irons played Rupert Gould, did at least introduce Rupert's name to a wider public. Gould suffered terrible bouts of depression, resulting in a number of nervous breakdowns. These, coupled with his obsessive and pedantic nature, led to a scandalously-reported separation from his wife and cost him his family, his home, his job, and his closest friends.
Kieran Tranter
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474420891
- eISBN:
- 9781474453707
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474420891.003.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
This chapter introduces the book. It introduces the key concepts of the Frankenstein myth, law as technology and the role of science fiction as the site for the collective dream of technological ...
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This chapter introduces the book. It introduces the key concepts of the Frankenstein myth, law as technology and the role of science fiction as the site for the collective dream of technological culture and society in the West. This chapter also locates the book to come in the emergent field of law and humanities and the existing literature that examines law and legality of science fiction. It also introduces the concepts of the monster and the trickster.Less
This chapter introduces the book. It introduces the key concepts of the Frankenstein myth, law as technology and the role of science fiction as the site for the collective dream of technological culture and society in the West. This chapter also locates the book to come in the emergent field of law and humanities and the existing literature that examines law and legality of science fiction. It also introduces the concepts of the monster and the trickster.
Kieran Tranter
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474420891
- eISBN:
- 9781474453707
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474420891.003.0002
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
This chapter argues that law can be seen as technological when, ironically, law is called to respond to technological change. Through a focus on the legal responses to cloning, it is shown that the ...
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This chapter argues that law can be seen as technological when, ironically, law is called to respond to technological change. Through a focus on the legal responses to cloning, it is shown that the called-for laws were responding to visions of cloning futures directly sourced from science fiction. Having located these legal acts within science fiction, the essential elements of this future-oriented process – monstrous technology, vulnerable humanity and saving law – can be seen. This will be identified as the ‘Frankenstein myth.’ What is revealed is that science fiction holds the technical and legal together at the level of substantive dreaming and also at the level of basic commitments. The irony intrudes at this point. This saving law that can determine the future has a particular character. It is a species of pure power, manufactured through procedure in the present to determine the future. It appears to have the same characteristics that have been ascribed to technology. With this the categories established by the Frankenstein myth of ‘technology’, ‘humanity’ and ‘law’ seem to be imploded. What is glimpsed is the singularity of technical legality.Less
This chapter argues that law can be seen as technological when, ironically, law is called to respond to technological change. Through a focus on the legal responses to cloning, it is shown that the called-for laws were responding to visions of cloning futures directly sourced from science fiction. Having located these legal acts within science fiction, the essential elements of this future-oriented process – monstrous technology, vulnerable humanity and saving law – can be seen. This will be identified as the ‘Frankenstein myth.’ What is revealed is that science fiction holds the technical and legal together at the level of substantive dreaming and also at the level of basic commitments. The irony intrudes at this point. This saving law that can determine the future has a particular character. It is a species of pure power, manufactured through procedure in the present to determine the future. It appears to have the same characteristics that have been ascribed to technology. With this the categories established by the Frankenstein myth of ‘technology’, ‘humanity’ and ‘law’ seem to be imploded. What is glimpsed is the singularity of technical legality.
Kieran Tranter
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474420891
- eISBN:
- 9781474453707
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474420891.003.0003
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
This chapter examines technical legality through looking in detail at how modernity allowed law as technology. This is undertaken through a jurisprudential reading of Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune cycle’. ...
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This chapter examines technical legality through looking in detail at how modernity allowed law as technology. This is undertaken through a jurisprudential reading of Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune cycle’. The Dune cycle has been read as involving an affirmation of chaos over rationality in public activities — religion, politics and ecology — concluding with the message of self-care and Zen-like calm in coping with an uncertain universe. But these accounts sell Herbert’s imagining short. This chapter re-examines the Dune cycle as a story of tyrants and leviathan sandworms. In this re-reading, Dune can be seen as an account of the metaphysics of law as technology. The themes of the secondary literature on Dune can be rewoven into a critical elaboration of Hobbes’ ‘mortal God’ which exposes the essential commitments of sovereignty and its technical law. These commitments are death and time. Located within the bloody alchemy of modernity, the monstrousness of the law as technology is revealed – the consumption of bare life in time. This brutal realisation seems to end with Schmitt’s representative sovereign deciding to make the world.Less
This chapter examines technical legality through looking in detail at how modernity allowed law as technology. This is undertaken through a jurisprudential reading of Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune cycle’. The Dune cycle has been read as involving an affirmation of chaos over rationality in public activities — religion, politics and ecology — concluding with the message of self-care and Zen-like calm in coping with an uncertain universe. But these accounts sell Herbert’s imagining short. This chapter re-examines the Dune cycle as a story of tyrants and leviathan sandworms. In this re-reading, Dune can be seen as an account of the metaphysics of law as technology. The themes of the secondary literature on Dune can be rewoven into a critical elaboration of Hobbes’ ‘mortal God’ which exposes the essential commitments of sovereignty and its technical law. These commitments are death and time. Located within the bloody alchemy of modernity, the monstrousness of the law as technology is revealed – the consumption of bare life in time. This brutal realisation seems to end with Schmitt’s representative sovereign deciding to make the world.
Katrina Navickas
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719097058
- eISBN:
- 9781526104144
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097058.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This chapter examines protesters’ attachment to the landscape. Peterloo reformers became involved in societies for the protection of footpaths in the 1820s. Increasingly unable to hold public ...
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This chapter examines protesters’ attachment to the landscape. Peterloo reformers became involved in societies for the protection of footpaths in the 1820s. Increasingly unable to hold public meetings in town centres, Chartists and Owenite socialists held monster meetings on fields and moors outside urban jurisdiction. Using the sites and rituals of Methodist camp meetings, moorland meetings reflected a sense of place among protesters. The experience of the environment was physical and elemental, particularly the hard rambles of itinerant lecturers and the secret drilling of radicals at night. The popularity of the Chartist Land Plan among northern industrial workers demonstrated how radicals’ utopian visions of a better life lay in the land as well as the vote.Less
This chapter examines protesters’ attachment to the landscape. Peterloo reformers became involved in societies for the protection of footpaths in the 1820s. Increasingly unable to hold public meetings in town centres, Chartists and Owenite socialists held monster meetings on fields and moors outside urban jurisdiction. Using the sites and rituals of Methodist camp meetings, moorland meetings reflected a sense of place among protesters. The experience of the environment was physical and elemental, particularly the hard rambles of itinerant lecturers and the secret drilling of radicals at night. The popularity of the Chartist Land Plan among northern industrial workers demonstrated how radicals’ utopian visions of a better life lay in the land as well as the vote.
Huston Gilmore
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620320
- eISBN:
- 9781789629958
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620320.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter explores the role of nature and the environment during the series of O’Connellite ‘monster’ meetings demanding the repeal of the Act of Union during the spring and summer of 1843. It ...
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This chapter explores the role of nature and the environment during the series of O’Connellite ‘monster’ meetings demanding the repeal of the Act of Union during the spring and summer of 1843. It considers the nature and extent of popular participation in O’Connell’s extra-parliamentary campaign amidst a charged political atmosphere and within specific environments in which place, identity, and a discourse of nationalist grievance as negotiated through a historicisation of the Irish landscape. It seeks to analyse both the processional nature of O’Connell’s rallies, the politicised culture of conviviality they engendered, and the extent to which the Repeal Association staged these rallies with a view to how they were reported in the popular press. O’Connell’s 1843 campaign is thus seen as a burst of popular participation on a scale hitherto unseen in Ireland. The O’Connellite ‘monster’ meeting is presented as a campaign to dominate public space in both small town and rural environments, based on a symbiotic relationship between the Repeal Association and Catholicism which deployed a nationalist iconography that deployed images of the natural world, and exhorted the Irish peasantry to peacefully demonstrate in favour of Repeal by invoking the natural advantages of Ireland that would be unleashed by self-government.Less
This chapter explores the role of nature and the environment during the series of O’Connellite ‘monster’ meetings demanding the repeal of the Act of Union during the spring and summer of 1843. It considers the nature and extent of popular participation in O’Connell’s extra-parliamentary campaign amidst a charged political atmosphere and within specific environments in which place, identity, and a discourse of nationalist grievance as negotiated through a historicisation of the Irish landscape. It seeks to analyse both the processional nature of O’Connell’s rallies, the politicised culture of conviviality they engendered, and the extent to which the Repeal Association staged these rallies with a view to how they were reported in the popular press. O’Connell’s 1843 campaign is thus seen as a burst of popular participation on a scale hitherto unseen in Ireland. The O’Connellite ‘monster’ meeting is presented as a campaign to dominate public space in both small town and rural environments, based on a symbiotic relationship between the Repeal Association and Catholicism which deployed a nationalist iconography that deployed images of the natural world, and exhorted the Irish peasantry to peacefully demonstrate in favour of Repeal by invoking the natural advantages of Ireland that would be unleashed by self-government.
Kate Turner
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474408196
- eISBN:
- 9781474434508
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474408196.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter’s analysis of queer Scottish Gothic originates from a simple observation: there is a large and coherent scholarship on queer Gothic and Scottish Gothic respectively; however, there is ...
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This chapter’s analysis of queer Scottish Gothic originates from a simple observation: there is a large and coherent scholarship on queer Gothic and Scottish Gothic respectively; however, there is notably little analysis of the way Scottish and queer Gothic may interact. With the exception of one recent article by Fiona McCulloch, queer Scottish Gothic has not yet been given full critical attention. This chapter explores revisions in the treatment of Gothic monsters, traditionally viewed as ‘all that is dangerous and horrible in the human imagination’ (Gilmore 2003: 1), in Louise Welsh’s The Cutting Room (2002), Luke Sutherland’s Venus as a Boy (2004) and Zoë Strachan’s Ever Fallen in Love (2011). More specifically, this analysis considers the dissociation of the monstrous figure from fear and terror in these texts, and suggests that they are repositioned as elusive figures through which the peripheral identities of Scottish and of queer may be simultaneously explored.Less
This chapter’s analysis of queer Scottish Gothic originates from a simple observation: there is a large and coherent scholarship on queer Gothic and Scottish Gothic respectively; however, there is notably little analysis of the way Scottish and queer Gothic may interact. With the exception of one recent article by Fiona McCulloch, queer Scottish Gothic has not yet been given full critical attention. This chapter explores revisions in the treatment of Gothic monsters, traditionally viewed as ‘all that is dangerous and horrible in the human imagination’ (Gilmore 2003: 1), in Louise Welsh’s The Cutting Room (2002), Luke Sutherland’s Venus as a Boy (2004) and Zoë Strachan’s Ever Fallen in Love (2011). More specifically, this analysis considers the dissociation of the monstrous figure from fear and terror in these texts, and suggests that they are repositioned as elusive figures through which the peripheral identities of Scottish and of queer may be simultaneously explored.
Russ Hunter
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780748693528
- eISBN:
- 9781474421997
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748693528.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The precise generic beginnings of horror cinema have the odd status of being both simultaneously clear and opaque. The general trend in studies of horror cinema has been to date the genre’s ...
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The precise generic beginnings of horror cinema have the odd status of being both simultaneously clear and opaque. The general trend in studies of horror cinema has been to date the genre’s beginnings around the release of the series of Universal’s ‘monster movies’ beginning with Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) and Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931). The desire to search for the antecedents, roots and origins of any genre leads film scholars to identify certain texts as key turning points that effectively lay the ground for what follows. While this view of genre can be overly deterministic, it is nonetheless true that some texts rather than others are given the status of key reference points based upon their perceived historical importance.Less
The precise generic beginnings of horror cinema have the odd status of being both simultaneously clear and opaque. The general trend in studies of horror cinema has been to date the genre’s beginnings around the release of the series of Universal’s ‘monster movies’ beginning with Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) and Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931). The desire to search for the antecedents, roots and origins of any genre leads film scholars to identify certain texts as key turning points that effectively lay the ground for what follows. While this view of genre can be overly deterministic, it is nonetheless true that some texts rather than others are given the status of key reference points based upon their perceived historical importance.
Josephine Metcalf
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617032813
- eISBN:
- 9781617032820
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617032813.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Social Groups
The publication in 1993 of Sanyika Shakur’s Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member generated a huge amount of excitement in literary circles — New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani ...
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The publication in 1993 of Sanyika Shakur’s Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member generated a huge amount of excitement in literary circles — New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani deemed it a “shocking and galvanic book” — and set off a new publishing trend of gang memoirs in the 1990s. The memoirs showcased tales of violent confrontation and territorial belonging but also offered many of the first journalistic and autobiographical accounts of the much-mythologized gang subculture. This book focuses on three of these memoirs — Shakur’s; Luis J. Rodriguez’s Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.; and Stanley “Tookie” Williams’s Rage, Black Redemption — as key representatives of the gang autobiography. It examines the conflict among violence, thrilling sensationalism, and the authorial desire to instruct and warn competing within these works. The narrative arcs of the memoirs themselves rest on the process of conversion from brutal, young gang bangers to nonviolent, enlightened citizens. The author analyzes the emergence, production, marketing, and reception of gang memoirs. Through interviews with Rodriguez, Shakur, and Barbara Cottman Becnel (Williams’s editor), she reveals both the writing and publishing processes. This book analyzes key narrative conventions, specifically how diction, dialogue, and narrative arcs shape the works. It also explores how the memoirs are consumed. This interdisciplinary study — fusing literary criticism, sociology, ethnography, reader-response study, and editorial theory — brings scholarly attention to a popular, much-discussed, but understudied modern expression.Less
The publication in 1993 of Sanyika Shakur’s Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member generated a huge amount of excitement in literary circles — New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani deemed it a “shocking and galvanic book” — and set off a new publishing trend of gang memoirs in the 1990s. The memoirs showcased tales of violent confrontation and territorial belonging but also offered many of the first journalistic and autobiographical accounts of the much-mythologized gang subculture. This book focuses on three of these memoirs — Shakur’s; Luis J. Rodriguez’s Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.; and Stanley “Tookie” Williams’s Rage, Black Redemption — as key representatives of the gang autobiography. It examines the conflict among violence, thrilling sensationalism, and the authorial desire to instruct and warn competing within these works. The narrative arcs of the memoirs themselves rest on the process of conversion from brutal, young gang bangers to nonviolent, enlightened citizens. The author analyzes the emergence, production, marketing, and reception of gang memoirs. Through interviews with Rodriguez, Shakur, and Barbara Cottman Becnel (Williams’s editor), she reveals both the writing and publishing processes. This book analyzes key narrative conventions, specifically how diction, dialogue, and narrative arcs shape the works. It also explores how the memoirs are consumed. This interdisciplinary study — fusing literary criticism, sociology, ethnography, reader-response study, and editorial theory — brings scholarly attention to a popular, much-discussed, but understudied modern expression.
Kimberly Lamm
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526121264
- eISBN:
- 9781526136176
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526121264.003.0005
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Focused on the infamous SCUM Manifesto (1967), chapter 4 examines how Valerie Solanas deployed language as a weapon capable of ‘cutting up’ patriarchal authority and demonstrates how her history as a ...
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Focused on the infamous SCUM Manifesto (1967), chapter 4 examines how Valerie Solanas deployed language as a weapon capable of ‘cutting up’ patriarchal authority and demonstrates how her history as a feminist lesbian of the 1960s helps evoke a historical milieu that brings the stakes of Codex Artaud into relief. Solanas wrote at western feminism’s most violent edge – and was perceived to be a monster for doing so. Reading Solanas as both an icon of the feminist lesbian but also the ambitious writer of a tightly crafted manifesto, this chapter traces how Solanas wrote to reject the expectation that women renounce their aggression. An Artaud-like figure who also embodies madness, Solanas’s attempted murder of Andy Warhol demonstrates that this rejection can take a dangerously literal turn. More subtly, her murderous rage reveals the insanity that came from sustaining a protest alone, bereft of feminist collectivities or images that mirror the value of women’s transgressions. Drawing upon Mary Harron’s well-researched film I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), this chapter highlights Solanas’s history as an unruly feminist lesbian who, with connections to Warhol, Pop Art, Marilyn Monroe, and the typewriter, exemplifies the risks and possibilities of refusing to become an image of feminine submission and sexual availability..Less
Focused on the infamous SCUM Manifesto (1967), chapter 4 examines how Valerie Solanas deployed language as a weapon capable of ‘cutting up’ patriarchal authority and demonstrates how her history as a feminist lesbian of the 1960s helps evoke a historical milieu that brings the stakes of Codex Artaud into relief. Solanas wrote at western feminism’s most violent edge – and was perceived to be a monster for doing so. Reading Solanas as both an icon of the feminist lesbian but also the ambitious writer of a tightly crafted manifesto, this chapter traces how Solanas wrote to reject the expectation that women renounce their aggression. An Artaud-like figure who also embodies madness, Solanas’s attempted murder of Andy Warhol demonstrates that this rejection can take a dangerously literal turn. More subtly, her murderous rage reveals the insanity that came from sustaining a protest alone, bereft of feminist collectivities or images that mirror the value of women’s transgressions. Drawing upon Mary Harron’s well-researched film I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), this chapter highlights Solanas’s history as an unruly feminist lesbian who, with connections to Warhol, Pop Art, Marilyn Monroe, and the typewriter, exemplifies the risks and possibilities of refusing to become an image of feminine submission and sexual availability..
Takayuki Tatsumi and Seth Jacobowitz
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781380383
- eISBN:
- 9781781381557
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380383.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Pop heroes and anti-heroes like Astro Boy and Godzilla represent not only our technological consequences but also the mythological unconscious. For example, one of the origins of Godzilla could well ...
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Pop heroes and anti-heroes like Astro Boy and Godzilla represent not only our technological consequences but also the mythological unconscious. For example, one of the origins of Godzilla could well be discovered in a pseudo-scientific and pseudo-religious theory championed by a nineteenth century new shintoist Masumi Ohishigori, who was so aware of the limit of Shintoism as to re-locate the origins of man in dinosaurs born of Japanese gods. Therefore, it is his syncretic and creationistic theory of dinosaurs that doubtlessly helped Meiji Japan modernize itself, and even survived the postwar junkyard in the form of Godzilla. Thus, a decade after Godzilla (1954), Ghidorah the Three-headed Monster (1964), which re-appropriates Audrey Hepburn’s Roman Holiday (1954) and dramatizes the way Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra join forces to defeat Ghidorah from outer space, skillfully allegorizes a critical point from the U.S. Occupation period to the High Growth period in Japanese history. The chapter also discusses the influences of Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville on the dinosaur imaginary.Less
Pop heroes and anti-heroes like Astro Boy and Godzilla represent not only our technological consequences but also the mythological unconscious. For example, one of the origins of Godzilla could well be discovered in a pseudo-scientific and pseudo-religious theory championed by a nineteenth century new shintoist Masumi Ohishigori, who was so aware of the limit of Shintoism as to re-locate the origins of man in dinosaurs born of Japanese gods. Therefore, it is his syncretic and creationistic theory of dinosaurs that doubtlessly helped Meiji Japan modernize itself, and even survived the postwar junkyard in the form of Godzilla. Thus, a decade after Godzilla (1954), Ghidorah the Three-headed Monster (1964), which re-appropriates Audrey Hepburn’s Roman Holiday (1954) and dramatizes the way Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra join forces to defeat Ghidorah from outer space, skillfully allegorizes a critical point from the U.S. Occupation period to the High Growth period in Japanese history. The chapter also discusses the influences of Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville on the dinosaur imaginary.
David Roche
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617039621
- eISBN:
- 9781626740129
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617039621.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter opens with a critical discussion of the notions of horror, terror and dread, which are defined according to a dialectic between the presence and absence of “monstrous” stimuli. The ...
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This chapter opens with a critical discussion of the notions of horror, terror and dread, which are defined according to a dialectic between the presence and absence of “monstrous” stimuli. The analyses show that the 1970s films consistently undermine the opposition between human and monster, revealing that the monster and the “monstrous” are not discrete concepts but shifting values within the films, and surely within the viewers’ cultural frameworks. As for the 2000s remakes, they significantly increase the danger factor by playing up the “monstrous” characters’ superhuman strength and omnipotence. This contemporary trend affects both the politics and the aesthetics of contemporary horror films: first, it somewhat downplays the “monstrous” characters’ status as victims that enabled a progressive subtext in the 1970s films, even though the contemporary films emphasize these characters’ motives on the diegetic level; secondly, it leaves less time to contemplate the “monstrous” stimuli that are, quite simply, too effective.Less
This chapter opens with a critical discussion of the notions of horror, terror and dread, which are defined according to a dialectic between the presence and absence of “monstrous” stimuli. The analyses show that the 1970s films consistently undermine the opposition between human and monster, revealing that the monster and the “monstrous” are not discrete concepts but shifting values within the films, and surely within the viewers’ cultural frameworks. As for the 2000s remakes, they significantly increase the danger factor by playing up the “monstrous” characters’ superhuman strength and omnipotence. This contemporary trend affects both the politics and the aesthetics of contemporary horror films: first, it somewhat downplays the “monstrous” characters’ status as victims that enabled a progressive subtext in the 1970s films, even though the contemporary films emphasize these characters’ motives on the diegetic level; secondly, it leaves less time to contemplate the “monstrous” stimuli that are, quite simply, too effective.
Michael T. Gilmore
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226294131
- eISBN:
- 9780226294155
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226294155.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
Stephen Crane published his classic novel about the Civil War, The Red Badge of Courage, in 1895, a full three decades after hostilities ended. Crane's tale, a major document of American realism, ...
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Stephen Crane published his classic novel about the Civil War, The Red Badge of Courage, in 1895, a full three decades after hostilities ended. Crane's tale, a major document of American realism, incarnates the ex post facto spirit. Crane's novella of a black stable hand who loses his face while saving a white child alerts us to another element in the postbellum détente that hampered dissent: the modernized reach of the doxa. The Red Badge of Courage and The Monster were both products of the post-Reconstruction depths, a temporal congruity too often overlooked in their usual isolation as narratives about, respectively, the Civil War and small-town parochialism. The Monster (1899) was also the context for his reimagining of the clash between North and South. The tale about the ostracizing of a physician for his allegiance to a damaged black stable hand is a strongest evidence for Crane's alienation from his culture's ideological rigidities.Less
Stephen Crane published his classic novel about the Civil War, The Red Badge of Courage, in 1895, a full three decades after hostilities ended. Crane's tale, a major document of American realism, incarnates the ex post facto spirit. Crane's novella of a black stable hand who loses his face while saving a white child alerts us to another element in the postbellum détente that hampered dissent: the modernized reach of the doxa. The Red Badge of Courage and The Monster were both products of the post-Reconstruction depths, a temporal congruity too often overlooked in their usual isolation as narratives about, respectively, the Civil War and small-town parochialism. The Monster (1899) was also the context for his reimagining of the clash between North and South. The tale about the ostracizing of a physician for his allegiance to a damaged black stable hand is a strongest evidence for Crane's alienation from his culture's ideological rigidities.
Emily L. Hiltz
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781496806444
- eISBN:
- 9781496806482
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496806444.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This essay examines Suzanne Collins’s monstrous “mutts” in her phenomenally popular series The Hunger Games. Hiltz is especially interested in Collins’s characterization of human-animal hybrids, ...
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This essay examines Suzanne Collins’s monstrous “mutts” in her phenomenally popular series The Hunger Games. Hiltz is especially interested in Collins’s characterization of human-animal hybrids, investigating the relationship between the political commentary at work in the novels and these “monsters,” from the half-wolf, half-humans that nearly overtake Katniss at the Cornucopia in the first novel to the lizard-humans whispering her name throughout the viaducts beneath the city in the last. Hiltz focuses on the mutts as abject creatures, demonstrating the ways in which these uncanny monsters, quite literally making the familiar strange, are at once metaphors for the political control exerted by the Capitol, the rebels’ resistance to the Capitol’s power, and the disruption of natural order. She also concentrates on Katniss and Peeta muttations, each of them reformed by warring entities in service of “the greater good.” Most importantly, Hiltz emphasizes that Collins’s mutts are designed to demonstrate the fine and wavering line between good and evil, calling into question the nature of monstrosity, especially as it relates to human behavior. Her location of monstrosity in the protagonists themselves especially offers a new way of thinking about teen dystopic novels that engage horror as a means of conveying identities assaulted by external forces.Less
This essay examines Suzanne Collins’s monstrous “mutts” in her phenomenally popular series The Hunger Games. Hiltz is especially interested in Collins’s characterization of human-animal hybrids, investigating the relationship between the political commentary at work in the novels and these “monsters,” from the half-wolf, half-humans that nearly overtake Katniss at the Cornucopia in the first novel to the lizard-humans whispering her name throughout the viaducts beneath the city in the last. Hiltz focuses on the mutts as abject creatures, demonstrating the ways in which these uncanny monsters, quite literally making the familiar strange, are at once metaphors for the political control exerted by the Capitol, the rebels’ resistance to the Capitol’s power, and the disruption of natural order. She also concentrates on Katniss and Peeta muttations, each of them reformed by warring entities in service of “the greater good.” Most importantly, Hiltz emphasizes that Collins’s mutts are designed to demonstrate the fine and wavering line between good and evil, calling into question the nature of monstrosity, especially as it relates to human behavior. Her location of monstrosity in the protagonists themselves especially offers a new way of thinking about teen dystopic novels that engage horror as a means of conveying identities assaulted by external forces.
Ray Zone
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813136110
- eISBN:
- 9780813141183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813136110.003.0024
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The release of Chicken Little 3D on November 4, 2005 marks the beginning of digital 3D cinema. Technology used to deliver digital 3D are examined and comments by Phil McNally, stereographer on ...
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The release of Chicken Little 3D on November 4, 2005 marks the beginning of digital 3D cinema. Technology used to deliver digital 3D are examined and comments by Phil McNally, stereographer on Chicken Little are included. Also analysed is the subsequent digital 3D cinema release, Monster House 3D, in 2006.Less
The release of Chicken Little 3D on November 4, 2005 marks the beginning of digital 3D cinema. Technology used to deliver digital 3D are examined and comments by Phil McNally, stereographer on Chicken Little are included. Also analysed is the subsequent digital 3D cinema release, Monster House 3D, in 2006.