Romances were among the most popular books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries among both Protestant and Catholic readers. Modeled after Catholic narratives, particularly the lives of saints, ...these works emphasized the supernatural and the marvelous, themes commonly associated with Catholicism. In this book, Tiffany Jo Werth investigates how post-Reformation English authors sought to discipline romance, appropriating its popularity while distilling its alleged Catholic taint.
Charged with bewitching readers, especially women, into lust and heresy, romances sold briskly even as preachers and educators denounced them as papist. Protestant reformers, as part of their broader indictment of Catholicism, sought to redirect certain elements of the Christian tradition, including this notorious literary genre. Werth argues that through the writing and circulation of romances, Protestants repurposed their supernatural and otherwordly motifs in order to “fashion,” as Edmund Spenser writes, godly vertuous readers.
Through careful examinations of the period’s most renowned romances—Sir Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, William Shakespeare’s Pericles, and Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania—Werth illustrates how post-Reformation writers struggled to transform the literary genre. As a result, the romance, long regarded as an archetypal form closely allied with generalized Christian motifs, emerged as a result of the struggle as a central tenet of the religious controversies that divided Renaissance England.
John Ford's tragedy 'Tis Pity She's A Whore was first performed between 1629 and 1633 and since then its themes of incest, love versus duty and forbidden passion have made it a widely studied and ...performed, if controversial, play. This guide offers students an introduction to its critical and performance history, including TV and film adaptations. It includes a keynote chapter outlining major areas of current research on the play and four new critical essays. Finally, a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further individual research.
The Portuguese Restoration of 1640 ended the dynastic union of Portugal and Spain. This book pioneers in reconstructing the global image discourse related to the event by bringing together ...visualizations from three decades and four continents. These include paintings, engravings, a statue, coins, emblems, miniatures, a miraculous crosier and other regalia, buildings, textiles, a castrum doloris, drawings, and ivory statues. Situated within the academic field of visual studies, the book interrogates the role of images and depictions before, during, and after the overthrow and how they functioned within the intercontinental communication processes in the Portuguese Empire. The results challenge the conventional notion of center and periphery and reveal unforeseen entanglements as well as an unexpected agency of imagery from the remotest regions under Portuguese control. The book breaks new ground in linking the field of early modern political iconography with transcultural art history and visual studies.
Challenging the prevailing images of India derived from nineteenth-century "orientalism,"Versailles Meets the Taj Mahalidentifies and explores the traces that exposure to India left on the cultural ...artifacts and mindset of France's "Great Century."
Historical materials have revealed that the Hokkaido-Komagatake Volcano erupted in 1640. In this study, we reviewed in detail the historical materials from a period closer to the eruption, which had ...yet to be investigated. We then evaluated the reliability of the historical materials and tried to interpret their descriptions from a volcanological point of view. As a result, we found descriptions that support the previous understanding of the number of deaths, tsunamis, and volcanic edifice collapses, or provide more detailed information. In contrast, we also found descriptions of the duration of the 1640 eruption, which lasted about one day and night, of the fallout tephra containing charred wood chips suggesting the occurrence of high-temperature phenomena and subsequent buoyant plumes, and of the volcanic activity that continued for a long time after the eruption. Examination of these historical materials revealed a picture of the eruption that could not be understood from the historical materials used in the past. This study demonstrates that investigating the characteristics of historical materials and the reliability of their descriptions and comparing the information obtained from them with volcanological knowledge can be useful in clarifying the phenomena and processes of past volcanic eruptions.
As there are sparse data on the impact of growth media on the phenomenon of biofilm development for Candida we evaluated the efficacy of three culture media on growth, adhesion and biofilm formation ...of two pathogenic yeasts, Candida albicans and Candida tropicalis. The planktonic phase yeast growth, either as monocultures or mixed cultures, in sabouraud dextrose broth (SDB), yeast nitrogen base (YNB), and RPMI 1640 was compared, and adhesion as well as biofilm formation were monitored using MTT and crystal violet (CV) assays and scanning electron microscopy. Planktonic cells of C. albicans, C. tropicalis and their 1:1 co-culture showed maximal growth in SDB. C. albicans/C. tropicalis adhesion was significantly facilitated in RPMI 1640 although the YNB elicited the maximum growth for C. tropicalis. Similarly, the biofilm growth was uniformly higher for both species in RPMI 1640, and C. tropicalis was the slower biofilm former in all three media. Scanning electron microscopy images tended to confirm the results of MTT and CV assay. Taken together, our data indicate that researchers should pay heed to the choice of laboratory culture media when comparing relative planktonic/biofilm growth of Candida. There is also a need for standardisation of biofilm development media so as to facilitate cross comparisons between laboratories.
Leaves from Psidium guineense Sw. are used in popular medicine for the treatment of inflammatory disease. However, there is no scientific evidence demonstrating this activity.
To evaluate the ...antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiproliferative and antimycobacterial activities of the essential oil of P. guineense and spathulenol (a major constituent). The study was conducted in part to provide evidence supporting the ethnobotanical use of the leaves of this species.
The essential oil (EOPG) was extracted from the leaves of P. guineense by hydrodistillation and analysed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS). The major compound, spathulenol (PG-1), was isolated in a chromatographic column and characterized by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). EOPG and PG-1 were evaluated in vitro for antioxidant activity by DPPH, ABTS and MDA methods; anti-inflammatory potential was assessed using two models, including pleurisy and oedema, in mice. The impact of EOPG and PG-1 on cell proliferation was determined via spectrophotometric quantification of the cellular protein content using a sulforhodamine B assay, and anti-Mycobacterium tuberculosis activity was determined using the REMA method.
A total of 38 components were identified from the EOPG, with the sesquiterpenic alcohol spathulenol (PG-1) (80.7%) being the major constituent. EOPG and PG-1 exhibited the highest antioxidant activities in the DPPH and MDA system compared with reference standard, with IC50 values ranging from 26.13 to 85.60μg/mL. Oral administration of EOPG and PG-1 showed significant inhibition in the Cg-induced mice paw oedema and pleurisy model. The EOPG (GI50 = 0.89μg/mL) and PG-1 (GI50 = 49.30μg/mL) were particularly effective against the ovarian cancer cell line. Both showed moderate antimycobacterial activity.
For the first time, this study demonstrated the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiproliferative and antimycobacterial properties of the essential oil of P. guineense (leaves were collected in Dourados-MS) and spathulenol, collaborating the etnhopharmacologycal use of this plant due to its an anti-inflammatory effect.
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SUMMARYFarnesol was first identified as a quorum-sensing molecule, which blocked the yeast to hyphal transition in
, 22 years ago. However, its interactions with
biology are surprisingly complex. ...Exogenous (secreted or supplied) farnesol can also act as a virulence factor during pathogenesis and as a fungicidal agent triggering apoptosis in other competing fungi. Farnesol synthesis is turned off both during anaerobic growth and in opaque cells. Distinctly different cellular responses are observed as exogenous farnesol levels are increased from 0.1 to 100 µM. Reported changes include altered morphology, stress response, pathogenicity, antibiotic sensitivity/resistance, and even cell lysis. Throughout, there has been a dearth of mechanisms associated with these observations, in part due to the absence of accurate measurement of intracellular farnesol levels (
). This obstacle has recently been overcome, and the above phenomena can now be viewed in terms of changing
levels and the percentage of farnesol secreted. Critically, two aspects of isoprenoid metabolism present in higher organisms are absent in
and likely in other yeasts. These are pathways for farnesol salvage (converting farnesol to farnesyl pyrophosphate) and farnesylcysteine cleavage, a necessary step in the turnover of farnesylated proteins. Together, these developments suggest a unifying model, whereby high, threshold levels of
regulate which target proteins are farnesylated or the extent to which they are farnesylated. Thus, we suggest that the diversity of cellular responses to farnesol reflects the diversity of the proteins that are or are not farnesylated.
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