A Re-Hearing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight :: Essays Papers

A Re-Hearing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight As J.A. Burrow has recently reminded us, Middle English literature "requires the silent reader to resist, if he can, the tyranny of the eye and to hear. Certain of the writings ... make a further requirement. They treat the reader, not just as a hearer, but as an audience or group of hearers" (Medieval Writers 1). Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is such a poem, a literate composition designed for oral performance, bearing the imprint of a poet skilled at once in manipulating a text and using it to affect his audience in ways outside the scope of the oral poet. It is with this dynamic between text and audience in mind that I approach the process of "re-hearing" Sir Gawain. In doing so I hope to achieve some clarification of what Tolkien referred to as one of the "structural failures" of the poem the failure of Mary, Gawain's protectress, to receive any further acknowledgement after Gawain twice asks her help, during his journey and in the final temptation scene. Studies of structural repetition (Howard 1964, 430-33; Burrow 1966, 87-97) and numerological patterning (Hieatt 1968, 129-31; Eckhardt 1980, 141-55) demonstrate the Gawain-poet's ability to exploit the spatial and temporal control afforded by the technology of writing (Ong 1971, 23-27). As Kent Hieatt has shown, he consciously uses numerological patterns. Line 2,525, the last long line of the poem, echoes the opening line and reinforces the emphasis given to five and twenty-five in the description of the pentangle. In a similar manner, notes Hieatt, in the "companion poem Pearl, the line that echoes the first line of the poem is 1,212, and 12 is probably the significant numerical structure in the poem" (Eckhart, 1980, 65-78). While such numerological structuring would of course go unnoticed by an audience during performance, its existence gives us a picture of a poet able to apply a fairly sophisticated process of organization to the physical text. In this paper I will examine an other method of textual structuring, one which deals primarily with color patterns rather than numerical sequences, though predictably the two appear to be interrelated. The poem deals almost exclusively and abundantly in reds and greens. Red, the color of Gawain's symbol of perfection, the red-gold pentangle on a red field, appears A Re-Hearing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight :: Essays Papers A Re-Hearing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight As J.A. Burrow has recently reminded us, Middle English literature "requires the silent reader to resist, if he can, the tyranny of the eye and to hear. Certain of the writings ... make a further requirement. They treat the reader, not just as a hearer, but as an audience or group of hearers" (Medieval Writers 1). Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is such a poem, a literate composition designed for oral performance, bearing the imprint of a poet skilled at once in manipulating a text and using it to affect his audience in ways outside the scope of the oral poet. It is with this dynamic between text and audience in mind that I approach the process of "re-hearing" Sir Gawain. In doing so I hope to achieve some clarification of what Tolkien referred to as one of the "structural failures" of the poem the failure of Mary, Gawain's protectress, to receive any further acknowledgement after Gawain twice asks her help, during his journey and in the final temptation scene. Studies of structural repetition (Howard 1964, 430-33; Burrow 1966, 87-97) and numerological patterning (Hieatt 1968, 129-31; Eckhardt 1980, 141-55) demonstrate the Gawain-poet's ability to exploit the spatial and temporal control afforded by the technology of writing (Ong 1971, 23-27). As Kent Hieatt has shown, he consciously uses numerological patterns. Line 2,525, the last long line of the poem, echoes the opening line and reinforces the emphasis given to five and twenty-five in the description of the pentangle. In a similar manner, notes Hieatt, in the "companion poem Pearl, the line that echoes the first line of the poem is 1,212, and 12 is probably the significant numerical structure in the poem" (Eckhart, 1980, 65-78). While such numerological structuring would of course go unnoticed by an audience during performance, its existence gives us a picture of a poet able to apply a fairly sophisticated process of organization to the physical text. In this paper I will examine an other method of textual structuring, one which deals primarily with color patterns rather than numerical sequences, though predictably the two appear to be interrelated. The poem deals almost exclusively and abundantly in reds and greens. Red, the color of Gawain's symbol of perfection, the red-gold pentangle on a red field, appears

How does “Taxi Driver” Essay

â€Å"Taxi driver† subvert the classical Hollywood genre due to its ending. In a classical Hollywood genre, the story is supposed to end with a resolution, but in this film we do not learn the true ending, because the one we do see is quite obscure and unexpected; Betsy in the back of Travis’ cab. There are many signs that this ending may be a figment of Travis’ imagination such as the way we are never shown Betsy actually sitting in the back of the cab, we only see her through Travis’ rear view mirror. This could suggest that the ending is more what Travis wanted to happen, not what actually happened. The film goes against classical Hollywood genre by its use of hybrid genre. Throughout the film we get scenes that make reference to film noir and thriller genres, but towards the end it mainly goes towards western, as Travis prepares for battle to the confrontation scene. This goes against the classical Hollywood genre as films usually only have one or two genres at the most, but this film even shows some comedic qualities at times. â€Å"Taxi driver† subverts the use of classical Hollywood narrative by its use of a circular narrative. We begin and end with Travis in his taxi, driving around looking for fares. This suggests to the audience that what he had to do has been done, and he is getting back to normal, but is he as unstable as ever? Throughout the film Travis has referred to the population of New York as â€Å"the scum of the earth†, but now he is behaving just like them, does this make him â€Å"the scum of the earth† also? â€Å"Taxi driver† should go along with the classical Hollywood narrative through the romance plot between Betsy and Travis at the end of the film, but the scene is awkward, and it reminds the audience of the reasons he began his plot to kill Palantine, and Sport and his gang. It also never shows the two of them together, only them looking at each other through the rear view mirror. This suggest to the audience that they can never be together, even now. Th film goes against the classical Hollywood narrative through Travis’ re-assimilation. Travis, who essentially can be classed as a villain through his actions of killing numerous people and plotting to kill even more, is represented to the population of New York as a â€Å"hero taxi driver† and how he battled the â€Å"mafia†. This makes the audience wonder just how good Travis’ actions were. The film is based on the life of Arthur Bremer, a man who was a taxi driver and plotted to assassinate George Wallace, but the plan fell through and he was arrested. Bremer’s thoughts, desires and plans are echoed throughout the film, especially through the use of Travis’ diary and the narrative he uses to read it to the audience. The film subvert classical Hollywood narrative through this, as quite often a disclaimer tells the audience that no events are related to any person living or dead, but this can clearly be related in a number of places to Bremer’s plans and actions.

Life Lessons Essay

ife (â€Å"Hard Work Beats Talent, When Talent Doesn’t Work Hard†) – (Kevin Durant) Over this past summer, I experienced a lot of events that I think will change my life for the better. It seemed like everything started falling in place when I got an unexpected call from a college coach from a small school called Samford University. I was shocked that I received the call because for one, I’d never even heard of the school he was calling from. Also, I never actually played a full game of football in high school.The reason he’d called me is because he said he was at one of the previous scouting camps I attended a few weeks prior, and he liked my athleticism and how I always worked hard and never gave up, even when he saw I was having a hard time. He wanted me to attend one of the school sponsored scouting camps that he was putting together, and he offered to get me in for free so I gladly accepted. When I arrived at the camp, I was very nervous becaus e there were a lot more major college coaches there than I expected, and the combine included college students also, so I wasn’t just competing against any regular competitors.There were 6 different events that we were doing that day, and I had never done any of them at any previous camps so I had no faith in myself from the start. At the first event, the 40 Yard Dash, I had to race a college linebacker from another school so I had to prove to my coaches that I could take on any challenge they threw at me from the beginning. But everything didn’t go quite as I expected. On my first try I false started 2 seconds early, and everyone was laughing at me so I started to down myself. On the 2nd attempt, I false started again!It wasn’t as early as the previous one, but I was wasting all of my chances at getting an official time because I was too nervous to even start on time. On the 3rd and final attempt, I managed to get off on a good start and run a 4. 92, but the sc outs weren’t very impressed by that because they knew and I knew that I could do better than what I was showing them. At the next event, the Running back drills, I was already nervous because of how bad I had done at the previous event, and it showed in my actions.When I went up to catch passes from one of the quarterbacks that was attending the camp with me, normal passes that I could catch in my sleep became difficult for me to complete. I was so worried about messing up again that I wasn’t performing to my full potential. The coach that recruited me to attend the camp took notice at my performance and pulled me aside and talked to me. He told me â€Å"he knows for a fact that I could do better, and he wants to see the athlete that he saw at the previous camp, not the nervous one that he had seen today.Just believe in myself and perform to the best of my abilities for the duration of the camp and everything would be fine†. Then he gave me a quote to think of w hen I got down, â€Å"Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn’t work hard†. Now I don’t know what it was about that speech, but when I went back to the drill, everything seemed to fall into place. I was catching every single pass the quarterback threw me, even the ones that were badly placed. When I re-did my 40 Yard Dash, my time dropped from a 4. 2 to a 4. 8. From that point on, I exceed all my expectations at every other event that was available to me at the camp. After that day, I learned that I can’t down myself every time I mess up at something, I have to just keep doing my best and to forget the rest. And whenever I get to the point where I want to just give up, I always remember that quote that the coach told me, â€Å"Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn’t work hard. Word Count: 695

Dell Background

The background and history of Dell began in 1984 with Michael Dell as the founder which has been known as the most innovative entrepreneur for marketing computers. Dell began his adventure with computers in 1983 by selling PC components out of his college dorm room at the University of Texas. He bought RAM chips and disk drives for IBM PCs at cost from dealers and resold them in newspaper and magazine ads for 10-15 percent below regular cost. One year later he was already running sales of $ 80,000 and dropped out of school, creating a company called PCs LTD, selling both components and PCs. Dell had a strategic approach to selling which was buy the dealers surplus at cost and create his own by adding graphic cards and more memory. He was making clones of the PCs eliminating the retail markup, cutting the price about 40 percent and attracting the price conscious customers. This produced rapid growth and by the end 1986 sales had reached $ 33 million. In 1987 the company was renamed to Dell computers and a year later added a sales force that quickly gained government agencies, as well as becoming a public company. This venture raised 34. 2 million from common stock in the first offering to the public. Dell during the years of 1990-93 began to distribute his computer through superstores, but quickly realized that margins grew thin with this distribution channel and quickly withdrew from selling to retailers by 1994. Transitioning to focus on the direct sale of the computer and customize it during the ordering process for the customer. This was possible because each computer was individually assembled setting it apart from the others. During this time the laptop or notebooks started to also emerge in the early 90’s, however in 1993 Dell ran into some financial problems from a risky foreign currency hedging strategy and problems with laptops and PC models. These difficulties turned off buyers and caused Dell to suspend the sales of the laptops, then write off $ 40 million of its laptop PC models. In order to get sales back on track a redesign of the computer models were done and the company started to go strong into an internet site by 1997. Using the internet to sell there computers opened up a new market for Dell. They were building powerful computers with multiple features custom made to each individual. This model is the build to order business model and resulted in great sales.

International intercultural management Assignment

International intercultural management - Assignment Example 2. Hofstede’s Model in Relation to Cultural Aspects Every nation has its own set of standards that define the culture in terms of thinking, being and acting, and these differences have a very strong impact on the business communication and workplace values in any organization. Something that may be considered perfectly normal and natural in an organization of one country can be frowned upon and seen as offensive in another. Values will always differ across cultures. Therefore, we have to understand these varying differences in order to describe and forecast employee behaviour from various countries. Some cultures value decisions that are made in a group, while others think that the leader should take control of the decision-making. For almost all business organizations, it is crucial to be aware of how the cultures will affect the workplace values because it will provide them with a framework of assessing the different dimensions. One of the most determined studies of the cult ural differences and how they influence organizational issues was commenced by Geert Hofstede, a Dutch scholar which involved data on more than 116,000 employees of IBM representing forty countries. Many of these dimensions will be based on Geert Hofstede’s framework for assessing cultures (Brown, 2009). It is important to understand where the values across cultures stem from, or what the source is. Previous research has identified two clear forces that have an impact on the formation of values that managers who are engaged in international business possess (Ronen, 1986; Webber, 1969). These two forces can be categorized into national culture as well as business environment. Both the culture of the nation and the environment the business operates in will have a significant influence on the values that an organization will possess. Triandis et al. (1986) brings forth the proposal that a way to have an understanding of the culture is to identify the dimensions of the variations in the culture of the organization such as Hofstede (1980). In a study including more by Geert Hofstede, it was found out there were four basic dimensions along with work-related values that differed across cultures: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity/femininity, and individualism/collectivism. Later on, work by Bond presented with a fifth dimension i.e. the long-term/short-term orientation. Power Distance is related to the extent to which a culture’s members accept an imbalanced distribution of power. Hofstede’s Power distance Index measures the degree to which the less dominant members of establishments and institutions accept the unequal distribution. This will almost always represent discrimination, but defined from below instead of above. It proposes that a society’s level of variation is recognised by the followers as much as by the leaders. If we look at France, we see that the power distance index is comparatively higher than the rest of the countries; around 68. This means that in the management as well as the general lifestyle of France there is a big gap between the social classes, and there are clear definitions of status involved.

Synthesis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Synthesis - Essay Example However, she dislikes the criticisms from the judges. On the other hand, Amy Tan dislikes the use of ‘broken’ and says that it shows negativity. Although she uses this word to describe her mother’s language, she dislikes it and says she is looking for a better one to use. To her, ‘broken’ cannot be used in a good way unlike for Nancy, who sees it as good sometimes. There is a common ground on diversity as both writers highly value it and are happy that it is seen. The engaging of Indian woman in ANTM and having black plus size models in the contests is a good thing to Nancy. Amy wants more Asian Americans and Chinese people to engage in writing and not just concentrate in medicine and engineering fields. She argues that joining the writing field with her ‘broken’ English cuts all odds. Despite her teacher saying that writing is not something she could do, she went ahead and proved him wrong. The way her mother was treated in restaurants shows that people do not take their time to understand other people with different cultures. Consequently, this emphasizes the need to embrace cultural diversity (Franklin). Diversity is a show of variety in people’s culture, behavior and style. According to Nancy Franklin, America’s Next Top Model has more diversity among contestants’ than other reality shows. People from different cultures participate in the contest: for instance, an Indian woman in one of the cycles really set a stepping stone to others since not many Indians are found in this field. Indian women show them that being engineers or doctors is not the only career they can take. It also has plus size models and several blacks who made it to the semi-finals. Banks embraces diversity in all sectors which is so evident. This plays a great role in helping women love their bodies, thus boosting self-esteem. Banks starts ANTM to look for a girl who has diversity, can do many different things, pass different challenges and can fit in different

LEUKEMIA Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

LEUKEMIA - Research Paper Example Leukemia, being a blood disorder, affects all systems of the body especially the respiratory, renal and digestive system. As a result of the less white blood cell count, the immune system deteriorates leaving the lungs, the kidney and the digestive tract less resistant to infectious diseases. On the other hand, the decrease of functional red blood cell results to decrease oxygen transport which leads to breathing problems, less effective body waste delivery and filtering in the kidneys and a protracted decrease in appetite due to bleeding in gums. Inflammation, damage and cancerous tumors in the lungs and kidneys have also been attributed to accumulation of leukemic cells. Leukemia is a disorder not yet well understood but the prevailing thought is that the production of abnormal cells in the bone marrow is due to mutations in DNA. Researchers believes that the risk for Leukemia is higher when the patient have one or a combination of the following: Leukemia detection can be definitive only through a routine blood test as there have been cases where chronic leukemia has been found with no prior physical indications. Nonetheless, individuals with leukemia usually suffer from the following: Patient presentation - Always feeling weak or tired, easy bruising and bleeding (dark skin patches or tiny red spots on skin), swollen lymph nodes especially in the neck, fever and night sweats and bone or joint pains. Cytogenetics- involves checking abnormalities in cell chromosomes to determine abnormality. For example, Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) is due to the Philadelphia chromosome, an abnormality in the cell’s chromosomes. Chemotherapy – is a drugs-based approach normally administered by vein or by mouth. Those with leukemia in their cerebrospinal fluid receive intrathecal chemotherapy which involves administering drugs in their spinal canal.