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The final decades of the eighteenth century saw the significant expansion of botanical propagation and collections across the globe, both as an aesthetic corollary and to provide the underpinning resources for imperialism. The focus of this article is the development of the network between botanists in India and England in the 1790s through the correspondence between William Roxburgh (1751–1815), superintendent of the Botanical Garden in Calcutta from 1793, and Sir James Edward Smith (1759–1820), who as Sarah Law notes, was 'a focus of correspondence with every serious botanist in the world' (Law, 2007, 184). Such networks were sustained by letters describing the plants and the treatment they needed, the habitat from which they had been taken, and details of how they had been collected and packed. Epistolary writing between plant hunters and British collectors can be understood, I suggest, as a form of travel writing. This is a form in which correspondence builds connections and relationships between fellow scientists and enthusiasts and the fragmentary focus on place, and the mobility of humans is replaced by close attention to the aesthetic and biological details of plants and the best ways of securing their successful transport across the globe. Using an ecocritical frame, this article explores the position of plants and biological specimens themselves as travellers and considers the ways in which their care and preservation have been articulated through sociable correspondence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Araucaria is the property of Araucaria-Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofia, Politica y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Introduction. Business letters addressed by the Kalmyk Khan (before 1690, Taisha) Ayuka (1642–1724), written in todo bichig (“clear letter”), are polythematic multifunctional texts that implement, among other things, informative and influencing functions. Since the influencing function is realized primarily in motives of varying degrees of categoricality (request, order, etc.) and tactics accompanying imperative subgenres, the purpose of this work is to identify imperative subgenres and other tactics of speech influence on the addressee in business letters to todo bichig, to analyze the ways and means of expressing the identified influencing techniques, as well as their comparison with simultaneous translations of letters into Russian. Materials and methods. The source of the material was the letters of Taisha (Khan) Ayuka, sent to representatives of the central and regional Russian authorities from 1665 to 1714, and their simultaneous translations into Russian, stored in the collections of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts and the National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia. For this work, only those letters from the specified period have been selected that have preserved a synchronized translation into Russian. Results. The tactics of explaining the reasons for the request, providing a preliminary description of the situation, and reminding of mutual obligations are typical of Ayuka’s business letters. These tactics are preserved in synchronized Russian translations, although the actual request or other type of motivation may be conveyed not by imperative constructions, but by synonymous ones characteristic of the design of indirect speech. The addressee factor is important, as well as the process of establishing the norms of Russian office work. The choice of language means in synchronized translation could also depend on an oral conversation with the envoy of Khan Ayuka, since in some cases synchronized translations of letters contain additions in the legal context of the request, representing additional means of influencing the addressee.

Introduction. The archived Oirat-language (in Clear Script) letters by Khan Ayuka are also available in their synchronic Russian translations. The seventeenth-eighteenth communication practices could involve oral messages to be transmitted to the addressee by the envoy, and such message would be openly indicated in the letter. To date, this aspect of correspondence has received no special attention, despite the specified structural and substantive element of official Kalmyk narratives — and related translations — is important enough as a marker of records management norms inherent to that era. Goals. The article seeks to identify peculiarities of certain linguistic patterns employed to express there are (were) additional data to be delivered orally — both in a Kalmyk text and its translation. The work shall also consider the practice of including such oral messages into synchronic Russian translations. Materials. The study examines a total of 236 letters (and their translations) by Khan Ayuka from the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts and Kalmykia’s National Archive dated between 1665 and 1724. The identified scope of official texts contains 41 mentions of oral messages. Results. In Clear Script texts and their synchronic Russian translations, mentions of additionally available messages to be delivered orally are articulated with standard formulas that however do not exclude some lexical and grammatical variability. Oral messages of Khan Ayuka would be regularly included into their Russian translations after 1716, which attests to a gradual change in standard procedures for Clear Script letters, further improvement of records management processes in general — and translation processes in particular. The recorded oral parts may repeat the data given in the letter, explain reasons behind the request contained therein, or essentially supplement the written message. The markers of such once oral fragments are the colloquial particle de, passive constructions, and set formulas that precede any written record of the messenger’s oral speech. Such written narratives may contain graphic indications of thematic sections, the latter’s numerical designations, and confirming signatures of the messenger proper.

The letters of Boris Zingerman (1928–2000) to the older generation of theatre critics, Grigory Boyadzhiev (1909–1974) and Boris Alpers (1894–1974), were written at different times and on different occasions. What unites the two letters is that they were addressed to Zingerman’s teachers at the State Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS), where he studied at the theatre studies department (1945–1950) and then did a postgraduate course (1950–1954). However, he had not only happy memories of those times. The end of the ‘luxurious hothouse’, as Zingerman saw GITIS, came after the editorial article in the Pravda newspaper of January 28, 1949 entitled “On One Anti-patriotic Group of Theatre Critics”. In February 1949, a two-day meeting of the GITIS Academic Council was held, where Vs.N. Vsevolodsky-Gerngross, B.V. Alpers, N.M. Tarabukin, S.S. Mokulsky, G.N. Boyadzhiev, and S.S. Danilov were exposed as ‘enemies of the Soviet culture’. Students and postgraduates were then forced to attend the civil execution of the teachers. Some were frightened by it, others used it to advance in their careers. Yet others formed the generation of the sixties: B.I. Zingerman, V.M. Gaevsky, I.N. Solovieva, N.A. Krymova, Yu.S. Rybakov, M.I. Turovskaya, N.M. Zorkaya, T.I. Bachelis, and K.L. Rudnitsky. The memory of 1949 remained with them forever, having become a ‘family trauma’. The plots of professional theatre studies are combined with existential plots, personal biographies merge in a common historical destiny. The latter testifies to the survival of thought and talent, capable of straightening out with the slightest weakening of external oppression.

The aim of this study is to publish a letter from F.I. Tyutchev to his second wife E.F. Tyutcheva dated to September 24 (October 9), 1853. The article was written as a result of work with the translation of an autograph of the letter stored in the archive of the National Library of Russia. The letter contains the poem “Neman”. Correspondence with E.F. Tyutcheva is of great interest to the researcher, since the spouses touch upon not only family, personal, or secular topics, but also discuss historical events and social issues. F.I. Tyutchev manifests himself as a thinker turning to an equal interlocutor. Philosophical poetry of F.I. Tyutchev, dedicated to the historical events of 1812, correlates with the general aesthetic orientation of his work. Of particular importance is the fact that some of his poems with reflections on difficult phenomena of history, human being, and sensual world are either dedicated or addressed in letters to E.F. Pfeffel-Dörnberg (Tyutcheva). Poetics of lyrical fragments of F.I. Tyutchev is considered within the framework of the approach proposed by Yu.N. Tynyanov, relying on biographical materials indicated in the monographs of K.V. Pigarev and V.V. Kozhinova. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that the autograph of the letter from September 24 (October 9), 1853 was deciphered and translated from French for the first time. The study revealed that the text of the letter containing the famous poem by F.I. Tyutchev “Neman” is significantly different from that published earlier, in 1914.

The article reviews the manuscript and printed sources related to the Koloch Icon of the Mother of God and the Kolotsk Dormition Monastery. A considerable part of the study relies on manuscripts from the Russian State Library. The article pays particular attention to literary works, which reflect the history of the discovery of the wonderworking icon and the stages of the monastery’s development from the 15th century to the present. The editions of the Tale of Luke of Koloch are considered on the example of the copies from the Manuscript Department of the Russian State Library. The research shows the necessity of studying the sources from several points of view, such as literary analysis of the text and axiological research. Such an approach shows the strengthening of Christian motifs in the copies of the 18th century. The article reveals a new copy of the beginning of the 20th century with a brief description of the Kolotsk monastery and introduces it into scientific circulation. The considered letters and memoirs describe the participation of the Kolotsk monastery in the events significant for Russia, including the Patriotic War of 1812.

Background. The current publication presents the text of three previously unknown letters from L. S. Vygotsky to E.I. Heifetz, which were written by him in 1918, 1920 and 1921. A psychological analysis of the letters was carried out in the context of the author’s life at the time of their writing. Objectives. The goal is to disclose previously unknown aspects regarding the personal and professional development of L.S. Vygotsky. Methods. Analysis of archival documents in comparison with biographical materials from the period of Vygotsky’s life under study. Results. The letters represent a unique source for understanding the experiences and moral and ethical views of the young Vygotsky: in them he provides reflections on his “Life’s Work”, the personal choices and social “sacrifices” required for its realisation and talks about the mystery of personal feelings. The analysis shows how these feelings and Vygotsky’s life views changed over time. Conclusions. The analysed letters, along with characteristics of relationships within the family and in the microsocial environment, reveal the uniqueness of Vygotsky’s self-perception and personal self-determination in his youth.

This article explores the depiction of letters, epigraphs, and other texts in Iamblichus' fragmentary Babyloniaka , primarily preserved by the ninth-century writer Photius in his Bibliotheca , and argues that they act as evidence for the novel's own cultural and literary positioning. These texts, while superficially unconventional in their form and mode of transmission, in practice reiterate traditional anxieties about written texts found throughout Greek literary history. As such, this paper argues that these embedded texts act as mirrors to the novel's own framing as a self-proclaimed Babylonian fiction constructed through imperial Greek linguistic and literary models. By considering the hitherto neglected depictions of letters and other texts within Photius' summary of the Babyloniaka , this approach sheds new light on the literary allusivity and cultural framing of the now-lost novel and its later reception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Everyday aesthetics offers a way to disclose the complexity of a seemingly routine activity like doing the dishes. In this article, I consider the aesthetic allure of one 15-year-old's letters home from camp preserved in a university's archives. By returning aesthetics to experience, philosophical hermeneutics restores the experience of understanding to its multi-sensuous materialization. When things speak to us and we in turn respond to them, we are both transformed. Betty Kaufman's letters vividly depict her experiences at the Laurel Falls Camp for Girls. How, I wondered, does aesthetics perform its mode of being? What are its topological contours? What might qualitative researchers co-responding with archival materials gain from this form of entanglement with understanding? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reads the decades-long correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy as an account, following Judith Butler. Specifically, it argues that an epistolary subject emerges through the shared act of durational witness enacted in letter writing. Reading the correspondence as a Butlerian account clarifies why subjects choose a relational form like letter writing for the self-representation of trauma. It observes how particular forms of life writing—letters and the eulogy, among them—provide occasions for the reciprocity on which the account depends, even as they unavoidably fail to make selves more knowable to an other than they can be to themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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One of Iqbal's correspondents was Ghulam Abbas Aram who was serving in Bombay at that time. He was born in 1903 in Yazd. His father, Ali-Reza, a tea seller, was a preacher of the Baha'i sect. It is clear from Ghulam Abbas Aram's Makatib-e-Iqbal that he was a scholar who had a special interest in poetry, literature, Sufism and philosophy. The available letters of Allama Iqbal to Ghulam Abbas Aram are in English, four in number and their duration is very limited. No information is available about how the introduction between Iqbal and Aram came about. Ghulam Abbas Aram neither wrote any article nor any other writing about Allama Iqbal's thoughts and correspondence with him. In this way, there is no other sign except these letters in his remaining documents. However, Ghulam Abbas Aram made sure that he kept them safe in his personal documents. Later, a distinguished Iranian translator and researcher, Dr. Hussain Ali Nozri, translated these English letters into Persian and they appeared in the first issue of the former magazine of this institute, "Tarikh Maasari Iran" in 1997. These letters are very helpful in understanding Iqbal's intellectual connection and preoccupation with Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Al-Adab / Al-ādāb is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With the publication of The Letters of Seamus Heaney in 2023, 15 years after Stepping Stones, two book-length epistolary accounts of Heaney’s life and work from his perspective are available to readers. This article probes the preoccupations and motivations of a most prolific and thoughtful letter-writer and argues that Heaney’s letters provide important additional material to his poetic oeuvre as well as an illumination of his writerly concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper pays attention to the phrase, which could be considered a literary topos, καταφιλῶ τὰ ἴχνη τῶν ποδῶν in Alciphron 3.31 and discusses whether it has only erotic and sexual implications, as it has been suggested. To answer this question, both literary parallels and documentary papyri from antiquity are investigated. They illuminate the phrase’s association with the expression of reverence and modesty and suggest that 3.31 could be considered the first stage of a process of “semantic transvaluation” which led to accept the act of kissing someone’s footprints as a component of late antique proskynesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deema Dalloul, a twenty-year-old Palestinian writer from Gaza, has been writing letters throughout the ongoing genocide. She has published several of these with the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) as part of the Letters from Gaza series featured on the institute's blog, Palestine Square. In this essay, IPS's Laura Albast shares how she came to know Dalloul and her writings. She offers five of Dalloul's letters that convey her unique and powerful writing voice, at once providing evocative and devastating imagery, accounts of daily struggles, existential reckonings, and reflections on better days. With her moving writings, Dalloul manages to capture hearts and minds, reminding readers of the limitless capacity of human thought, reflection, and emotion, even in the midst of unrelenting horror. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the existing scholarship on letters as material culture and relic culture in the nineteenth century and in Charlotte Brontë's Villette (1853). In the novel, Lucy collects and preserves letters from absent loved ones to maintain a sense of connection to others in a life that she seems destined to live alone. In this article, I argue that her letters serve as relics of her past relationships and dead love as she desperately clings to tangible objects that bind her to other people. While scholars have concentrated on letters in Villette as material symbols of the corporeal body and romantic love, I argue that Lucy's letters form a collection that acts as a substitute for personal relationships. To borrow a term from Deborah Lutz (2017), I assert that Lucy's collection of letters function as a 'personal museum' of relics of dead love, which she carefully collects to preserve past relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is devoted to one of the forms of interaction between believers of Kazakhstan and the authorities, namely, letters from citizens to the state authorities. These letters of complaint against the actions of local officials led to the emergence of a set of documents that were deposited in archival fund. They became the main documentary base of the research. The concept of cultural adaptation of ethnic groups was used as a methodology to characterise the mechanisms of adaptation of believers to the requirements of the anti-religious policy of the Soviet state. The systemic analysis of the documents showed the informational potential of believers' letters as a narrative base that allows reconstruction the history of relations between the Soviet state and religious organisations. The letters of believers' form ideas about religious discourse and the spiritual state of society. They reflect the religious feelings of Soviet people and characterise the level of religiosity of society. They express the reaction of ordinary citizens to the confessional policy of the state and the methods of its implementation. The informative content of letters, as sources for research into the methods of religious legislation, is often more comprehensive than the content of official documents and reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article embarks upon a pioneering examination of the hermeneutical methods and techniques developed by the esoteric group known as the "German Pietists." Of the semantic and semiotic mechanisms used to decipher scripture, one of the most common and methodological is the technique of "absent letters" (‏אותיות נעלמות‎), or lipograms. This method is dedicated to finding and interpreting the meaning behind letters omitted from a given text of the scripture. Although some scholarly voices question its value, pietistic hermeneutics display both coherence and cohesion. The absence of a letter from the text becomes an element rich with interpretive possibility. The lipogram was developed as an exclusive tool to decipher the meaning of the concept of absence. It is far from homogenous, however, and a panoramic selection of various themes reveals that the subtheme of absence remains a diversified focal point throughout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the phraseology of three epistolary formulae—namely, the formula valetudinis initialis (opening health wish formula), the formula of joy, and the καλῶς ποιήσεις formula, in Greco-Egyptian private letters written between the first century bce and third century ce. In particular, we observe that the letter writers make an opening health wish customarily when the letter recipients' position/status is higher or at least equal to the writers—but rarely when the recipients' position/status is lower than the writers. Furthermore, when the opening health wishes were made in expanded and reconfigured forms, they signal intensified courtesy to the recipients. The formula of joy also reinforced the favourable atmosphere when persuasion or request was intended. In this vein, the expanded and reconfigured formula valetudinis initialis used together with the formula of joy in 3 John 2–4 shows that the Elder does not intend to write his letter from the position of a higher authority. Furthermore, in requesting hospitality, he uses the καλῶς ποιήσεις formula, indicating his intention to persuade Gaius, whom he also includes in 'us' (3 John 12). Thus, the epistolary rhetoric of 3 John fits better with a correspondence between partners rather than an exhortation in an institutionalised hierarchy, unlike the case of the Ignatian letters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of ABHATH is the property of ABHATH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Babylon Center for Humanities Studies is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article analyzes an unpublished corpus of 131 letters written in Spanish by four Dutch merchants during the seventeenth-century (1669–1677). The aim of the investigation is to determine whether the variation found in these letters was internal, external, or both, and to study the factors that favored each source. To do so, I will look at vowel variation in this corpus. Since standard vowel variants were being selected in seventeenth-century Spanish, the research questions addressed in this work are the following: Did multilingual merchants acquire the emerging standard of the moment? Did multilingual merchants contribute to the selection of standard variants? Did multilingual merchants acquire the sociolinguistic variation of that period? How did multilingual merchants differ from L1 speakers and why? How did linguistic and social factors influence this variation? The results revealed a great amount of intra- and inter-speaker vowel variation, and this variability was a matter of both internal and external factors. Therefore, this study argues that, while multilingual merchants acquired some of the standard variants that were being selected in the emerging standard Spanish of the seventeenth century, they reported linguistic variation that can be explained considering the context of use and the socio-economic conditions underlying their acquisition of linguistic repertoires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our purpose is to reflect on the role of the ruler of the ruler in the organization and consolidation of the University, in the Portuguese kingdom, in the medieval autumn. We recover a set of political measures taken by the regent Infante D. Pedro (1392-1449) between the years 1441 to 1444 that aimed to protect the lives of men of knowledge and instituted privileges that ensured exclusive dedication to university activities. At the same time, the regent defined measures aimed at the general population so that they would recognize the importance of university men for society. We used as sources a set of eight Letters published in the Chartularium Universitatis Portugalensis that will be analyzed according to the principles formulated by Social History, especially from the concept of long duration of Braudel (1991). We also note, in terms of final considerations, that we believe it is fundamental that the actions of the Portuguese ruler were consciously inclined to defend the existence of the University and its actors.

The aim of this article is to identify the methodological and moral-ideological underpinnings of the project by Andrei Nikolaevich Alekseev (1934–2017), and to show how he conceptualized, developed and advocated for it, working outside the generally accepted epistemological and institutional framework of sociology. With this goal in mind, the author of this article cites Alekseev’s own reflections on his contribution to the discipline that were inspired by his colleagues’ critiques, while avoiding making any judgments of her own. The original social knowledge developed by Alekseev can be described as personal (in the words of M. Polanyi), but while containing elements of self-reflexivity and reflexivity, as well as actionism. The initial portion of the text gives a brief summary on the making of a “working sociologist”. Also Alekseev’s key ideas and methods are touched upon, those contained within two segments of the field that he established — within “dramatized sociology” and “sociological autoreflection”, also the specifics of these concepts and genres are described. The second part of the article includes excerpts from discussions between the star of this article and his scientific opponents. Typically the article would refer to reviews and letters addressed to Alekseev in which his colleagues would express their doubt or criticize “dramatized sociology” and “sociological autoreflection”. Shown are Alekseev’s self-reflective responses to his opponents — L.G. Grigoryev, V.A. Yadov, D.N. Shalin, D.M. Rogozin, particularly on the topic of methodology and research ethics. It also outlines Alekseev’s perspective when it comes to how his project fits into the established system of social-humanitarian knowledge, what are the methodical and substantive similarities and differences when comparing to existing directions in this field — auto-ethnography, biographics, public sociology, as well as the connection to literature and journalism.

The essay provides news and publishes the text of a short handwritten letter (unknown until today) by Marcel Proust addressed to a «chère Madame». The letter, purchased by Bononi and hung under glass on one of the walls of his library, forms a sort of diptych with a pencil portrait of the great French writer very similar to the famous one painted in 1892 by Jacques-Émile Blanche.

The article describes the predominant type of dysgraphia in primary-school students that live and study in a bicultural and bilingual environment of the Republic of Tuva, Russia. The research revealed the effect of social factors on the development of written expression as a manifestation of a higher mental function, i.e., speech. Domestic social psychology pays little scientific attention to speech formation in the conditions of natural bilingualism, which gives relevance and novelty to this neuropsychological research. Its objective was to identify the leading type of dysgraphia in primary-school children and subject it to quantitative and qualitative analyses. The author counted dysgraphic errors in a text written by primary-school students and used the neuropsychological approach to classify them. Acoustic-kinesthetic (phonemic) dysgraphia proved to be the most frequent type of dysgraphia. It was caused by Tuvan pronunciation and spelling peculiarities, which proved that the bilingual Tuvan-Russian environment affects written speech of primary-school students.

Battista Guarini’s letters had a great fortune in print between the Nineties of the Sixteenth and the first decade of the Seventeenth century. Then comes a period of oblivion, ending in the Thirties of the Eighteenth century, when the letters were included into the draft edition of all Guarini’s Works, made by the printer Giovanni Alberto Tumermani. Although the three volumes of letters (edited by Apostolo Zeno in cooperation with Lodovico Antonio Muratori) were never published, the contribution of the studies made in preparation for printing is still relevant today. Specifically, Zeno found and transcribed letters, whose originals are lost; moreover, he copied twice the annotations that Giovan Niccolò Panizzari, a Guarini’s friend, had written at the first edition of the printed letters (Venezia, Ciotti, 1593). These annotations provide important information about the transition from letter-document to letter-work and about the author will. In this article I want to reconstruct the authorial intervention in Ciotti’s first edition and provide the Panizzari’s annotations scholar edition.

Sidonius is often the only source of information on his addressees. Following Dolveck's stemma codicum of Sidonius' Letters , the present contribution offers a timely reassessment of the manuscript tradition attesting the names of his addressees by using manuscript studies and onomastics as a tool for prosopography. The paper first examines the evolution of onomastics in the Late Antique West and Sidonius' own name. These introductory remarks are closed by some considerations on what is commonly believed to be Sidonius' epitaph and whether it bears the author's name or that of his son Apollinaris. The contribution then analyses some of the most noteworthy case studies of diverging readings of names of addressees in his collection, questioning the prosopographical tradition. The survey shows that the popularity enjoyed by some names—rather than attested variants—in Sidonius' prosopography is a remnant of prior editions and of their influence over the collective knowledge of the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The epistolary relationship between Julio Cortázar (1914-1984) and Manuel Antín (1926) during the 1960s is an interesting case through which to study the relationship between literature and cinema – or vice versa – and, more specifically, the dialogue between two poetics that try, in their respective practices, to be at the forefront of the artistic process. In this process where enthusiasm and distancing progressively follow one another, this article argues that these artists’ poetics never fully agreed on any one point. Cortázar often insists on the need to innovate by building bridges with readers/viewers. This consisted of a cross between the imaginative freedom of surrealism, after overcoming its initial neo-romantic stage, and the ethical commitment that existentialism demanded, which grounds his novel Rayuela, written during those same years. The convergences they found through their interoceanic mail for the adaptations of the short stories “Cartas a mamá” and “Circe”, were diminished when Antín sent him his project and script to film Continuidad de los parques (1965), based on two other stories, which to the writer was a failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article publishes a recently discovered letter apparently written by the 19th-century British intelligence officer Arthur Conolly. Conolly is best known as the author of the term 'The Great Game' in connection with Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia during the mid-19th century. The letter was written in April 1841 while Conolly stopped on the bank of the Amu Darya River, the northern boundary of Afghanistan en route to Bukhara. He was travelling partly in an attempt to rescue a fellow British officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Stoddart, who was detained there. The mission failed and both men were executed in Bukhara the following year. The letter is addressed to the Austrian general August Giacomo Jochmus, who was the commander of the combined forces of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and Austria during the Syrian War of 1839–1841. The letter was discovered by the authors in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate evidence of diachronic variation in patterns of Discernment Politeness in letters written in the ancient Egyptian Old Kingdom (c. 2300–2200 bce) and Late Ramesside period (c. 1099–1069 bce). We present examples of requests, information acts and honorifics used in these letters, predominantly those letters sent by subordinates to their superiors, to explore how this relationship dynamic is linguistically indexed. Our evidence shows that throughout the Old and New Kingdoms, communicative acts were regulated by behavioural norms dependent on power structures rather than individual volition, with Power being the most dominant social variable. Finally, we argue that Discernment is a key approach for exploring politeness in texts from ancient Egypt, supporting current research on the topic, and that the approach used here for the ancient Egyptian material has wider applicability for diachronic linguistic analyses of remote civilisations which are highly hierarchical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an examination of a corpus comprising 244 letters authored by Chinese women residing in Wangxia, a rural district within Guangdong province, to their emigrant family members settled in Arizona, the United States from the 1910s to 1920s, this article posits that the phenomenon of being left-behind constituted a pivotal catalyst for the social and economic empowerment of women within rural contexts, fostering heightened self-awareness and autonomy. These accounts of their personal experiences, emotions, and reflections on gender relations document the awakening initiative and self-empowerment of ordinary women in the first half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, the absence of male authority in the family caused by the exclusive emigration of males out of villages created space and conditions for women’s independence and autonomy; on the other hand, transnational epistolary communications with emigrants empowered these women to control remittances and enabled them to increase their families’ fortunes, which further stimulated their desire for economic independence and education. These women’s letters offer rich historical testimony to the reality that an awareness of gender equality and female empowerment were the result of the Chinese women’s own initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay focuses on the Old English translation of the Latin Epistola Alexandri Ad Aristotelem (The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle) as it appears in the Nowell Codex. It explores the text's capacities as a prescriptive guide for the work's eleventh-century consumers. A blend of hagiographic and heroic literature devoid of a stated audience, the Nowell Codex defies classification according to content or target audience. By focusing on Alexander's Letter, I test whether the fictional epistle prescribes a particular judgement on its protagonist's conduct for audiences to embrace or shun. Specifically, I examine the letter's possible valuations of sexual conduct as social practice, and examine, albeit secondarily and briefly, resonances among its neighbouring texts: Saint Christopher; Wonders of the East; Beowulf and Judith. Entertaining the collection as an exhortation to chastity, doubling as a call to arms against earthly and spiritual enemies, may reconcile the texts' apparent thematic disparity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have examined the performance of recalling Arabic letters. Some studies suggest that the low recall performance of Arabic letters may be attributed to the inherent visual complexity of Arabic script, while others highlight poor visual attention abilities among Arabic readers.In this context, the presentstudy focuses on investigating immediate memory and the factors influencing its capacity among young Arabic readers. Immediate memory refers to the number of letters an observer can recall in a free recall task. Three experiments were conducted to examine the effects of exposure time (50, 100, and 200 ms), letter spacing (0.04°, 0.36°, and 1°), and stimulustype (acquired vs. non-acquired). Acquired stimuli consisted of Arabic and Latin letters, whereas non-acquired stimuli included Amazigh letters. It is noteworthy that our participants had no prior exposure to the Amazigh language. The results revealed significant effects of exposure time, letter spacing, and stimulus type on performance in the free recall task. In light of these findings, the study provides a discussion of factors that may account for the low recall performance observed in previous research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]