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Barthes, the Desire to Write, and the Prevision of the Work

Anne Herschberg Pierrot

in Interdisciplinary Barthes

This chapter explores the connections between Le Lexique de l’auteur (the seminar of 1973–4 in which Barthes reflects on the genesis of the text that will become Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes), ... More

This chapter explores the connections between Le Lexique de l’auteur (the seminar of 1973–4 in which Barthes reflects on the genesis of the text that will become Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes), La Préparation du roman (his last Collège de France lecture course of 1978–80), and critical essays he wrote in the mid- and late 1970s on scription, the ductus, and writing as gesture (from an anthropological point of view, as in the posthumously published Variations sur l’écriture, and within the paintings of Bernard Réquichot and Cy Twombly). The main focus will be on Barthes’s reflection, across the two seminars, on the idea of the virtual work: his exploration of the modalities of literary genesis in the grammatical mood of the ‘as if’, and his development of ways of modelling literary genesis through the concept of the œuvre-maquette. This bringing together of modelling, genesis, and writing as process, placed in relation to the desire to write as a significant dimension of actual writing, is one of the strikingly original aspects of Barthes’s 1970s thought. It is one that the posthumous publication of the seminars and lectures allows us to understand.Less

Keats’s Ways: The Dark Passages of Mediation and Giving Up Hyperion

Yohei Igarashi

in The Connected Condition: Romanticism and the Dream of Communication

The fourth chapter proposes a new way to read Keats’s most famous letters and his two fragmentary attempts at epic, Hyperion (1819–1820). There is a major, although overlooked, dissonance throughout ... More

The fourth chapter proposes a new way to read Keats’s most famous letters and his two fragmentary attempts at epic, Hyperion (1819–1820). There is a major, although overlooked, dissonance throughout Keats’s letters and poetry. On the one hand, they dramatize his wish for rapid, intuitive communication between individuals at a distance, a fantasy fueled by the period’s advancements in telegraphy. On the other, Keats’s writing reveals a commitment to laborious, meandering reading—a mode of encouraged by the densely figurative poetic language of the literary tradition that he idolizes, and which has its origins in the allegorical language of scripture and the rhetorical concept of ductus. Ranging over Keats’s letters as well as different moments from his verse, this chapter culminates in a reading of Hyperion. The discordance between Keats’s two tendencies or “ways”—rapid transmission and slow reading—precipitates the impasses that prevent him from continuing Hyperion.Less

“Vanysshed Was This Daunce”: Reenactment, Experience, Virtuality

Seeta Chaganti

in Strange Footing: Poetic Form and Dance in the Late Middle Ages

This chapter defines the terms reenactment, experience, and virtuality. It elucidates Strange Footing's reenactment method, which juxtaposes medieval and contemporary dance.

Bonaventure and a Strumpet: A Theory of Medieval Poetic Form

Seeta Chaganti

in Strange Footing: Poetic Form and Dance in the Late Middle Ages

Building upon Chapter 1’s reenactment method, this chapter proposes a theory of poetic form, reenacting it as an experience. Using St. Bonaventure’s Breviloquium, a primer in the formalist reading of ... More

Building upon Chapter 1’s reenactment method, this chapter proposes a theory of poetic form, reenacting it as an experience. Using St. Bonaventure’s Breviloquium, a primer in the formalist reading of Scripture, this chapter argues that encounters with textual form involve the apprehension of virtual force both within and across media. Having established this foundation, the chapter goes on to locate the experience of medieval poetic form in the virtualities hovering at the intersection of dance and verse.Less

“A Certain Slant of Light”: Reenacting Danse macabre as Dance

Seeta Chaganti

in Strange Footing: Poetic Form and Dance in the Late Middle Ages

This chapter reenacts danse macabre as a multimedia installation tradition by juxtaposing it with Lucinda Childs’s 1979 choreographic work Dance. The reenactment process reveals danse macabre to ... More

This chapter reenacts danse macabre as a multimedia installation tradition by juxtaposing it with Lucinda Childs’s 1979 choreographic work Dance. The reenactment process reveals danse macabre to inflict upon its medieval audiences a disorienting multiplicity of temporal rates and passages simultaneously. It is this possibility that renders the approach of death terrifying and explains what has made danse macabre so compelling to its audiences.Less

“Dredful Fotyng”: Reenacting Danse macabre’s Poetic Form

Seeta Chaganti

in Strange Footing: Poetic Form and Dance in the Late Middle Ages

This chapter argues that the experience of danse macabre poetry’s form is a temporal and spatial disorientation. The danse macabre spectacle conditions the reader/viewer to bring these perceptual ... More

This chapter argues that the experience of danse macabre poetry’s form is a temporal and spatial disorientation. The danse macabre spectacle conditions the reader/viewer to bring these perceptual practices to the encounter with the poetic tradition. The audience’s habituation to dance’s virtual supplement allows them to perceive asymmetry, orthogononality, and untimeliness, even within the poet’s insistently regular huitain stanza.Less

Dance on the Surface, Dance in the Depths: Reenacting Form in the Middle English Carol

Seeta Chaganti

in Strange Footing: Poetic Form and Dance in the Late Middle Ages

The round dance’s virtual circles configure the medieval reader’s experience of English carol form. In this ductile experience of poetic form, the reader is aware of forces, irregular and uncanny, ... More

The round dance’s virtual circles configure the medieval reader’s experience of English carol form. In this ductile experience of poetic form, the reader is aware of forces, irregular and uncanny, supplemental to the evident regularity of the lyric’s stanzaic pattern. The chapter makes this case using the carols “A child is boren” and “Maiden in the mor lay.”Less

The Shares

BERNARD RUDDEN

in The New River: A Legal History

At the founder's death, the company's fixed assets consisted of the watercourse together with the servitude aquae ductus, the pond at the New River Head of which Hugh Myddelton was tenant for years, ... More

At the founder's death, the company's fixed assets consisted of the watercourse together with the servitude aquae ductus, the pond at the New River Head of which Hugh Myddelton was tenant for years, freehold land in Amwell at the source of the water held on similar trusts, and the pipes laid in London's streets. By the mid-seventeenth century, the King's moiety had been divided into thirty-six shares. The whole enterprise was split into seventy-two shares and, although some were soon subdivided, there was to be no increase in their number until 1866. At first, the King's shares seem to have been of little concern to the company as such, and the Treasurer's accounts for 1670–84 present only the Adventurers' moiety as divided. Further, it was Sir Hugh and his heirs who were liable to pay the royal fee-farm, although later the company discharged this obligation.Less

Psychopharmacology

Kazuya Iwata

in Oxford Assess and Progress: Psychiatry

Psychotropic drugs are the main form of physical treatment in psychiatry and they exert their action by mainly acting on dopamine, noradrenaline, serotonin, and muscarinic receptors. ... More

Psychotropic drugs are the main form of physical treatment in psychiatry and they exert their action by mainly acting on dopamine, noradrenaline, serotonin, and muscarinic receptors. Antipsychotics, which are the mainline treatment for psychotic ill–nesses, usually act by blocking dopamine receptors in the dopamine pathways of the brain, usually the mesolimbic system. The D2 receptors are the usual target of the antipsychotics, although clozapine, which is considered the gold standard antipsychotic, has a strong affinity for the D4 receptors. The underlying principle of antipsychotic treatment builds on the dopamine theory of schizophrenia, whereby an excess of dopa–mine is linked to the development of psychotic symptoms. Overactive dopamine receptors are thought to be involved in this, and thus block–age of the dopamine receptors through antipsychotics can provide relief from psychotic symptoms. Antipsychotics are divided into typical and atypical, and the defining feature of typicals is their propensity to cause EPSEs. This is thought to be due to the fact that typical antipsychotics are not specific for dopa–mine receptors in the mesolimbic pathways, but can also block those in mesocortical, tuberoinfundibular, and nigrostriatal pathways. Atypical antipsychotics can impact on a variety of receptor types, such as serotonin, and thus they are usually subclassified according to their pharmacological properties. Their heterogeneous pharmacodynamics in part explains their variable side-effect profile. One common side-effect of atypical antipsychotics is their tendency to trigger metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of cardiovascular risk factors including dyslipidaemia, hypertension, central obesity, and impaired glucose tolerance. They also cause endocrine-related side-effects, such as hyperprolactinaemia. An important adverse effect seen with any antipsychotic is neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS), which is an idiosyncratic reaction to antipsy–chotics taken even at therapeutic doses. Patients can present with hyper–thermia, rigidity, autonomic disturbances, and altered mental state over 24–48 hours. It can be potentially life threatening, and thus, if suspected, urgent referral to a general hospital is required. Antidepressants also vary greatly with regards to their pharmacologi–cal properties, but the majority increase the concentration of neuro–transmitters in the synaptic cleft to alleviate depressive symptoms. Less