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The troubles of a certain Mr A and idea of pre-destination
Now I realise that all of this sounds much too fatalistic to appeal to 21st century ideas of ‘freedom of choice’ and ‘psychological growth’. However it does indicate that at some level our lives are pre-destined and at the moment, I’m at a loss on how to suggest it might be otherwise.
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The Plusses and Minuses of New Criticism
Further, if we accept that a text is an ‘aesthetic object’ (however TS Eliot and others might have us define that) then if we are to take anything valuable away from our ‘aesthetic experience’ , we need to focus on what it tells us about ourselves.
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The Birth of Tragedy and other Cultural Lies
For Nietzsche, transformation was not simply a matter suspending audience disbelief, but instead allowing the audience to actually enter the world of the Greek god Dionysus, in whose realm lies all primordial truths and with it, the tragic suffering inherent in comprehending these truths.
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Predicting with Medieval Astrological Techniques – Directing by Triplicity
Note that there are no hard and fast rules as to when you’re moving from one life phase to another – but usually by about aged 30 years of age you should be transitioning to the 2nd triplicity ruler and about aged 60 years you move into the last phase.
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It’s going to be a Phlegmatic Couple of days
The phlegmatic energy is, as you might expect with the Sun and Moon both in watery signs, is wet – even dreary. This is because it is connected with the Jungian Function of ‘feeling’ and that suggests not only getting bogged down in your feelings but also your inability to access the opposition Jungian Function…
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Structuralism and the ‘New Perspective’ on Literature
As a feminist looking at texts through structuralist eyes, I am also able to hone in on sex-inflected signifiers pointing to specific patriarchal cultural values I am keen to eliminate.
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New Historicism – the Relationship Between Literature and History
Rather like Michel Foucault, the New Historicist believes that words are power and that it is through words that we are ‘communicated’ into being. Those who would ‘normalise’ and ‘socialise’ us to their purposes can do this well with facts and reported events that support their goals.
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Use and Abuse of Power in the Writings of Virginia Woolf
Whilst in full flow in answering the latter point, she quotes from Gray’s Ode : “what is grandeur, what is power? – what the bright reward we gain?’ Gain indeed; power is what people want and in her writings Woolf not only demonstrates this but she also deals with some of the ways and reasons…
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Today is a Phlegmatic/Sanguine Day
It should come as little surprise that humoural theory found its way into astrology most notably with Ptolemy – and so the astrological sign Cancer is associated with Water (cold/wet) and Libra with Air (Hot/Wet).
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The Impact of World War I on Modernist Writers
It seems that this knowledge has prevented Clarissa from also committing suicide although why she would want to do so – so privileged she was such – is not completely clear. If, as she believed, her life was a failure then more had to be at root of such failure than the fact that she…