The first of eight volumes of Hopkins's Collected Works to be published, Oxford Essays and Notes presents a remarkable cache of previously unpublished papers, including forty-five essays which Hopkins produced during his undergraduate career at Oxford, only seven of which were reproduced in the 1959 edition of Journals and Papers. Topics range from Platonic philosophy to theories of the imagination, from ancient history to then-contemporary politics and voting rights. Also included are notes from a commonplace book, a remarkable 'dialogue' about (...) aesthetics, and the lecture notes Hopkins prepared in the winter of 1868 while teaching at John Henry Newman's Oratory School in Birmingham-writings in which he explores, for the first time, the theories of inscape and instress so central to his poetic practice. The edition is fully annotated and provides a detailed introduction that situates historically Hopkins's academic and creative efforts.The twelve notebooks represent Hopkins's intellectual and aesthetic development while studying with some of the greatest scholars of the era, as well as the ethical and spiritual anxieties he wrestled with while deciding to convert to Catholicism. Hopkins never wrote to please his tutors or the university professors-he wrote vividly and searchingly in response to the challenges they presented. Whether evaluating Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the role of 'neutral' England in the American civil war, or the comparative merits of classical sculpture, his first instinct was always to frame the difficult questions involved and work towards a 'counter' argument. (shrink)

"Cult of ugliness," Ezra Pound’s phrase, powerfully summarizes the ways in which modernists such as Pound, T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, and T. E. Hulme—the self-styled "Men of 1914"—responded to the "horrid or sordid or disgusting" conditions of modernity by radically changing aesthetic theory and literary practice. Only the representation of "ugliness," they protested, would produce the new, truly "beautiful" work of art. They dissociated the beautiful from its traditional embodiment in female beauty, and from its association with Walter Pater (...) and Oscar Wilde. Their cultivation of ugliness displaced misogyny and homophobia. Higgins takes in texts such as John Ruskin’s art criticism, Eliot’s literary journalism, Lewis’s pro-fascism pamphlets, and the poetry of Pound, Conrad Aiken, and Langston Hughes. She demonstrates that even vigorous champions of beauty were committed to aesthetic practices that disempowered female figures in order to articulate new truths of male artistic mastery. (shrink)

Directors rate integrity as having the greatest impact on successful Board performance. Yet, no shared meaning exists about what integrity means because it is dependent on one's personal values. This paper builds on research into integrity and top teams by investigating how integrity varies by director's personal values and implications for the Board agenda. It will explore how executives' and directors' definitions of integrity are based on their values, beliefs and underlying needs. Data from UK society was collected from 500 (...) UK adults, aged 18 and over. Results of the research found that definitions of integrity vary by ones value system. Implications include that what director's mean by integrity differs substantially from other employees with different values. Recommendations include re-focusing the Board agenda on issues that resonate with the director's personal values. A passionate Board requires integrity plus action; action without integrity equals indifference. (shrink)