http://hdl.handle.net/11320/9312 2026-06-01T16:28:48Z http://hdl.handle.net/11320/9317 Tytuł: Archibald Alison, landscape painting, nature poetry and the landscape of the mind Autorzy: Oracz, Marta Abstrakt: The subject of this article is the landscape of the mind. At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in landscape painting and in nature poetry, the surrounding nature became an insignificant element of the artist’s or poet’s work, acting only as a trigger for introspection. In landscape painting, nature was supposed to express emotional states. The viewer was to embark on a mood suggested by the painting and immerse himself/herself in contemplation of his or her internal states. In nature poetry, such as William Wordsworth’s Prelude, the vision of nature was subjective: its colouring was an effect of projection of the emotions of the speaker in the poem, it was a reflection of the landscape of his mind. The theoretical context to be used in this essay for the discussion of the landscape of the mind in landscape painting and nature poetry is the aesthetic theory of Archibald Alison. 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11320/9316 Tytuł: The city vs. the country: A climate of anti-urbanism in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton Autorzy: Kiersnowska, Beata Abstrakt: This paper aims to discuss a contrast between the city and the country in Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell’s first novel. By juxtaposing negative images of early-Victorian Manchester with positive descriptions of rural life and scenery, Gaskell reveals an anti-urban attitude prevalent among a large section of the cultivated middle and upper class. In Mary Barton, nature is an agent of creating an atmosphere of nostalgia for the simple and pure rural world that is disappearing, giving way to a hostile and brutal reality of industrial cities. Strong bonds and human inter-reliance marking rural communities are replaced by aggregation and alienation of human beings in the city. Living in a human-made environment dominated by machine technology of industrial processes, some characters in the novel try to reconnect with the natural world by cultivating rural traditions or seeking in the country an escape from the dreariness of urban existence. Numerous references to nature and its importance for the novel’s characters are a testimony to its ideological significance to Victorian society and an apprehension of unbridled urbanisation. 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11320/9315 Tytuł: Lexical networks between sounds and meanings in Taiwan Mandarin: Evidence from psycholinguistics Autorzy: Tseng, Tzu-Yi Abstrakt: The present study aims to provide an outline of lexical networks between sounds and meanings in Taiwan Mandarin. Both the phonological and semantic relations are explored by a free word association task. Previous research has demonstrated a significant influence of phonology on Indo-European networks and suggested the influence of semantics on languages with lexicography such as Mandarin. With a new methodology in which word frequency, syllable type, syllable structure, tone structure, imageability, and parts of speech are carefully considered for the experimental stimuli, a total of 248 responses were collected from six Taiwan Mandarin native speakers. The results of lexical associations suggest that: 1) semantic relations show a stronger connection than phonological ones in Taiwan Mandarin networks; 2) rhymes present a stronger influence on associations than initial segments. The understanding of lexical organization in the human brain may contribute to further research on functions of associations and networks between human and artificial intelligence. 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11320/9314 Tytuł: Annual Company Reports’ narratives migrate to the Web: A diachronic perspective Autorzy: Giglioni, Cinzia Abstrakt: Despite the dramatic innovation brought about in the field of corporate communication by the advent of the World Wide Web, when it comes to annual company reports (ACRs), companies seem to introduce few innovative digital elements in the drafting and formatting of the narrative sections. The present study, as the last step of a long-term research project, aimed at investigating this genre from a diachronic point of view by concentrating on the transformations that ACRs’ corporate narratives undergo once they migrate to the Web. Two standpoints emerge: the first sees companies that are highly engaged in the digital environment take advantage of several digital tools at once, while the second proposes a slightly less technological approach whereby simple ACRs in pdf format are uploaded on the company website therefore lacking the most interactive functions. While radical changes in the presentation of ACRs’ narratives between 2000 and 2018 cannot be traced, some companies have decided to deal with such narratives by reporting either the complete narrative or its synthesis. 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z