Hearing loss has been identified as a major modifiable risk factors for dementia. Adult candidates for cochlear implantation represent a population at risk of hearing loss-associated cognitive decline. This study investigated the effect of demographics, habits, and medical and psychological risk factors on cognition within such a cohort. Data from 34 consecutive adults with post-lingual deafness scheduled for CI were analyzed. Pure tone audiometry and Speech Discrimination Score were recorded. The Repeatable Battery for Assessment of Neuropsychological Status for Hearing impaired (...) individuals was used to measure cognition. Demographics, habits, and medical factors were evaluated. Depression was measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and social inhibition with the Type D questionnaire. All participants suffered from severe to profound hearing loss. The mean RBANS-H total score was 83 ± 16. Participants reported a mean of years of formal education of 12 ± 5 years. The prevalence of habits and medical risk factors was: physical inactivity, body mass index >30, traumatic brain injury, hypertension, heavy alcohol consumption, smoking, and diabetes. Regarding psychological factors, the mean scores of social inhibition and depression were 10 ± 6 and 6 ± 5, respectively. The number of years of education was significantly correlated with the RBANS-H total score, and with the domains “Immediate memory”, “Visuospatial/constructional”, and “Attention”. The mean RBANS-H total score in participants who had university studies or higher level was 97 ± 9, with the remaining participants reporting a mean score of 75 ± 15. Men performed better in the “Visuospatial/constructional”. Physical inactivity was associated with lower scores in the “Delayed memory” ; hypertension correlated with lower RBANS-H total scores and “Attention”. Depression and social inhibition were negatively correlated with RBANS-H total score and with the “Immediate memory,” “Visuospatial/constructional,” and “Attention”. In adults with late-onset deafness scheduled to CI, educational level has a significant effect. Additionally, sex, physical inactivity, hypertension, and psychological traits of social inhibition and depression may also influence cognitive status. Long-term studies with more participants would enable us better understand the effects different risk factors on cognitive status. (shrink)

"Six memos for the Next Millenium" is a collection of five lectures Italo Calvino was about to deliver at the time of his death. Here is his legacy to us: the universal values he pinpoints become the watch-words for out appreciation of Calvino himself. What should be cherished in literature? Calvino devotes one lecture, or memo to the reader, toe each of five indispensable qualities: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity. A sixth lecture, on consistency, was never (...) committed to paper, and we are left only to ponder the possibilities. With this book, he gives us the most eloquent defense to literature written in our century - a fitting gift for the next millennium. (shrink)

‘Wrongdoing does not remain isolated in time’. In February 2013 the McAleese Report confirmed that more than 11,000 women and girls were incarcerated in Ireland’s Magdalen laundries between 1922 and 1996. These women were arguably the scapegoats of Ireland’s national shame as it struggled to develop its identity as a morally pure state following independence, of familial shame as communities fought to hide abuse and illegitimacy, and of male shame, as men sought to have their cake and eat it. What (...) does ‘atonement’ – a concept that embodies connection and integration mean in the context of shame – a state that signifies rupture, separation and isolation? This paper will explore the role of shame in the dis-integration of relationships and lives and ask whether the Christian concept of atonement can be utilized to put this right. In a moral climate where past abuses in church-run institutions are increasingly coming to light, what value does atonement have in the way we respond to the on-going reverberations of shaming and shameful wrongdoing? (shrink)

Lightness -- Quickness -- Exactitude -- Visibility -- Multiplicity.

Calvino probeert te komen tot een definitie van werken die 'klassiek' kunnen worden genoemd. Hij gaat daarbij onder meer in op de vraag of het voor het eerst lezen van een klassiek werk tijdens de jeugd of op oudere leeftijd verschil maakt, op de invloed van de sporen die deze werken dragen in onze cultuur, en op de wisselwerking tussen 'klassiek' en 'actueel'.

InCarm.4.1 Horace asks Venus to stop waging war against him, who is now over fifty (1–7), and suggests that she should set her aim instead on Paulus Maximus, a young and passionate nobleman who will be happy to obey Venus' orders (9–20).

The aim of this study is to analyse a passage of the pseudoepigraphic Carmen de resurrectione which relates to insipientes, interpreted as those who do not accept that the rational observation of nature proves the existence of a unique creator God. Such a refusal is believed to make them worthy of eternal damnation. The resulting concept of sapientia involves both ratio and voluntas; it is also connected with gnoseology and soteriology. A similar concept can be found in the Aquitanian poetry (...) of the fifth century and in the theology of the so-called Semipelagians. This similarity calls into question the traditional dating and the supposed area of origin of the Carmen. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to determine the historical and cultural context of the pseudoepigraphic Carmen de resurrectione. The Carmen treats poetically many subjects of Christian eschatology: the second coming of Christ, the final judgement, heaven and hell, the universal conflagration. The author believes that the end time is imminent. This perception is common to all the Christians who experienced tribulations: persecutions, natural calamities, barbarian invasions. These painful events urged the Christians to undertake a path of true conversion, in (...) the religious and moral sense. Unlike other poets, the Anonymous author emphasises the virtuous value of the hope of divine reward rather than the fear of divine punishment. The same perspective can be found in the poets and in the monks of early fifth-century Gaul, who suffered the barbarian invasion of 406. (shrink)

Geleneksel bir bakış açısıyla İsrailoğullarının Tevrat’taki ilk kadın peygamberi olan Miryam, Harun ve Musa’nın kız kardeşi olup Mısır’dan çıkışın önemli figürlerinden biridir. Ancak eleştirel ve farklı bakış açısından Miryam ile ilgili kutsal kitap ve midraşlardaki anlatılara bakıldığında onun üç farklı portreye sahip olduğu görülmektedir. İlk portre, sepet içinde suya bırakılan Musa’yı uzaktan seyreden ve ismi belirtilmeyen abladır. İkinci tasvirde o, Mısır’dan çıkış esnasında Harun’un kız kardeşi peygamber Miryam olarak betimlenmektedir. Bu tasvir daha yakından incelendiğinde Mısır’dan çıkışta dilinde (...) ezgisi, elinde tefi ile dans ederek İsrailoğullarına liderlik eden Miryam’ın, peygamber olmaktan ziyade Mısır’dan izler taşıyan rahibe olmaya daha yakın durduğu görülmektedir. Nitekim Miryam’ı bir rahibe olarak görmek Cüzzamlı Miryam kıssasını daha anlaşılır kıldığı gibi onun fiziki kusurla cezalandırılması Mısır’daki bir rahibenin görevden uzaklaştırılmasıyla uyumluluk arz etmektedir. Rabbani literatür başta olmak üzere Yahudi geleneğinin Miryam algısı ise ona üçüncü bir portre kazandırmaktadır. Midraş literatürün Miryam portresi, ölümünden hemen önce Tevrat’ın ondan aldığı saygınlığı iade çerçevesinde olup, onu diğer önemli anneler arasında görmek üzerine kuruludur. (shrink)

Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities presents a wide array of possible cities—cities whose composition turns on a productive ambiguity of their being described or invented by Marco Polo in his conversations with Kublai Khan. Implicit in this book is also a theory about how all possible cities are composed. The method turns on decomposing a city down to its basic elements and recomposing it in different ways through the imagination. I argue that there is a close affinity between Calvino’s (...) theory of fictional cities and Leibniz’s theory of possible worlds. The main similarity is that both theo­ries are combinatorial—they suppose that possibilities are produced by combination and variation of basic elements. The paper presents Leibniz’s theory of possibility in its metaphysical context and explores the similarity with Calvino’s cities in their literary context. I suggest that there is a rather strong relation between the theory of literary fiction implicit in Invisible Cities and Leibniz’s theory of possibility, in that both define the possible in terms of the conceivable. Indeed, Leibniz often refers to literary examples to substantiate his position, and I argue that this reveals an essential feature of his theory. (shrink)

Para muchos, el sujeto moderno se origina en la Reforma protestante. Si esto es así, deberíamos encontrar el embrión de estas ideas fundacionales en los textos políticos de Juan Calvino (1509-1564), reformador de Ginebra y padre de una de las corrientes principales del protestantismo. Sin embargo, frente al tópico, el lector encontrará en esta selección de escritos políticos, a un Calvino para quien Dios sigue siendo la fuente de toda autoridad, el pueblo carece de cualquier tipo de legitimidad (...) política y la Biblia ha de ser la fuente de inspiración moral y social. Sin embargo, su influencia es innegable en debates tan centrales para laposteridad como las disputas sobre el derecho de resistencia durante las guerras de religión en Francia, la tolerancia política en la Holanda del siglo XVII, o la vinculación entre libertad política y libertad de conciencia del siglo XVIII americano. Esta edición pretende poner en evidencia la complejidad del legado de Calvino. (shrink)

Este ensaio tem como objetivo afirmar a leitura e a escrita enquanto processo ativo tradutório, por meio da reimaginação do Texto de Partida As cidades invisíveis, redigido em 1972 pelo autor italiano Ítalo Calvino. O ensaio é tecido mediante a noção de fragmentos, tal como entendido por Tavares, em que a escrita se constitui como uma experimentação do pensamento. Toma como ponto de partida as pistas deixadas pelo viajante Marco Polo, na obra de Calvino, a qual foi lida (...) e reinventada pelos acadêmicos do Curso de Pedagogia de uma Instituição de Ensino Superior localizada no interior do Rio Grande do Sul. Um Roteiro de Procedimentos Escrileitores – escritura e leitura – das Cidades de Calvino foi disponibilizado aos estudantes, tendo como proposição mostrar nove regras, cujo objetivo consistiu em servir à operação tradutório-inventiva. A partir delas, os estudantes arriscaram uma leitura ativa e uma escritura viva, ou seja, uma escritura tradutória, que não visa à recuperação literal do texto, mas privilegia uma escrileitura inventiva e traduções-reinvenções. Como aporte teórico, o texto aproxima-se do pensamento da diferença, de Roland Barthes, de Gilles Deleuze, além das teorizações da tradução literária propostas por Haroldo de Campos. Trata-se de experimentar a prática da leitura e o ensaio da escrita gerando novas interpretações ao Texto de Partida. Nesse sentido, ler-e-escrever configuram-se como uma prática aberta, jamais definitiva e tampouco estática. Em síntese, o texto propõe defender que os Textos de Partida são sempre fisgados pelos processos tradutórios e, por isso, novamente reinventados via leitura e escrita em Textos de Chegada. Palavras-chave: Tradução. Recriação. Pedagogia. Educação. (shrink)

This article examines one of Italo Calvino’s most beloved novels, (1957), contextualizing it in its landscape and exploring the multifaceted strands of its environmental creativity. Unsuspected paths of political ecology, environmental history, and even biosemiotics and plant neurophysiology will emerge, thus showing the timeliness and clairvoyance of his books vis-à-vis our planetary crises. Written in a seminarrative form, this piece is an invitation to read literary works not only along with their landscapes, but their landscapes, and to consider the (...) potential of more-than-human stories for the shaping of our ethical-environmental imagination. (shrink)

This article examines one of Italo Calvino’s most beloved novels, (1957), contextualizing it in its landscape and exploring the multifaceted strands of its environmental creativity. Unsuspected paths of political ecology, environmental history, and even biosemiotics and plant neurophysiology will emerge, thus showing the timeliness and clairvoyance of his books vis-à-vis our planetary crises. Written in a seminarrative form, this piece is an invitation to read literary works not only along with their landscapes, but their landscapes, and to consider the (...) potential of more-than-human stories for the shaping of our ethical-environmental imagination. (shrink)

En este artículo nos proponemos reconstruir las bases de la teoría política calviniana. Intentaremos comprender cómo define el reformador al sujeto político de su teología, donde es definido como Pueblo de Dios. A través de una Teología de la Alianza Calvino establece los términos de un contrato político en el que las instituciones humanas son queridas y establecidas por Dios. A continuación, veremos que el Estado cristiano según Calvino es la plataforma desde la que se promueve el conocimiento (...) de la Voluntad divina, a través de la predicación y la positivación de leyes conformes a la misma. Finalmente, veremos que las ideas del reformador sobre la organización y la naturaleza de la política tuvieron en Ginebra una realización evidente. Ni sus textos ni sus acciones nos permiten calificar a Calvino de constitucionalista o republicano, sino más bien de hombre de orden y defensor de la tradición del derecho divino de los reyes. (shrink)

En el quinto centenario de su nacimiento, esta monografía ofrece una nueva interpretación de la teología política calviniana, analizando sus textos clave a la luz de los antecedentes conceptuales y de las circunstancias prácticas en que Calvino los escribió. Se analiza así el sentido político que originalmente tuvieron sus ideas sobre la predestinación, el voluntarismo divino, la interpretación bíblica, la ética protestante, la disciplina eclesiástica o la obediencia al príncipe cristiano. ¿De qué modo contribuyó el protestantismo a la Modernidad (...) secular? He aquí el interrogante que, a la luz de esos análisis, plantea este libro. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this paper I try to 'rethink' consistency as an educational quality for the 3rd millennium, following Italo Calvino's choice to take it up in his lecture series Memos for the Next Millennium, and despite the fact that the (final) lecture devoted to this quality remained unwritten. After reflecting on how consistency already plays a certain role in Calvino's other lectures, I expand on the specific educational implications of this role's unresolved ambivalence, in order to argue that this (...) ambivalence, properly understood, might be fully constitutive of the educational significance of consistency. To achieve such an understanding I turn to Gilles Deleuze and his concept of style as a 'practice' of consistency. Not only does a stylistic understanding of consistency offer interesting possibilities for a more constructive approach to the said ambivalence—between consistency as static stability and dynamic keeping-together- but as such it also speaks to a number of issues that are directly and fundamentally educational in nature. (shrink)

In den 1960er Jahren intensivierte der Schriftsteller Italo Calvino seine ästhetischen Bemühungen, „die Landkarte des labyrinthischen Gefängnisses zu umreißen, in dem sich der Mensch des 20. Jahrhunderts bewegt." Es ging ihm darum, mithilfe seiner Poetik biopolitische Dispositive der Welt zu entwirren. Dabei stellt die Erzählung La giornata d’uno Scrutatore die epistemologische Schwelle dar, an der Calvino auf die Widerstandskraft des Lebendigen stößt. Auf Basis dieses neuen Lebensbegriff entwarf er eine Vielzahl poetologischer Verfahren, um die Lebendigkeit der komplexen Welt (...) ästhetisch aufzubereiten, und eröffnete damit gezielt ethische Diskurse. Durch die bio-poetische Annäherung schlägt Calvino ein neues literarisches Modell vor, das vielfache Anschlussmöglichkeiten für aktuelle Diskurse bietet. Mit dem Fokus auf die poetische Kategorie des „Lebendigen" und das Foucault‘sche Konzept der „Bio-Macht" vollzieht der Band eine Neubewertung des Werkes und auch der Rolle Italo Calvinos als „Karthograph der Dispositive". (shrink)

This essay begins with the premise that Italo Calvino’s Memos serve as a fundamentally educational proposition. Each of his lectures can be regarded as a substantive proposal, encouraging a revaluation of our contemporary world through unconventional forms of knowledge, especially considering the challenges posed by the new millennium. The essay’s central objective is to further the intellectual movement initiated by Calvino, but with a specific focus on theorizing education. It aims not to simply apply Calvino’s principles and (...) insights to education or provide a pedagogical analysis but rather to actively engage with them, fostering educational-philosophical reflections centred around the concept of “lightness”, as identified by the Italian writer. Key questions emerge from this exploration: How can “lightness” be considered an educational quality? Can it serve as a valuable guide for navigating the complexities of contemporary education? Can the notion of “lightness” inspire the creation of new pedagogical languages that resist the instrumentalizing tendencies in education? The essay proceeds to elucidate Calvino’s primary theses on “lightness” while also examining the potential for a productive dialogue between Calvino and Richard Rorty’s ideas on irony, both in public and private dimensions. It illustrates how ironic practices, such as sarcasm, satire, and wit, conveyed through artistic expressions, can embody the essence of “lightness” that Calvino encourages. Ultimately, the essay concludes by reflecting on the pedagogical implications of embracing “lightness” in education, particularly in the affirmative/post-critical and Arendtian sense, as a means of bequeathing a world that genuinely belongs to future generations. (shrink)

This paper primarily aims at conceptualizing a new philosophical approach to literature education, one that we—in the vein of certain pedagogical trends—propose to call “thing-centered”. Point of departure is the ongoing confrontation with a two-sided educational problem: on the one hand, the confrontation with the steady decline of younger generations’ engagements with ‘classical’ literature; on the other hand, that with the unsatisfactory answers which either accept this development, in light of the world’s irresistible digitization, or try overcoming it through a (...) more student-centered, ‘biographical’ appropriation of literature. Beyond the more immediate didactical difficulties which this two-fold problem poses, we ask ourselves the question whether it is not time for a more fundamental renewal of our understanding of literature’s contemporary educational significance. In answering this question, for which we turn to such diverse authors as Rousseau, Deleuze and Calvino, it is argued that if education is to continue its care for both classical literacy and literary classics—and not so much against as in relation to ascending digital literacies—a more radically immanent, thing-centered perspective is likely to prove the most sustainable, in the sense of enabling truly new, ‘care-ful’ literary-educational practices to emerge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Participation and Immersion in Walton and CalvinoM. Carleton SimpsonThe novel begins in a railway station, a locomotive huffs, steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud of smoke hides part of the first paragraph... The pages of the book are clouded like the windows of an old train, the cloud of smoke rests on the sentences.1Part of Kendall Walton's theory of psychological participation, explicated in (...) Mimesis as Make-Believe, is that representations that display or draw attention to their fictionality discourage participation; part of our enjoyment of representational art is our psychological participation with the representation. The activity of participating comprises the game world, while the material representation comprises the work world. We play games of make-believe with representations, much as children play games with toys or other props. For Walton, the fullest psychological participation arises from the fullest immersion in the game world. Immersion means ignoring or being unaware of the materiality of the work world, attending only to the fictional reality of the work world. It is to "look past" the painted surface, or to become engrossed in the novel's narrative.To the extent that we consider the material of the work, we are distracted from participating in the game prescribed by the work: we do either the one or the other. So, Walton claims "One obvious way in which works sometimes discourage participation is by prominently declaring or displaying their fictionality, betraying their own pretense" (p. 275).2 For example, "The conspicuous brush strokes of Van Gogh's Starry Night call attention to themselves and to their record of the process by which paint was applied to the canvas, possibly intruding on the viewer's participation in his game... One can ignore the brush [End Page 321] strokes enough to lose oneself in the fictional world" (p. 277). In response to prodding by Patrick Maynard, Walton tempers this position: "Prominent brush strokes, as in many of Vincent van Gogh's paintings, can have an inhibiting effect, especially if the observer isn't used to such. Then they not only constitute a plain indication that what one is seeing is a mere painted canvas, but force this fact on the viewer's attention" (italics added).3Ernst Gombrich endorsed this position in Art and Illusion, attributing it to Kenneth Clark.4 Gombrich tells of Clark attempting to see both the brush strokes and the representation, and his failure to "observe what went on when the brush strokes and dabs of pigment on the canvas transformed themselves into a vision of transfigured reality as he stepped back" (p. 6). Walton intends his theory of psychological participation to be widely applicable to the representational arts; he argues that what holds for visual representations holds also for verbal representations. When reading a novel our ability to participate in the story is diminished to the extent the novel draws attention to its fictionality. We either immerse ourselves in the fictional world of the novel or attend to the historical production or materiality of the novel.Attending is contained in Walton's notion of appreciation. Appreciation without participation results when some representations "positively discourage participation, especially the psychological participation that would constitute the experience of being caught up in the story" (p. 274). Works like these employ a variety of strategies, "deliberately 'distancing' the appreciator from the fictional world... For if one does not imagine a proposition, it is unlikely to be fictional that one knows or believes it; and if one imagines it with minimal vivacity, one is unlikely to have the experience of fictionally being concerned or upset or relieved or frightened or overjoyed by the fact that it is true" (p. 274). Just as children imagine themselves to be participants in games of make-believe, more mature imaginings require us to imagine we are participants, not simply observers. Reflexive imagining is central to Walton's theory, and is a point he extensively develops.I argue against this disjunction of activities. My thesis is that participation need not arise from immersion at the expense of awareness. I am also critical of Walton's distinction between appreciation and participation—they are... (shrink)

The subject of “The Other”, the different one always generated conflicts more or less serious in the history of humanity, without proposals of any resolution. In the measure in that The Other questions, by similitude or by difference, the identity in which the subject is sustained, that questioning make unstable that precarious construction, and because of this, it converts itself in the opposer. In this study, we will find, in the text of Il Visconte Dimezzato by Italo Calvino, the (...) subject of the Otherness/Alterity, analyzing from the semiotic point of view the reactions and behaviors of each one of the two characters and of the members of the society in which they live. The starting point of the story by Italo Calvino is that in a war between Austria and the Turks, the Viscount Medardo di Terralba as a consequence of a canon shot remains divided vertically into two halves and both halves survive. One of the two halves is very bad and the other is very good. Each one of the two halves sees in the other one “The Other”, feeling itself “The One” but incomplete and desiring to turn to be “The Same” as it was before being divided by the canon shot. (shrink)