In this paper, I argue that John Milton’s writings demonstrate a subtle preoccupation on the part of their author with the inherent limitations presented by various forms and conventions. In addressing and challenging the restrictive nature of poetic conventions, the human form, ontological conceptions, perceived gender binaries, and poetic verse itself, I find that Milton’s writings illustrate an undercurrent of rebellion against the imposed limitations and conventions of the mediums they inhabit, as well as a fascination with the idea of form free from confinement. The lines and construction of the majority of Milton’s English sonnets and his timeless lapsarian epic, Paradise Lost , as well as other works such as Areopagitica, “Lycidas,” and “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” bear significant support for a rebellion against form and convention. The implication is that Milton exercised some degree of metaliterary thought amid the composition of his works and their unprecedented defiance of standard and convention. Before there were such well-acknowledged norm-benders as the genrebusting megastar musician Prince, the revolutionary American gender theorist Judith Butler, or the diversity-minded rap-opera theater-maker Lin-Manuel Miranda, there was John Milton. The seventeenth-century poet, polemic, civil servant, and intellectual of sustained international notoriety nursed a preoccupation with the inherent limitations that various forms and conventions present. He challenged the restrictive nature of poetic conventions, ontological conceptions, perceived gender binaries, and poetic verse, and even the human form itself. Milton’s writings illustrate an undercurrent of rebellion against the imposed limitations and conventions of the mediums they might inhabit, as well as a fascination with the idea of confinement-free form. And yet at the same time, he seemed to purposely seek out constraints, from the strict sonnet form to the highly stylized epic and pastoral genres. The majority of his English sonnets and his postlapsarian epic Paradise Lost—as well as other works such as Areopagitica, “Lycidas,” and “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” although less blatantly so— BUTLER JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH, VOLUME 7 27 bear significant support in their lines and construction for an attraction to constraints as well as a simultaneous rebellion against typical form and convention. Milton’s simultaneous seeking of and resistance to typical forms indicate a subtle but distinct fascination on his part with norms and how to purposefully push their boundaries. Milton’s portfolio of sonnets, twenty-four poems strong, first consisted of poems that respectfully and artfully explored Petrarchan/Tuscan sonnetary conventions. As a young man, he wrote “a fragmentary group of Italian poems” between 1629 and 1632 that intended to “explor[e], in the correct Tuscan dialect, the origins of the love sonnet” (Kerrigan et al. 137). Until 1632, the vast majority (if not entirety) of known sonnets, Tuscan or otherwise, were concerned with matters of love. That year, Milton broke poetic convention with his seventh sonnet, a self-reflective poem written in English. As Kerrigan et al. write, “Nothing [...] could have anticipated Milton’s effort [in this sonnet] to gather religious strength in contemplating the end of an apparently unpromising youth” (137). Such a topic had never before been breached in sonnet form. As Milton himself stated within the sonnet, “It shall be still in the strictest measure even” (10), and indeed, he played within the foundations of the Petrarchian sonnet with Sonnet 7 in his thematic structure and Italian language. The first quatrain introduces conflict, which—prior to Milton’s sonnets—was always romantically grounded. In this seventh Italian sonnet, though, Milton writes to a friend of his progressing age and seemingly stagnant development as a writer: “How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, / Stol’n on his wings my three and twentieth year! / My hasting days fly on with full career, / But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th” (1–4). He continues by developing this conflict in the second quatrain, then beginning the traditional sonnetary sestet with a volta that introduces a pronounced change in tone—in this case, a reaffirmation of self, that he will continue to march toward whatever goal “Time” and “the Will of Heaven” lead him (12). Milton’s specific writing, while meeting the structural qualifications for a Petrarchian sonnet, could also be read as three quatrains and a couplet, which evokes the measure of Shakespearean sonnets. In Sonnet 7, Milton chronicles his woe and delay morphing into steadfastness and confidence within a poetic container previously exclusive to tales of love and loss, thus renegotiating the boundaries of sonnets and the stories within their stanzas. The vast majority of Milton’s other sonnets further challenged poetic convention. His tenth, thirteenth through seventeenth, twentieth, and twenty-first sonnets celebrate well-known individuals and his relationships with them, while his BUTLER JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH, VOLUME 7 28 eighth and eighteenth sonnets provide commentary on wartime skirmishes; his eleventh and twelfth sonnets defend his Tetrachordon divorce tracts, and his final English sonnet, “On the New Forces of Conscience,” was written in opposition to the Presbyterians. Milton defied convention with these poems in that he appropriated the sonnet as a means of political discourse best suited to his own compositional style as a self-identified poet. “Far from standing at odds with one another, poetic creation and political engagement [thus] turn out to be intimately connected. The artistry of the sonnets keeps pace with [...] Milton's specifically political understanding of events, parties, and leaders as well as his sense of their significance to himself and his nation as political entities” (Mueller 477). Thus, I argue not that Milton challenged the structural form of sonnet poetry but that, in harnessing his dexterity as a poet to supplement his political prose with sonnets, he transformed the perceived boundaries of sonnets. Beyond politically repurposing their poetic form, Milton also used sonnets to express explicit feelings of frustration with other forms’ limitations. Sonnets 19 and 22 both testify to Milton’s frustrations with the limitations of form, in that their lines depict Milton’s doubts and anxieties concerning his own human existence, limited by visual impairment and mortality. In both sonnets, the forty-three-yearold poet contemplates whether his developed blindness might make impossible his perceived divine responsibility to produce a literary work “unattempted yet in prose or rhyme” (1.16)—a subject that, like those touched on by the majority of his English sonnets, had never before been addressed in this particular medium. We know, however, that despite his blindness, Milton ultimately did produce such a work in Paradise Lost, a literary masterpiece that illustrates Milton’s form obsession perhaps more than any other piece he conceived. Paradise Lost is a mutiny against form in myriad ways, one of which is its construction—that is, the medium in which John Milton produced it. In his 1672 Artis Logicae, Milton defines matter as “the cause from which a thing is [causa ex qua res es]” and form as “the cause through which a thing is what it is [causa per quam res est id quod es]” (Artis 866–67; Lieb 207). This work’s ontological exploration of form provides a logical basis for the great deal of thought that Milton seems to have put into choosing an appropriately limitless form for his intended masterpiece. Milton’s Trinity College manuscript from the early 1640s contains a series of outlines and ideas for such a work, four of which are outlines for Paradise Lost as a tragic drama (Kerrigan et al. 252). It seems, however, that Milton decided that a theatrical medium could not realistically accommodate Adam and Eve’s “first naked glory” (4.1115) and switched forms, opting instead for a work of “English BUTLER JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH, VOLUME 7 29 heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin,” as he stated in his postpublication argument, “The Printer to the Reader.” Milton explicitly targets the limitations of form—specifically, poetic form—in this originally unintended foreword of sorts, having written and included it with his epic as a response to public outcry concerning “why the poem rhymes not”: [R]hyme being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame meter [...] [t]his neglect of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming. (Paradise 291) In his Between Worlds: The Rhetorical Universe of Paradise Lost, Will Pallister argues that the particular blank verse form Milton chose for his lapsarian epic enabled Milton to weave near-countless political, religious, philosophical, historical, mythological, literary, justice-related, and gender-related elements and references into the work’s “encyclopedic scope” while still maintaining such elements’ subordinacy to the work’s “overarching poetic agenda” and “aesthetic achievement” (241). Renaissance critical theory, too, offers support for the notion of the epic as a compendious storytelling medium. At frequent points within Paradise Lost, Milton references the similarly blind poet Homer, a Grecian whose epics were widely considered an original source for philosophy, mathematics, history, geography, military, art, and numerous other disciplines in their time (Lewalski 5). The continuous union of all these fields via t
The global media is not limited to disseminating information but also plays the role of fostering ideas, diffusing stories, and exchanging culture. The content produced by global media, however, may be subject to different ownership structures. The ways that different media ownership structures influence global communication in both economic and political significance are therefore worth exploring. This paper first introduces two types of global media ownership structures—state-owned and privately owned—and cites specific examples to parse how these two types of ownership structures may influence global communication economically and politically. The paper then critically discusses issues of media ownership concentration in western democracies.
Cerebral vascular injury is a common phenomenon after traumatic brain injury (TBI), with complications including vascular inflammation, decreased cerebral blood flow, and increased vessel tortuosity following TBI. Promoting cerebrovascular health may therefore be a useful therapeutic intervention after TBI. High density lipoproteins (HDL) are an attractive target due to their vasoprotective and anti-inflammatory roles in periphery vessels, but little is known on whether these benefits extend to the brain. Recently, deficiency of ApoA-I, the major protein constituent of circulating HDL, was shown to increase vascular associated plaque load in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) mice, which may imply a vessel protective function of ApoA-I in the brain. This study was designed to test the novel hypothesis that ApoA-I deficiency would worsen acute vascular and inflammatory outcomes in mice after Closed-Head Impact Model of Engineered Rotational Acceleration (CHIMERA) TBI. ApoA-I KO and WT mice underwent single moderate-severe TBI. Histopathological outcomes at 6hr and 2 days (2D) post injury were assessed. ApoA-I deficient mice exhibited greater ICAM-1 immunoreactivity at the cortex at 2D post TBI compared to WT controls, and a subtle increase in brain cytokine levels, potentially suggesting role of ApoA-I in protecting from TBI induced inflammation.
Today, 2.3 million Americans are incarcerated; 1,564,000 of those people are not White. This illustrates a clear racial disparity within the U.S. justice system in terms of which individuals are sentenced to prison. Although previous research, examining mostly state justice systems, has found that racial bias leads to longer sentences and has noted differences in sentencing length for male and female defendants, a paucity of research examines the impact of race and gender on sentencing lengths within the federal justice system. This study seeks to fill that gap. Data from the years 2000 through 2016 were obtained via the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Monitoring of Federal Criminal Cases and were analyzed using multiple linear regression featuring control variables of education level, age, socioeconomic status, and criminal history. The data set included 1,011,988 defendants, of whom 87% were male, 71% were White, and 78% had a criminal history. Results found that, on average and across crimes, White individuals received shorter sentences than did people of color, and women received shorter sentences than did men. When comparing ethnicity, on average and across crimes, White men received shorter sentences than did men of color, and White women received longer sentences than did women of color. These findings suggest that a judge may base the length of sentence not only on the facts of the case but also on the defendant’s race or gender. These results alert federal judges to possible biases of which they must be aware, and they highlight the need for a policy to control for demographic factors in determining sentences.
Various organizations and governments throughout Canada have attempted to reduce the phenomenon of impaired driving through public awareness campaigns as well as governmental policy. In September 2018, the Government of Canada, amended the Criminal Code of Canada (hereinafter, CCC) using Bill C-46 which, increased powers of peace officers. CCC Section 320.27(2) now allows peace officers to request a breath sample from any lawfully stopped driver without needing reasonable suspicion of impairment. The new legislation however, may not be compatible with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (hereinafter: CR+F). This paper analyzes whether or not CCC section 320.27(2) is compatible with Section 8 of the CR+F that protects Canadians against unreasonable search and seizure. This legal analysis was conducted to evaluate if the legislation could be upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) as a future legal challenge is highly likely. It was found through legal analysis that CCC section 320.27(2) is unlikely to be determined compatible with the CR+F as it fails to pass the reasonableness standard as found in R v Bernshaw (1995). Oakes Test analysis was therefore conducted to evaluate whether or not the legislation could be upheld using the section 1 “reasonable limits clause” of the CR+F. It was determined that CCC section 320.27(2) will likely be upheld as a reasonable limit on Charter rights as per the Oakes Test, as the legislation is as minimally impairing on Charter rights as possible and helps to achieve a pressing and substantial legislative objective. Oakes Test analysis however, would be impacted if the Government cannot show compelling evidence to prove their case.
This essay examines the emergence of two forms of communications during the 1789 French Revolution: pamphlet literature and public speeches. These two new communications, written and oral, functioned together to tear down the barriers of gender, class, and social mobility of the French society and facilitated the creation of a revolutionary community that attracted a broader audience and invited wider participation. Their use of revolutionary rhetoric to appeal to various audiences bred a new set of political language and a modern standard of leadership based on oratory and the ability to cope with dynamics, chaotic circumstances. These two forms of communications were products of their time and they played a significant role in shaping the French Revolution.
This paper juxtaposes the later Wittgenstein's and Mozi's theories of knowledge to provide us with new perspectives for addressing the deadlocks faced by a representational theory of knowledge that hinges on direct realism in order to devise a solution that incorporates the best of both philosophers' thinking. This article highlights the Chinese understanding of mind and knowledge in terms of competence, compared to Western epistemology that focuses on having an accurate representative model of reality, allowing for a dichotomy between representation and mind-independent reality. I argue that we should aim for the middle way by synthesizing both these philosophers' insights on contextualism to overcome the deadlocks faced by the traditional Western epistemological focus on representation and by extending Mozi's version of contextualism into other areas of knowledge, beyond social and moral issues.
Orthosis is a non-invasive method of treatment for patients with scoliosis, in which prescribed individuals will undergo correction of their spinal misalignment with the support of a brace. The main mechanisms involved in orthosis are the internal and external forces applied by the brace to help prevent further deterioration of the spinal cord. Specifically for Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS), occuring in youth during the critical ages of bone development, it is essential to improve the spine’s condition as much as possible before the body fully matures. Although orthosis does not aim to correct the misalignment, it has been proven that bracing will aid in slowing down the progression of deformity. However, a common concern is that the spinal curve will regress back to its original state upon removal of the brace at the end of the treatment period. After reviewing both short-term and long-term cases of various patients who have used a brace, there is evidence demonstrating that this is not true as studies have shown more benefits to using orthosis than drawbacks, making it an effective intervention for scoliosis. When comparing those who undergo orthosis treatment and those who do not, a significant decrease in the spine’s progression was found.
Goodpasture syndrome is a rare autoimmune disorder affecting approximately one person per million. It is caused by the development of antiglomerular basement membrane (GBM) antibodies. Since the description of Goodpasture syndrome in 1958, understanding of the syndrome’s pathophysiology has significantly increased with advances in molecular biology, delineation of immune function, and research into the structure and function of collagen, which forms the basement membranes in the alveoli and glomeruli. Although the exact trigger for the development of these autoantibodies is unknown, there is a clear genetic predisposition in affected individuals with a correlation to human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles in anti-GBM disease. Environmental factors such as viral infection and smoking then damage the alveoli, causing increased permeability and increased access to the basement membrane for the autoantibodies. The autoimmune response attacks the basement membrane of both alveoli and glomeruli, causing pulmonary hemorrhage, hemoptysis, anemia, respiratory failure, glomerulonephritis, and renal failure. It is diagnosed by a combination of respiratory function tests, chest X-ray, serology for anti-GBM antibodies, and renal biopsy. A renal biopsy reveals crescentic glomerulonephritis and linear immunofluorescent staining from autoantibody deposition in the capillaries. Disease progress is monitored by using these tests serially. Treatment involves immunosuppressive medications such as corticosteroids and cyclophosphamide to prevent autoantibody production, as well as plasmapheresis to remove autoantibodies from circulation. Novel treatment methods currently under investigation include immunoadsorption, cryofiltration, and enzymatic degradation. Immunoadsorption is a developing therapy with early results showing high effectiveness, but further trials are necessary. New developments for using enzymatic proteins from the Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria to remove anti-GBM autoantibodies that are bound to the actual basement membrane and not just those in circulation are currently under investigation. This is facilitated by further recent BUTLER JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH, VOLUME 7 227 advances in delineating collagen molecular structure composition in the basement membrane. Provided Goodpasture syndrome is diagnosed early, treatment regimens are very effective in controlling the disease; however, late-stage disease requires dialysis and lung or kidney transplantation. As advances in molecular biology and genetics continue, the immune function is mapped in greater detail, and genetic susceptibility is better understood, more opportunities to treat autoimmune conditions such as Goodpasture syndrome will develop. Goodpasture syndrome is a rare autoimmune disorder characterized by the destruction of the basement membrane in both the lungs and kidneys (Zhong et al., 2020). Circulating anti-glomerular basement membrane (GBM) antibodies attach to collagen-fiber networks in the membrane, which triggers the membrane’s destruction, causing alveolar hemorrhage, resulting in anemia and respiratory failure due to impaired gas exchange (Greco et al., 2015). Alveolar hemorrhaging from basement-membrane breakdown causes dyspnea, hemoptysis, and chest pain (Huart et al., 2016). Given the potential severity of these clinical manifestations, pulmonary abnormalities usually become evident before respiratory failure develops; however, a rapid diagnosis is essential, as hemorrhage is the leading cause of death in individuals with Goodpasture syndrome (Nasser & Cottin, 2018). Although the exact trigger of this antibody-induced autoimmune response remains unknown, certain environmental factors (e.g., chemical or infectious exposure) coupled with genetic susceptibility may lead to its development (Pedchenko et al., 2018). Diagnosis is achieved by a combined interpretation of respiratory function testing, antibody detection through serology, chest X-ray, and lung or kidney biopsy. Patients diagnosed with Goodpasture syndrome undergo an array of treatment depending on the severity of their condition. Commonly used therapies include plasmapheresis, immunosuppression, renal dialysis, and organ transplantation. Emerging research has provided numerous opportunities for alternative methods of treatment in the near future. The following review will utilize current literature and research to investigate the history, epidemiology, etiology, and pathophysiology of Goodpasture syndrome. The most common forms of diagnostic and treatment procedures will be analyzed. Additional insights for emerging research in the field will also be discussed.
This paper was inspired by my confusion that women voted for sexual predators in several elections in 2016, despite the fact that women are usually the victims of sexual misconduct. My research question was, Does privilege affect political party crossover when a candidate is accused of sexual misconduct? I hypothesized that a woman’s likelihood of crossing political party lines when a candidate is accused of sexual misconduct decreases as her privilege increases, and that the opposite would therefore also be true: as a woman’s privilege decreases, her likelihood of crossing political party lines increases when a candidate is accused of sexual misconduct. I used a split-sample survey experiment, then ran four bivariate tests. The first bivariate test measured the impact of partisanship on political party crossover when the candidate is accused of sexual misconduct. The second bivariate test tested the impact of privilege, controlling for partisanship. The third bivariate test was done differently for men and women. The last bivariate test measured whether privilege—controlling for partisanship—had an impact on the dependent variable separately among men and women. I found my hypothesis to be wrong. A woman’s privilege does not significantly influence whether she is willing to support a candidate accused of sexual misconduct. Partisanship is the pivotal force in determining a woman’s voting habits when the candidate has been accused of sexual misconduct. I also found that a male’s increasing privilege increases his likelihood of crossing political party lines when a candidate has been accused of sexual misconduct. After witnessing several high-profile elections, such as the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the Alabama senate election, in which candidates accused of sexual misconduct either won or came incredibly close to winning the election, one should question why. Donald Trump ultimately became president of the United BUTLER JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH, VOLUME 7 95 States after more than 15 women came forward to say he sexually assaulted them (Pearson et al., 2020). In Alabama, Roy Moore lost his U.S. Senate race but still received 48.4% of the vote (Bloch et al., 2017). He was undeterred after his 2017 loss and ran again in 2020. These are two examples of higher-profile cases. It should not be overlooked or understated that candidates and government officials at any level have been accused of sexual misconduct. One might assume that women, who are most often the victims of sexual misconduct, would change political parties to prevent the reward of a political office to a sex offender, yet that is not the case, as voters elected Donald Trump and Roy Moore only narrowly lost. This paper asks why women specifically are still willing to vote for candidates accused of sexual misconduct. After evaluating the literature on partisanship and elections with sexual misconduct accusations, previous studies have yet to examine whether the several levels of privilege a woman possesses might explain the results of such elections. This paper seeks to answer the research question of whether privilege affects political party crossover when a candidate is accused of sexual misconduct.
A community of trillions of commensal bacteria inhabit the gastrointestinal tract - collectively known as the intestinal microbiota. The gut microbes are essential for the development and functioning of the enteric nervous system. Approximately two-thirds of the cell bodies of all enteric neurons are gathered in the myenteric plexus – an intricate network of neurons and glial cells that primarily regulate gut neuromuscular activity. Studies in laboratory rodents have observed that antibiotic treatment leads to a reduction in microbial abundance and diversity within the intestine and these findings are correlated with enteric nervous system structural abnormalities. Specifically, antibiotic-treated mice have an abnormal myenteric plexus characterized by a reduction in myenteric neuron numbers and ganglia area. However, it is unknown whether these effects occur in wild Peromyscus mice that are exposed to a natural bacterial flora. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effects of antibiotic exposure on the colonic neurons of the myenteric plexus in wild Peromyscus mice. Thirty-two wild-caught adult male Peromyscus mice were divided into control and antibiotic-treated groups. Whole mount preparations of longitudinal muscle with adherent myenteric plexus were prepared and alterations in colonic neuron and ganglia numbers were assessed by immunohistochemistry analysis. Antibiotic-treatment reduced the total number of colonic enteric neurons/mm2 and the total number of ganglia per myenteric plexus. Our results suggest that antibiotic-induced microbial dysbiosis affects the colonic neurons and ganglia of wild Peromyscus mice similarly to laboratory rodents.
