Genetic and Related Biomedical Aspects of Twinning

1983 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 179-183
Author(s):  
Frederick Hecht ◽  
Barbara K. Hecht

Twins are nothing new. They have been of interest for thousands of years. The Song of Solomon sang in amorous tones: "Thy breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies." Genesis relates the story of Adam and Eve and their sons: Cain and Abel. According to Mohammedan tradition, Cain and Abel were born with twin sisters. Adam wished for Cain to marry Abel's twin and for Abel to marry Cain's twin. However, Cain was enamored of his own twin sister and so in jealousy slew his brother Abel. Twins appear in many ancient writings beyond the Bible. Romulus and Remus, the mythic founders of Rome, were twins. Shakespeare wrote of "twinn'd lambs that did frisk; ' the sun, and bleat the one of the other" in The Winter's Tale. GALTON: THE STUDY OF TWINS Modern scientific interest in twins dates to Sir Francis Galton. In 1875, Galton emphasized the importance of studies of twins to distinguish heredity from environment or, as he put it, "nature from nurture." Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, made numerous other contributions, among them the study of fingerprints which are remarkably alike in identical twins. Fingerprints are today commonplace in law. In pediatrics, dermatoglyphic features assist in the rapid clinical diagnosis of trisomy 13, 18, and 21 (Down syndrome).

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Cayetana Heidi Johnson

The Old Testament is clearly a mixture of myths and real historical figures with their events. There is no question about the contribution of mythology, since much of Genesis has been formed from common mythological accounts from all over the ancient Near East. The stories of Creation, the primordial couple, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the Great Flood, and much more, are a commonplace of narratives throughout the region. Although these accounts are mythological, it does not mean that they have not been shaped by real events. Specialists speculate about a great flood that took place in the Near East as a result of rising water levels at the end of the last Ice Age (around 5000 BC). This coincided at a time when the Agricultural Revolution had taken over the Fertile Crescent and Egypt. Various peoples of the Levant adopted mythological narratives and reformulated them to create their own unique and original tales. Some of the main figures of the Bible, such as Adam and Eve, Noah, Lot, finally the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) were their own compositions but, as can be seen with the patriarch Abraham, who was not an exclusive figure of the Hebrew people, his conversion to monotheism is, however, something peculiar to the spiritual creativity of the Jews. Here as in the composition of the New Testament, archeology is the necessary aid to locate the reality and the truth of sacred history and its development in human time.


Author(s):  
Michael Coogan

What is the Bible? The Bible is the sacred scripture of Judaism and Christianity. In its pages we encounter some of the most memorable characters in world literature: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, Moses, Samson and Delilah, David and Bathsheba,...


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-110
Author(s):  
Rachel Fensham

The Viennese modern choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser's black coat leads to an analysis of her choreography in four main phases – the early European career; the rise of Nazism; war's brutality; and postwar attempts at reconciliation. Utilising archival and embodied research, the article focuses on a selection of Bodenwieser costumes that survived her journey from Vienna, or were remade in Australia, and their role in the dramaturgy of works such as Swinging Bells (1926), The Masks of Lucifer (1936, 1944), Cain and Abel (1940) and The One and the Many (1946). In addition to dance history, costume studies provides a distinctive way to engage with the question of what remains of performance, and what survives of the historical conditions and experience of modern dance-drama. Throughout, Hannah Arendt's book The Human Condition (1958) provides a critical guide to the acts of reconstruction undertaken by Bodenwieser as an émigré choreographer in the practice of her craft, and its ‘materializing reification’ of creative thought. As a study in affective memory, information regarding Bodenwieser's personal life becomes interwoven with the author's response to the material evidence of costumes, oral histories and documents located in various Australian archives. By resurrecting the ‘dead letters’ of this choreography, the article therefore considers how dance costumes offer the trace of an artistic resistance to totalitarianism.


Author(s):  
J. F. Bernard

What’s so funny about melancholy? Iconic as Hamlet is, Shakespearean comedy showcases an extraordinary reliance on melancholy that ultimately reminds us of the porous demarcation between laughter and sorrow. This richly contextualized study of Shakespeare’s comic engagement with sadness contends that the playwright rethinks melancholy through comic theatre and, conversely, re-theorizes comedy through melancholy. In fashioning his own comic interpretation of the humour, Shakespeare distils an impressive array of philosophical discourses on the matter, from Aristotle to Robert Burton, and as a result, transforms the theoretical afterlife of both notions. The book suggests that the deceptively potent sorrow at the core of plays such as The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, or The Winter’s Tale influences modern accounts of melancholia elaborated by Sigmund Freud, Judith Butler, and others. What’s so funny about melancholy in Shakespearean comedy? It might just be its reminder that, behind roaring laughter, one inevitably finds the subtle pangs of melancholy.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen Etman

The Hogarth Shakespeare Project presents a way to view Shakespeare’s plays through a different lens. These books allow for a feminist reading of Shakespeare, looking at some of Shakespeare’s ill-treated female characters to construct a new idea of female characterization. Three of the plays adapted, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and The Taming of the Shrew, were adapted by female authors. By investigating how these plays are being adapted for a more contemporary audience, with modern conceptions of feminism and gender roles, we can gain insight as to how these concepts have changed since Shakespeare’s time. By looking at these modern adaptations, we can interrogate how modern audiences as a whole conceptualize and, potentially, idealize Shakespeare, as well as understanding the progression of treatment of women in contemporary culture since Shakespeare’s time. The novels addressed in this project are The Gap of Time by Jeannette Winterson, Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood, and Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler. The project concludes that, of the three, Vinegar Girl does the most effective job addressing the problematic aspects of its adapted play in a new way, distinguishing it from previous adaptations of The Taming of the Shrew. This project also investigates the role that adaptation theory plays in addressing Shakespeare adaptations, particularly the Hogarth Shakespeare Project.


Author(s):  
Amanda Anderson

This chapter explores the specific challenges that cognitive science and social psychology pose to those literary concepts and modes that are grounded in traditional moral understandings of selfhood and action, including integrity of character and notions such as tragic realization and moral repair. Focusing on the concept of moral time, the chapter explores two literary texts in which profound middle-of-life dramas take place: Henry James’s “The Beast in the Jungle” and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. A form of slow psychic time entirely lost to view in recent cognitive science is shown to take place in James’s tale, while The Winter’s Tale insists on the forms of moral and emotional experience that are beyond reflection and explanation. The readings presented are set in relation to key critical debates on the works, to challenge a persistent evasion of moral frameworks in contemporary anti-normative approaches.


Author(s):  
Charlotte Scott

Moving into the late plays or romances, Chapter 5 engages the book’s central question: why are children so important and so unique to Shakespeare’s dramatic imagination? Focusing on the extraordinary collection of plays, including The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and Pericles, this chapter considers the formative impact of the child on Shakespeare’s stage. Thinking about memory and grief, loss and childhood, the section on The Winter’s Tale attends to the child as a young body but also as an adult’s memory of its former self. The focus in TheTempest is on servitude and teaching and the narratives of love through which parents justify power. In the section on Pericles, the chapter studies anxieties about incest and desire, redemption and hope. In all the plays under discussion here, the child becomes a unique and staggeringly assertive character of redemption as well as loss.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 488-495
Author(s):  
Cláudia Martins ◽  
Sérgio Ferreira

AbstractThe linguistic rights of Mirandese were enshrined in Portugal in 1999, though its “discovery” dates back to the very end of the 19th century at the hands of Leite de Vasconcellos. For centuries, it was the first or only language spoken by people living in the northeast of Portugal, particularly the district of Miranda do Douro. As a minority language, it has always moved among three dimensions. On the one hand, the need to assert and defend this language and have it acknowledged by the country, which proudly believe(d) in their monolingual history. Unavoidably, this has ensued the action of translation, especially active from the mid of the 20th century onwards, with an emphasis on the translation of the Bible and Portuguese canonical literature, as well as other renowned literary forms (e.g. The Adventures of Asterix). Finally, the third axis lies in migration, either within Portugal or abroad. Between the 1950s and the 1960s, Mirandese people were forced to leave Miranda do Douro and villages in the outskirts in the thousands. They fled not only due to the deeply entrenched poverty, but also the almost complete absence of future prospects, enhanced by the fact that they were regarded as not speaking “good” Portuguese, but rather a “charra” language, and as ignorant backward people. This period coincided with the building of dams on the river Douro and the cultural and linguistic shock that stemmed from this forceful contact, which exacerbated their sense of not belonging and of social shame. Bearing all this in mind, we seek to approach the role that migration played not only in the assertion of Mirandese as a language in its own right, but also in the empowerment of new generations of Mirandese people, highly qualified and politically engaged in the defence of this minority language, some of whom were former migrants. Thus, we aim to depict Mirandese’s political situation before and after the endorsement of the Portuguese Law no. 7/99.


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