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INKYTEXT 341
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Issue No 341 Sunday March 12th 2000
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Editorial correspondence should be sent to InkyText@lancaster.ac.uk
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AGENDA
Minutes and Matters Arising
1. The Funeral of Dr Davina Chaplin
2. News: Birth, Retirement, Visual Arts TQA, Chemistry High Noon, Student
Elections and Referenda, Making Professor, Roz Marks.
3. Tips for would-be Proustians (IV).
4. NEW FEATURE: On-going Research - New Managerialism, New Labour.
5. Readers' Letters: Cumbria, David Hall, Frogs.
6. Small Ads: Accommodation wanted, Renault Clio, Berlin, ELT Teaching Jobs.
MINUTES AND MATTERS ARISING
---------------------------
For "AMEC" read "MACE"
For "collective memory" read "associative memory".
Maurice Slawinski's History Seminar on Courtliness in the Italian
renaissance is on Tuesday.
1. THE FUNERAL OF DR DAVINA CHAPLIN
-----------------------------------
Mrs Chaplin, who has been awarded her Ph.D posthumously, died suddenly
at home in the early hours of Thursday 2nd March. She was 55. Her
funeral took place in St Wilfrid's Halton on Friday, a mild but grey
and windy day when the rain mercifully held off until after the
committal.
Bob and Davina came to Lancaster in 1976, when Davina was appointed
lecturer in Italian Studies, the department of which she later became
head. When they were married in 1966 they had agree a change of roles
every 10 years. Happily, in 1986 they decided to stay on in Lancaster,
though a few years later Davina decided it was time to change career
and left the university, initially to follow a course in broadcast
journalism. She later seemed to find a real nich in Tourism at UCLAN.
Appropriately there was a full-house in the ancient church for a
thoughful service conducted by the vicar, the Rev Linda Macluskie. An
address by her best friend from teacher training college in Bedford
succinctly captured her energetic, fun-loving and forceful character.
Tony Hindle of Lancaster Footlights also spoke, highlighting her love
of the theatre and her innumerable stage performances and productions.
The Regent Singers, with whom she had been rehearsing, sang a touching
anthem by John David called This is the New Day. Her mother was present
and the Vicar shared some of her memories of Davina's childhood in
Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex, her student days at Reading where she met
her future husband on the Rag Committee. The Vicar pointed out that
scarcely two months ago the family had also been present in the church
for the baptism of her grand-child, Louis.
A large cortege followed the coffin on foot to the modern burial
ground, high above the village and next to the motorway.
At the graveside, thanking the vicar, Dr Bob Chaplin, strong and
placid as ever, spoke with feeling, saying he had only three words for
the mourners, which he wanted to address particularly to married
couples amongst them: "Listen. Remember. Cherish."
She appears on the Channel 4 game show "Fifteen to One" on Monday
afternoon 13th March (it was recorded some time ago), and the Morecambe
Warblers production of Half A Sixpence, which she was directing, goes
ahead at the end of the month. Mourners were also invited to attend
Bach's B Minor Mass in the Great Hall on Saturday, in which Davina had
declined to take part because of other commitments, but would have
attended.
[PERSONAL NOTE: I last saw Davina in The Venue a month or two ago, on
the day she handed in her Ph.D thesis. She was particularly happy to
get that weight off her mind and sat for a capuccino, telling me about
her research into the sociology of British 2nd home ownership in
France. She also told me that she had just become a grandmother, and
that her younger daughter, Heidi, was assisting in a research project
in Education. She filled me in on gossip and scandal from UCLAN, a
topic on which she held strong opinions. In return I tried to satisfy
her curiosity about locals. Then she had to zoom off for a swim and
numerous other commitments. I was again reminded of Shirley Conran's
Superwoman. (Ed.)]
2. NEWS
-------
CONGRATULATIONS AND BEST WISHES TO PHIL AND LISA CROSS (Independent
Studies) on the birth of Emily.
BEST WISHES TO DAVID HALL who has retired after many years as
University House porter. [See Readers' Letters]
MANY CONGRATULATIONS TO VISUAL ARTS on yet another 23/24 in TQA. Some
minor drama was involved when the Safety Officer was asked to attend
the audit at one hour's notice and to comment on the safety of workshop
equipment. The auditors appeared not to be aware of relevant legal
requirements and British Standards, or to be looking for something that
far exceeded them. Happily a magisterial survey by the Safety Officer
of the law and the facts arrived next morning to blast their objections
out of the water. Congrats all round.
HIGH NOON FOR CHEMISTRY came at 12.00 on Friday when all parties were
due to assemble with representatives from Sheffield and Lancaster to
sign their new contracts simultaneously. Things seem to have gone ahead
satisfactorily.
HOW TO BE A PROFESSOR is the subject of a half-day course organised by
HEDEC as part of its Equal Opps brief. All women academics have been
invited and the response has been massive. Departments have also been
circulated and men are welcome. We seem to have currently six or seven
women professors, most of whom it is hoped will take part.
STUDENTS' UNION ELECTIONS: Congratulations to the winners:
President - Huw Owen
Scan Editor - Rory Daly
AU President - Gemma Timmons
Womens Officer - Naomi Woodward
Ed & Welfare - Trish McGrath
Gen Sec - Sam Mitchell
The student body just voted to keep the position of Sabbatical Women's
Officer by 1461 votes to 850(ish). The current woman's officer Lou Edge
was quoted as feeling "smug". (And why not?) The results for the
refendum on splitting the post of sabbatical Education and Welfare
officer into two was also carried by 1436 votes to 750. However the
constitution demands that at least 1500 people vote in favour of an
option before the constitution can be changed. So we keep the status
quo for the time being, though no doubt there will be grumbling.
ROZ MARKS, the Blair's former nanny, is a teacher-training student at
St Martin's and currently doing her teaching practice at a primary
shool in Blackpool. She lives with her mother and brother in Crofter's
Fold, Galgate, the new housing development next to the Mill, which was
besieged by the national press for most of the week.
3. TIPS FOR WOULD BE PROUSTIANS (IV)
------------------------------------
Don't panic. The reason I'm spending so long on Combray, the first
third of the first volume of Proust's novel, is because so much of it
is crucial to what happens in volume 8 (the film) and is taken up again
there as he wistfully recalls how things used to be.
But warning: lots of people are going to be bored by the 2 hr 38
minute film. Critics in France and elsewhere have in their majority
quibbled and been condescending, giving it only 3 stars out of 4.
Utterly ill-informed of course, and just showing their own ignorance.
And it didn't win anything at the Cannes festival. Audience response on
the web, very like the earliest reactions to Proust's novel. has also
been decidedly iffy, with many people (perhaps understandably) bored
and lost.
You are already better placed than they. PERSEVERE (motto of Leith).
At least everyone admits that it's a wonderful costumed spectacle and
period piece, and there is some virtuoso violin playing towards the
end. (Hope someone in music is going to be able to identify it for us.
The original music for the film is composed by Jorge Arriagada but
there is surely something famous here as well.)
The remainder of Combray, then, introduces us to the characters who
are going to be lengthily developed later and most of whom re-appear in
Time Regained, if only as memories. First the family and household. The
stern and distant father of course, and the adored and too indulgent
mother. In a wonderful passage at the end of Combray he points out that
there may be wiser, kinder, more beautiful mothers than our own, but no
one would swap their's for another, our own is the only one we want or
weep for.
The querulous and sickly nosy aunt who spies on everyone in the
village all day long is a vintage old maid. And don't forget Uncle
Adolphe, whom he visited once as a boy and found entertaining 'une dame
en rose' whom we (and he) later recognize as Odette in grand courtesan
mode. (We see that scene recalled in the film.)
We meet the devoted but sadistic family retainer, Francoise, so
jealous of the kitchen maid whom Swann thought looked like Giotto's
Charity in the Arena chapel, that when she discovered the poor girl was
allergic to asparagus, she made the family eat it one entire summer.
Another ferociously loyal and protective servant, Celeste Albaret (real
name!) took over in later life, and it is she whom we see at the start
of the film.
Above all we meet Charles Swann, the amusing and immensely cultured
connoisseur, who constantly finds echoes of works of art in the world
around him, sees people through a haze of artistic associations. Swann
has acquired a tolerance and wisdom now that he is out of love, and
becomes a kind of mentor for the narrator's artistic ambitions. Alas,
he himself is a mere aesthete, not a creator, precisely what the
narrator himself would have remained had he not late in life discovered
the secret of Time Regained.
Gilberte Swann he first sees playing in the garden at Swann's and
falls in love instantly, aged about 7 to 9. Besides, she knows his
hero, the writer Bergotte. He is alas not allowed by his parents to
play with her, because her mother is unmentionable, but later meets her
for real in her teens when they play together in Paris in the gardens
of the Champs-Elysees. (Down by the Rond-Point and on past the palace
along Avenue Gabriel to Concorde. There's a stamp market. The same
gardens figured in a Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn film whose title I've
forgotten. Charade?)
Then there's Bloch, his eccentric Jewish friend. Being part-Jew
himself Proust could joke about Jewishness but was enemy of the then
widespread antisemitism in French society and on the side of the angels
in the Dreyfus affair, for example. His grandfather once jokingly
accuses him of having ONLY Jewish friends.
In Combray, Bloch is a romantic idealist and dreamer, a believer in
art for art's sake who never notices trivial things like whether it's
raining or not. Swann, who always looks for life imitating art, says he
looks like Bellini's portrait of Mahomet II. By the time of the
hilarious scene in the film the successful and ambitious journalist has
changed his name to conceal his Jewishness and get ahead.
We even catch a first glimpse of Baron Charlus (John Malkovich in the
film), an extraordinary figure, aesthete, wit, arch-snob and close
friend of Swann. Charlus is younger brother of Basin, the Duc de
Guermantes, and bluest of blue bloods. In Combray people assume him to
be a lover of Odette. Swann however knows he has no fears on that
score, since Charlus tastes lie elsewhere. But he doesn't have any
illusions about his wife either, whom he no longer loves.
Most importantly the narrator at least drops the names of his artistic
gurus. He'll get to know most of them personally later: Elstir the
painter (a mixture of Monet and Paul Helleu), Bergotte the writer
(Anatole France and Bergson), and Vinteuil the musician (Faure,
Saint-Saens). Also the totally revered actress La Berma (Sarah
Bernhardt), later to be competed with by younger beauties, including
Rachel whom we see in the film.
Vinteuil is even linked to the village, because there is a poor
music-teacher of that name who has recently died. His parents know of
the composer and wonder if he can be any relation, never suspecting
that they are the same person. Vinteuil's quartet and violin sonata,
the narrator later learns, played a crucial part in Swann's love affair
with Odette de Crecy, becoming 'their' tune, the 'national anthem of
their love' as the narrator puts it. Especially one theme in it which
Swann and the narrator always refer to as 'la petite phrase'.
Vinteuil's daughter also introduces the darker themes of the novel.
Spying voyeuristically through Vinteuil's window at Montjouvain, the
child narrator saw the daughter having a lesbian romp with a friend in
front of her dead father's portrait, and giggling at the thought of
what daddy would say if he could see them now. This sacrilege against
the dead disgusts him.
The boy wanted to become a writer, and first learned of his heroes
through hearing adults talk about them. Once he himself tried to write
a piece about this intense happiness he sometimes felt, when looking at
the hawthorn blossom on Swann's Way, for example. While being bounced
and shaken in a cart as it bobbed around the twisty country roads near
Martinville, he had the impression that the three steeples of the local
churches were changing position, that they were dancing. Struck by this
original idea he tried to write it down as a metaphor and shows the
piece to a visitor, M de Norpois, a stuffy diplomat, who smiles
dismissively at it and reminds him in a superior way that serious
literature is a matter of lofty thoughts and ideas. The boy agrees but
his disappointment is damning to his ambitions, and it is not until the
end of Time Regained that he will rediscover his 'duty'.
Then there's Legrandin, an engineer from Paris who spends the weekends
in his cottage in Combray, another immense snob who doesn't realise he
is one.
Lots of other characters don't really 'appear' in Combray, but their
names are mentioned there as a marker and to show something of the
relationships between them. We'll get to know them well in later
volumes, where they are often first revered and eventually mercilessly
satirized as the narrator serves his apprenticeship in the ways of high
society, and learns its codes and hypocrisies.
Once, bow deeply, we even see the Duchesse, as she attends an event in
the village church. The narrator queues up to rubber-neck... but
doesn't see her, only a dowdy and rather plump middle-aged woman with a
pimple on her nose. A descendent of Genevieve de Brabant surely
couldn't be fat and have pimples? Oh yes, she could.
He ends this Wagnerian (his word) overture by reminding us that he
often lay awake recalling these distant events on sleepless nights...
and by association of a story told to him later of a love affair Swann
had been involved in before he was born....
Someone once pointed out that Proust's novel is really a Parisian
novel, and his society is the beau monde of the belle-epoque, at a time
when the war and democratization are about to introduce radical
changes. He meets the same people everywhere. Thus Combray is Paris in
the country, Balbec (Cabourg in Normandy) is Paris at the seaside,
Venice is Paris in Italy, but mostly Paris is just Paris. That's where
we're going to go next.
4. ON-GOING RESEARCH
--------------------
THE NEW MANAGERIALISM AND THE MANAGEMENT OF UK UNIVERSITIES is a major
research project led by Prof Deem, with Oliver Fulton, Rachel Johnson,
Mike Reed and Stephen Watson. This 127K ESRC funded project reports
this autumn. It has three aims:
a) to explore the attitudes and perceptions of manager-academics from
a range of institutions and subject-backgrounds about the extent to
which new managerialism (emphasising efficiency and effectiveness
inspired by the private sector) has permeated universities (and how we
react to it!).
(b) to look at the actual practices and values of manager-academics
(and how they describe them) in particular institutions
and also to examine how manager-academics are selected and supported.
(c) to explore how management practices and strategies are embedded in
organisational cultures, including gendered cultures.
Towards this end, researchers have interviewed a large number of VCs
and other senior officers in a variety of institutions. Their
uncensored findings should be unputdownable reading.
NEW LABOUR, NEW LANGUAGE by Norman Fairclough (Linguistics) is a
severe and exceptionally lucid critique of New Labour and its policies
through a close analysis of the language and rhetoric employed by Tony
Blair and his spin doctors. It is also by implication a critique of the
Professor Giddens' 'third way'. Professor Fairclough's radicalism may
have mellowed into wisdom over recent decades, but the fire is still
there.
The book isn;t officially published till later this week, but
Waterstone's copies have been going rapidly. Expect major reviews in
the national press (the Telegraph has already carried an article by
Norman, no doubt on the principle 'the enemy of my enemy is my
friend').
The blurb says:
"Norman Fairclough deconstructs the language of New Labour and the
political discourse of the Third Way to understand what is hidden
behind the words. Demonstrating just how essential language and
language analysis is to the understanding of politics, Fairclough
examines a wide range of political speeches and texts. These include
Blair's speech following the death of Diana, the 1997 Labour Party
Manifesto, Bill Clinton's book "Between Hope and History", interviews
with John Prescott and documents on welfare reform and education.
Written in a clear style and including a comprehensive glossary, "The
Language of New Labour" should appeal to anyone interested in language
or politics."
It even makes an excellent popular introduction to linguistic
pragmatics.
5. READERS' LETTERS
-------------------
It was interesting and 'collegiate' to find the letter from Mike
Milne-Picken, Head of Planning & Performance Review, University of
Central Lancashire.
It does seem that although we do/have done a great deal to encompass
the needs of Cumbria (in schools telecomms systems for example), we had
not seen Cumbria as an important local region to support. Lancaster
University failed to gain the University status for the new 'campus' in
Carlisle which was taken by the now 'University of Northumbria'. We
don't have campuses in Penrith, Kendal or Barrow created by the new
university institute in Preston..
As a child brought up in Cumbria (and now an 'honoured member of
Lancaster University') I feel that Lancaster missed (some years ago) a
great opportunity to serve a region on its doorstep - but it needed to
have taken that initiative 10 years ago. Can it get back to be a player
in this region? ;-(((
As Mike Milne-Picken wrote: "While Lancaster U is a member of HEFCE's
AGHEC (Advisory Group on HE in Cumbria), they did not participate in
the bid for additional places."
I wonder why? Sadly,
Professor R. LEWIS
Knowledge Technology Research Unit,
-----------------------------
Dear Colleagues and Friends
I would like to thank you all for your good wishes, gifts, cards, etc.
and the "surprise" get together last Friday on the occasion of my
retirement. I was University House Porter for almost 23 years, in fact
the whole of my service at the University and have had contact with
many people during that time. I am unable to thank everyone personally
but I hope that this short note will help to show my appreciation of
your kind thoughts and good wishes. Thank you.
David Hall
---------------------------
Our dried-out pond has come back to life after the recent heavy rain
and has been colonised by a plague of frogs. Whilst not quite biblical
in its proportions, there must well over thirty in a fairly small
space. The actual number is difficult to ascertain as they won't stay
still while I try to count, troilism rules OK and many of the others
are clamped together, doing, I guess, what comes naturally to a frog at
this time of year.
So all this poses 4 questions:
Where have they all come from, as we rarely saw one in the garden previously?
How did they know there was water in the pond again?
How long can a frog hold its breath under water? (At the slightest
movement, they all disappear and my frog-watching patience runs out
before they surface again.)
Can anyone offer some of them a home before the pond is transformed
into a huge sago pudding?
Any help would be much appreciated. Call me on Lancaster 64053 or
email JClarke783@aol.com
Judith Clarke
------------------------------------
Is the text of Professor Denver's lecture available to the
disappointed public unable to attend?
Angela Bolton
[NOTE: You'd need to ask Prof Denver, but the university publishes all
inaugurals eventually. (Ed)]
---------------------------
6. SMALL ADS
------------
ACCOMMODATION wanted (or exchange) Accommodation wanted for a month in
January 2001 for an Anglo-Spanish family (Kate Gass, Environmental
Sciences graduate of 20 years ago or so) and Spanish husband and 2
children, now living in northern Spain (and earning their living
playing Cantabrian and Irish traditional music). A house with at least
2 bedrooms within 20 mins walk from Dallas Rd School would be ideal.
(And neighbours who like Spanish bagpipes would be good). Would either
pay money or exchange for similar accomm. in Cabezon, 10 minutes from
the sea and 40 mins or so from Santander in Northern Spain. Contact
Fiona Frank, x92901/381263 or f.frank@lancaster.ac.uk in the first
instance.
-------------
CAR FOR SALE Renault Clio Auto K reg, 60000 miles, 12 months tax, long
MOT, 4000 or near offer. Fiona Frank - f.frank@lancaster.ac.uk,
x92901/381263.
-------------
LANCASTER CIVIC SOCIETY
The Society's March meeting will be a talk entitled
BERLIN
-the making of a capital
by
JIM GARBETT
Wednesday 15 March 2000
7:30pm
Lancaster Town Hall
All members of the public are welcome to attend
Non-members contribution 1.00
---------
PROFESSOR ROBERT SEGAL (Department of Religious Studies) will deliver
his inaugural lecture, entitled "Myth as Make-Believe" on Wednesday 22
March 2000. The event will take place in the Faraday Lecture Theatre at
6.00 pm. Staff, students and members of the general public are most
welcome.
------------
STUDENTS FOR PRACTICAL TRAINING WANTED
We are an education company, under our company we have several
institutions, and we are seeking for students who would like to have
international experiences. The task of the trainees will be teaching
English in China, Russia, Taiwan and Costa Rica.
The students must:
1. have English as their native language
2. teach English
3. be responsible
4. pay for the travel costs between the place of residence and the
place of practical training
5. have a health and accident insurance valid for the country of
practical training
We offer:
1. contacts with the firms offering practical training position at
free of charge
2. free accommodation (except Costa Rica)
3. pick-up services between the airport and the firm
4. free language courses of the country of residence
Interested? Please send application, curriculum vitae, copy of your
passport and personal I.D. to:
Mr. Andy Chen
Postfach 4247
D-39106 Magdeburg
Germany
Tel + Fax: +49-391-5432831
E-Mail: boulevard_international@yahoo.com
----------
STILL MORE PROUST NEXT TIME