The Politics of Henry James
Each great writer acquires an image that owes its energies to certain felt airs and essences associated with his creative imagination. The cut and quality of that imagination, its character and code, its reach and ambit, finally determine its dynamics. The image is uniquely answerable to such a dialectic; it sustains itself through a certain "chemistry" of effects, and, at times, through a certain aesthetic "mysticism." In short, it attains, en route, an unmistakable ambience. Considered thus, Henry James figures to the responding imagination as a writer of such rare refinements, subtleties and felicities as to become in the end a kind of vintage wine to be taken in slow, measured draughts. To be sure, his fastidiousness has in some later tales a distressing aspect, and his "transcendence" a false ring, but where the Jamesian imagination is true to its inner energies and does not let the human situation turn cold or abstract or static, the compact between reader and writer has the quality of a shared dream. Its ceremoniousness has a purposive aspect; it becomes a kind of aesthetic tender. The "great good place" holds and compels.
Beyond Post-Modernism: The Sense of History in The Princess Casamassima
Hugh Kenner opens his 1972 "history book," The Pound Era, with Part One, entitled "Toward the Vortex," and Chapter One, signed "Ghosts and Benedictions," thereby announcing the approach his discussion of a new era will take by reference to what lingers (ghosts) and what bids farewell (benedictions) from the preceding period. And whom does he poise almost ludicrously at the vestibule of "modern times"? His opening sentence tells us: "Toward the evening of a gone world, the light of its last summer pouring into a Chelsea street found and suffused the red waistcoat of Henry James, lord of decorum, en promenade, exposing his Boston niece to the tone of things."Â·1
Gut immunity in Lepidopteran insects.
Lepidopteran insects constitute one of the largest fractions of animals on earth, but are considered pests in their relationship with man. Key to the success of this order of insects is its ability to digest food and absorb nutrition, which takes place in the midgut. Because environmental microorganisms can easily enter Lepidopteran guts during feeding, the innate immune response guards against pathogenic bacteria, virus and microsporidia that can be devoured with food. Gut immune responses are complicated by both resident gut microbiota and the surrounding peritrophic membrane and are distinct from immune responses in the body cavity, which depend on the function of the fat body and hemocytes. Due to their relevance to agricultural production, studies of Lepidopteran insect midgut and immunity are receiving more attention, and here we summarize gut structures and functions, and discuss how these confer immunity against different microorganisms. It is expected that increased knowledge of Lepidopteran gut immunity may be utilized for pest biological control in the future.