Mali Business Intelligence Report (World Business Intelligence Report Library)

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Mali Business Intelligence Report (World Business Intelligence Report Library)
USA International Business Publications
Manufacturer: International Business Publications, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
ASIN: 0739726048

Book Description

This report contains business intelligence information for succesful export-import, business and investment operations, strategic contacts and more... The report also contains selected information on investment and business opportunities, international economic projects, tenders, government projects, as well as, marketing and export-import opportunities information.

Book Description

Museum-hop in Zurich, ski the famous Alps, visit picturesque Swiss villages, or dine at exquisite restaurants – Fodor's Switzerland, 44th Edition offers all these experiences and more! Our local writers have traveled throughout the country to find the best hotels, restaurants, attractions and activities to prepare you for a journey of stunning variety. Before you leave for your trip be sure to pack your Fodor's guide to ensure you don't miss a thing.

The San Francisco Chronicle sums it up best –"Fodor's guides are saturated with information."

- We frequently update our Switzerland guide, and we make every effort to bring you the most accurate and thorough book. Plus we provide timely updates about the area at Fodors.com.
- Unlike other travel books, Fodor's guides rely heavily on local experts who know the territory best–so you know you're seeing the real Switzerland.
- We give you the planning tools you need to tailor your trip. We give options for all budgets. You make the choices.

Customer Reviews:

Great Walking Tours of the Cities.......2007-06-08

If you like doing your own walking tours of cities, this book has many detailed itineraries. Also good on logistics, like getting in to town from the airport.

Switzerland '98: The Complete Guide with Mountain Drives, Alpine Hikes and City Walking Tours (Fodor's Gold Guides)

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Switzerland '98: The Complete Guide with Mountain Drives, Alpine Hikes and City Walking Tours (Fodor's Gold Guides)
Fodor's
Manufacturer: Fodor's
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

Switzerland | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

Guidebooks | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Travel Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 0679035400
Release Date: 1997-10-28

Book Description

The best guide to Switzerland, updated every year
Back-road tours over Alpine passes and through valleys to medieval villages, tidy farm towns, and mountain resorts
Riverside strolls and city walks to squares and fountains, landmark bridges, cathedrals, clocktowers, and museums
Summer sports, nightlife, and shopping from toys to watches

Where to stay and eat, no matter what your budget
Sleek modern hotels, family-run inns, Victorian mountain chalets, and patrician manses--from glitzy to gemütlich
Chic restaurants, wood-beamed stübliand beerhalls, French bistros, Italian grotti, aprés-ski spots, and cafés with a view

Fresh, thorough, practical--off and on the beaten path
Costs, hours, descriptions, and tips by the thousands
All reviews based on visits by our savvy writers

41 pages of maps, 33 vacation itineraries, and more
Important contacts and smart travel tips
Fodor's Choice
What's Where
Pleasures & Pastimes
Festivals
Essays on Swiss cheese, soldiers, hiking, and skiing
Videos
Complete index
And more!

FD SWITZERLAND 1985 (Fodor's Switzerland)

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FD SWITZERLAND 1985 (Fodor's Switzerland)
Fodor's
Manufacturer: Fodor's
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Switzerland | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0679011579
Release Date: 1984-10-12

FD SWITZERLAND 1986 (Fodor's Switzerland)

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FD SWITZERLAND 1986 (Fodor's Switzerland)
Fodor's
Manufacturer: Fodor's
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Switzerland | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0679012796
Release Date: 1985-09-12

Fodor Switzerland-1984 (Fodor's Switzerland)

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Fodor Switzerland-1984 (Fodor's Switzerland)
Fodors
Manufacturer: Fodor's Travel Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Switzerland | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0679010416

Fodor's How to Stay Healthy and Fit While Traveling (Fodor's Switzerland)

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Fodor's How to Stay Healthy and Fit While Traveling (Fodor's Switzerland)
Fodor's
Manufacturer: Fodor's
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Switzerland | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0679008314
Release Date: 1982-01-12

Fodor's Switzerland 1955 (fodor's Modern Guides)

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Fodor's Switzerland 1955 (fodor's Modern Guides)
Fodor's Travel Publications
Manufacturer: Fodor Modern Guides
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Switzerland | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000KU9U2E

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Fodor's Switzerland 1969
Eugene Fodor
Manufacturer: David McKay Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000L3FUI8

FODOR'S SWITZERLAND 1977 -Including Lichtenstein.

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FODOR'S SWITZERLAND 1977 -Including Lichtenstein.
EUGENE FODOR
Manufacturer: DAVID McKAY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000LE3CBY

Fodor's Switzerland 2000: Expert Advice and Smart Choices, Completely Updated Every Year, Plus a Full-Size Color Map (Fodor's Switzerland)

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Fodor's Switzerland

Fodor's Switzerland 2000: Expert Advice and Smart Choices, Completely Updated Every Year, Plus a Full-Size Color Map (Fodor's Switzerland)
Fodor's
Manufacturer: Fodor's
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

Liechtenstein | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

Switzerland | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

Guidebooks | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0679003452
Release Date: 1999-11-02

Book Description

"Fodor's guides are always a pleasure." - The Chicago Tribune

"Teeming with maps and loaded with addresses, phone numbers, and directions." - Newsday

Experienced and first-time travelers alike rely on Fodor's Gold Guides for rich, reliable coverage the world over. Updated each year and containing a foldout Rand McNally map, a Fodor's Gold Guide is an essential tool for any kind of traveler. If only you had one guide, this is the guide for you.

Let the world's smartest guide enrich your trip
Vivid descriptions evoke what makes Switzerland unique - Local experts show you the special places - Thorough updating keeps you on track - Practical information gives you the tools to explore - Easy-to-use format puts it all at your fingertips

Choose among many hotels and restaurants in all price categories
Stay in Victorian mountain chalets, family-run inns, sleek modern hotels - Dine in pine-paneled Stübli, chic French bistros, rustic Italian grotti - Check out hundreds of detailed reviews and learn what's distinctive about each place

Mix and match our itineraries and discover the unexpected
Savvy advice helps you decide where to go and when - City walks lead you to stunning cathedrals, historic squares, and fascinating museums - Driving itineraries guide you through Alpine passes, medieval villages, and hillside vineyards - Find great sources for chocolate, watches, and crafts

Go straight to the facts you need and find all that's new
Useful maps and background information - How to get there and get around - When to go - What to pack - Essential French, German, and Italian vocabulary - Costs, hours, and tips by the thousands

Customer Reviews:

Fodor's Switzerland.......2000-06-17

It is a very good book with lots of information about the Hotels, restaurants, Public transport. It made our trip a lot easier.

Book Description

Interest-Rate Risk Models is a practical guide for asset-liability managers and other investment professionals who are faced with the decision of whether to build or buy a financial model to measure, monitor, and help manage their institution's risk exposure. The book reviews the evolution of interest-rate risk models and describes and evaluates the state-of-the-art models in use today.

Customer Reviews:

Review of Chapter 10: OAS Implementation Issues.......2001-01-18

Chapter 10 of this book contains the best exposition I have found to date regarding contruction of an OAS model for MBS. On the downside, in the process of replicating the model I have not been able to reproduce the interest rate cap prices on page 171 nor the the output of the prepayment model aging function depicted graphically on page 184, figure 6.

On the cap price issue, all inputs to the cap pricing were reproduced exactly, so that the failure to reproduce the prices themselves is a mystery.

Regarding the prepayment aging function it does not appear that the function presented in equation (22) on page 183, using the GNSF model coefficients, produced the output contained in figure 6, on page 184.

I point out these two issues in order to indicate the extent to which replicating the results of this chapter are possible. Finally, I was dissapointed in the willingness of the author to respond to clarifying questions regarding the presented material. I was surprised when I did not receive a response because the author was eager to answer a prior inquiry from me asking about the appicability of his chapter to my MBS modeling interests.

In any event, the chapter provides the best documentation of OAS model construction I have found. For those practitioners wanting to learn how to construct a workable OAS model for MBS fixed rate pass throughs I highly recommend chapter 10 of this book.

Review of Chapter 10: OAS Implementation Issues.......2001-01-18

On the cap price issue, all inputs to the cap pricing were reproduced exactly, so that the failure to reproduce the prices themselves is a mystery.

Book Description

Presents a detailed study of the rhetorical structures and legal contents of approximately one-tenth of the Midrash Sifra.

Strategic Renaissance and Business Transformation

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Strategic Renaissance and Business Transformation

Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Strategy & Competition | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Entrepreneurship | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0471957518

Book Description

The Wiley Strategic Management Series aims to illustrate the best in global strategic management for academics, business practitioners and consultants. This book addresses some of the most significant issues currently facing business strategists, including restructuring and reorganization, global competition, strategic change, and organizational learning. These issues are, of course, currently relevant but as thoughts and approaches to management issues they are timeless in their nature and importance. Strategic Renaissance and Business Transformation addresses one of the Strategic Management Societys primary concerns building and maintaining bridges between management theory and business practice.

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O.O. Howard, Union General
Gerald Weland
Manufacturer: McFarland & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Reference | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0786401338

Book Description

Civil War leaders abound who were ensnared by the web of strategy and battle, while losing sight of principles or the cause. But for O.O. Howard, the Civil War was a chance to advance his vision of what the United States could become, a vision of assimilation for all people and not merely the emancipation of the slaves. A distinguished combat veteran, General Howard was awarded the Medal of Honor and was one of only 15 Civil War servicemen to receive the official thanks of Congress. After the war, Howard assumed command of the Freedman's Bureau and worked diligently on Reconstruction. During this period, he realized that freed blacks sorely needed advanced educational opportunities, and soon thereafter "the Christian general" founded America's first college for blacks. He would later serve in the Indian Wars and, as President Grant's emissary, he spearheaded that war's sole successful, albeit short-lived, peace plan.

Book Description

This interactive journal is aimed at today's baby boomers, to help them prepare for the second half of what promises to be a long life. Start a new career, obtain an advanced degree, set out on far-flung adventures...Questions and exercises help you to plan the exiting journey in store. Includes a list of resources for successful aging.

The Memory Manual: 10 Simple Things You Can Do To Improve Your Memory After 50 (The Best Half of Life Series)

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"Improving my Memory" I need.

The Memory Manual: 10 Simple Things You Can Do To Improve Your Memory After 50 (The Best Half of Life Series)
Betty Fielding
Manufacturer: Quill Driver Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Memory Improvement | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

The Memory Workbook: Breakthrough Techniques to Exercise Your Brain and Improve Your Memory

ASIN: 1884956157

Customer Reviews:

"Improving my Memory" I need........2000-06-11

"After 50" attracted my eyes. My memory began deteriorating at the age of 40. "Memory is the ability to register, combine, and store information from each of your senses." Senses are your own memory tools. The more senses you use, the more information you will store in your memory bank. I had never really practiced it until I read this book which reminded me in an organized way. I am going to bring this book to the next reference librarians' meeting. Most of my colleagues are getting closer to 50 or over. We need improving our memories.

Half Moon Bay memories: The coastside's colorful past

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Half Moon Bay memories: The coastside's colorful past
June Morrall
Manufacturer: Moonbeam Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Isfahan Is Half the World: Memories of a Persian Boyhood (Princeton Library of Asian Translations)

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one of the most beautiful books i ever read
Jamalzadeh ,The father of modern novel writing in Iran

Isfahan Is Half the World: Memories of a Persian Boyhood (Princeton Library of Asian Translations)
Sayyed Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh
Manufacturer: Princeton Univ Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Eastern European | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0691065632

Customer Reviews:

one of the most beautiful books i ever read.......2003-02-18

If you have come so close... order the book! It is one of the most beautiful books I ever read -- and I have read thousands and am a writer myself.
"Isfahan is half the world" is not just a wonderful boyhood tale, it is an essential introduction in to the origins of the problems of modern Iran. Sayyed Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh was one of the major modern Iranian writers, and his father was in the eye of the typhoon of the violent reformer vs. tradionalist and laicist vs. islamist debates in Iran at the beginning of the 20th century.

Jamalzadeh ,The father of modern novel writing in Iran.......2000-12-28

He is called the founder of modern novel writing in Iran.So,his memories is useful to read.A teacher from Iran

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Memories of a Half Life
Rikhi Jaipal
Manufacturer: South Asia Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Reference & Collections | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Nellie Cashman ;: A modest tribute to the memory of a noble woman whose energetic, courageous, self-sacrificing life was an inspiration on a wide frontier during half a century

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Nellie Cashman ;: A modest tribute to the memory of a noble woman whose energetic, courageous, self-sacrificing life was an inspiration on a wide frontier during half a century
John P Clum
Manufacturer: s.n.]
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Starlight memories: A collection of his favorite columns reflecting more than a half-century of Alaskancy

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Starlight memories: A collection of his favorite columns reflecting more than a half-century of Alaskancy
Lee Jordan
Manufacturer: Samson Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Telling it like it was: Anecdotes and memories of family life in the first half of the twentieth century

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Telling it like it was: Anecdotes and memories of family life in the first half of the twentieth century
David S Marston
Manufacturer: D.S. Marston
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Genealogy | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006F5ZBS

Short-memory and the PPP hypothesis [An article from: Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control]

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Short-memory and the PPP hypothesis [An article from: Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control]
M.A. El-Gamal , and D. Ryu
Manufacturer: Elsevier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000RR591Q

Book Description

This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
The purchasing power parity (PPP)-puzzle has been framed in recent years in terms of half-lives of real-exchange rate shocks that exceed 3 years. Recent studies have attempted to solve that puzzle by adopting nonlinear stochastic models of real exchange rates. The notion of half-life is fundamentally linear, and therefore is inappropriate for those nonlinear models. We provide operational algorithms for estimating more general measures of persistence that are appropriate for nonlinear as well as linear models: memory-in-mean and memory-in-distribution. We study three parametric models: autoregression, threshold autoregression and exponential smooth threshold autoregression. Our Monte Carlo simulations suggest that all three models can produce biased estimates of persistence measures, depending on the true data generating process. In addition, the sample size is found to be too small for reliable nonparametric estimation, suggesting that we need to impose parametric structure. In the empirical application, all three parametric models provided general support for the long-term PPP-hypothesis, suggesting that there is no puzzle, and questioning the need for recently introduced nonlinear models.

Groombridge old and new: Memories of village life in the first half of the 20th century

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Groombridge old and new: Memories of village life in the first half of the 20th century
Barbara Lee
Manufacturer: Old People's Welfare Council
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Book Description

This is an amazing record of the life of one of the most inspiring figures of the twentieth century, with over 300 photographs drawn from a comprehensive visual archive compiled over 12 years.

In one of the most extraordinary lives ever lived, Mahatma Gandhi (18691948) effected tremendous political change and wielded enormous influence. His teachings on non-violence elevated him in the eyes of many to the status of a saint. Among those profoundly influenced by his philosophy of peaceful resistance was Martin Luther King Jr, who adopted Gandhi's methods in his own struggle for civil rights. In Peter Rhe's book, Gandhi's life is told by means of an extraordinary collection of nearly 300 photographs, many never seen before. These pictures document Gandhi's early life in India, his law studies in London, his work in South Africa, and his return to lead the struggle for Indian independence, which won him the title of 'father of the nation'. We can see the sweep of world politics and the struggles of the poor in the life of one man whose impact on the world is matched by few in the history of mankind. As Albert Einstein said: 'Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.'

Customer Reviews:

Photographs of Mahatma Gandhi..........2002-06-30

Excellent book, the photo-biography on Mahatma Gandhi the Father of India was a real pleasure to read and a wonderful account of his life told in pictures. One forgets that Mahatma Gandhi wanted India to be one nation-state and not divided into India and Pakistan, it was Nehru, Jinnah and the British that separated India. Granted there would have been problems, but they would have been under one nation-state and not two as there is between India and Pakistan today...

Magnificent!.......2002-01-04

This book is an amazing compilation of photographs, in chronological order, telling you about the life and philosophy of Gandhi. The pictures tell the story themselves and help you get a feeling of how things really were and the true magnitude of the movement for an independent India.

This is a difficult book to read........2001-12-18

This is a difficult book to read.

It is a difficult read, not because of the historical writing of Peter Ruhe, who has done a commendable job, nor because of the photo editing by Sophie Spencer-Wood, a top rate job indeed; but because the publisher, Phaidon Press, choose to print the text using a very small type with a recessive color using glossy paper. Sad, especially when you open to the text section and see there are 2 ½" top, 2 ½" left and 1 ½" bottom margins. Go figure. To make the matter worse under each photo caption, the publisher uses an even smaller type and in a tan color.

Phaidon Press failed to consider that the audience most likely to buy to this book, will be, by majority, mid-aged or older. Thus, they, like me, probably will need reading glasses. However, even with good reading glasses, the smallness of type, the faded black ink (on the verge of gray) and the glaring glossy paper made reading this book very strenuous and difficult.

That said, I found Peter Ruhe's writing balanced and refreshing. He chronologically lays out Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's life in an engaging, investigative manner. Ruhe is an admirer of Mahatma but not enamored enough to be a blind devote. He points out the times that Gandhi's belief in satyagraha (truth-force) blinded him. One such time, related to the evil of Nazi Germany, "Gandhi insisted that Hitler was merely misguided. In his mind the German leader could be dissuaded from further conquest by the power of reason or, if necessary, satyagraha". Though Gandhi had achieved mystical status, to Ruhe he was still a man, although, one of the world's greatest.

The 400 Black and White photos curated by Sophie Spencer-Wood are excellent They illustrate the time line of this great man's life. The reproduction of the photos is top rate, and this alone makes the book a worthy addition to any Mahatma Gandhi collection. Gandhi's body was cremated, January 31. 1948. The words of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, eulogize Gandhi even today, "the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, our beloved leader... the father of the Nation is no more." Recommended

Book Description

William Howard Schuman, a celebrated figure in 20th-century music, was a composer and a copious writer on music and music education. Early on, as a composer, he received the attention of several musicians and writers such as Nathan Broder, Elliott Carter, and Leonard Bernstein. He was the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the New York Music Critics Circle Award. After teaching at Sarah Lawrence College from 1935 to 1945 and serving as president of the Juilliard School from 1945 to 1962, Schuman assumed the presidency of Lincoln Center, where he successfully implemented that institution's artistic programs. Schuman, who composed in several genres, is perhaps best known for his orchestral compositions and choral music. This reference work provides a biography and a thorough catalog and guide to Schuman's writings and compositions and to the current research available on this gifted and multi-talented musician. An invaluable resource to music scholars interested in William Schuman's career, five sections provide accessible detailed information: a biography, works and performances, discography, bibliography, and bibliography of writings by Schuman. The biography traces Schuman's life and career with an emphasis on illustrating his compositional activity. The bibliography includes books, dissertations, articles, and reviews that chronicle Schuman's activities from his days as a young composer to his death in 1992. An author index, index of compositions, and general index complete this in-depth reference on William Schuman.

Customer Reviews:

Chaucer, a Secret Jew? Psychohistorical Arguments Maybe!.......2004-12-30

A New Midrashic Reading Of Geoffrey Chaucer His Life And Works by Norman Toby Simms (Studies in British Literature: Edwin Mellen Press) Excerpt: After completing my study of Sir Gawain and the Knight of the Green Chapel, I feel there is a similar context in which Chaucer has to be fitted into if we are to appreciate more fully the uniqueness of his poetry, as well as the way his work relates to the traditions and precedents available to him during the fourteenth century in England and the rest of Western Europe. These other contexts, as I showed in that earlier book, are those of the Jewish heritage left behind after the formal expulsions in the late thirteenth century, as well as the Crypto-Jewish or Marrano context of those persons who remained hidden after 1290 or returned over the next generation or who came from elsewhere in Europe, nor just to flee prosecution but to live a strange new kind of concealed and non-institutional Judaism. Once it is noticed that while organised rabbinical life in England had been abolished and no one could perform all the formal mitzvot required of Talmudic (or rabbinic or halachic) Judaism, the question arises of what else there is: and that question has many answers, some of them to be found in private, public, and courtly literature, including the new religious plays-Mysteries, Moralities and Miracles-many of which deal with Jews in such an ambiguous and complex way that the old argument that there were no Jews in England at that time or that no one knew anything about Judaism other than what was in the Bible as the fathers no longer holds much water. There were Jews about, albeit of a very fuzzy kind, and those fuzzy Jews were there in England as much in the audience as in a creative role. The strongest aspect to the new perspective is therefore that probably most of these fuzzy Jews did not know who they were and, if they did not outright reject the overt implications of their depiction of Jews and Judaism, at least show that they felt very uncomfortable with those developments.
Does this mean that I believe Geoffrey Chaucer was himself a practicing Jew or at least a self-curious child of such halachic Jews-one or two generations from a forced or voluntary conversion by his parents or grandparents? In a way the answer is yes...but a "yes" with many qualifications. Before we can move towards any answers, and there are many different kinds of answer to be given, we have to move away from the simplistic dichotomy which assumes that either one is or one is not a Jew; and if one is a Jew, since the religion and the institutions of Judaism were outlawed in 1290, then there could have been no Jews in England at all, and so Chaucer could not have been a Jew: tout court. The whole history of the Sephardic persecutions and expulsions from the end of the fourteenth century onwards shows that such dichotomizing cannot work to trace the experiences of individuals and families. After the massacres of 1390 in Spain, a series of mass conversions followed, until almost half, at least, of all Sephardic Jews went into the baptismal fount. Given that at this time, too, the overwhelming majority of all Jews in the world were Sephardim, this was no isolated event, but one of the most profound demographic and cultural events before the twentieth century. Our task, though, is not so much to look at the repercussions of this traumatic transformation of world Jewry in the early modem period, but to see if there were specific antecedent events, small in their scope and impact, but nonetheless significant and paradigmatic of what was to follow.
Can we, however, justify applying the lessons of this somewhat later period about the New Christians, Marranos, and escaped and returning Jews from Spain and Portugal to the situation in England a century earlier? Not if we are going to be rigid about it, or trip ourselves up on quibbles over the meaning of specific words like converso and Crypto-Jew. I will argue that there are analogies and that, once alerted to kinds of subtle distinctions to be found in the Spanish and Portuguese cases, we can start to find similar evidence in the fourteenth century and in Britain: as long as we keep reminding ourselves that similarities are not exact replicas or foreshadowing. This also means that we risk dealing with essentialist concepts, as though there were something specifically, innately, inalterably Jewish, despite historical and social differences, something that outlasts conscious religious and psychological beliefs about oneself or one's family and friends, in other words, a sort of genetic inalterability that can be sustained for several generations despite conversion and then isolation from, with consequent ignorance of, Jewish ways of thinking, perceiving the world, evaluating experience, and feeling about oneself and one's children. I will not argue simply that "the proof is in the pudding": that because Chaucer looks and sounds like a Jew in some of the postures he assumes and the judgments he makes in the course of his poetry he must be a Jew, whether he likes it or not, and even whether he knows it or not. But I will argue that in a more complex, and I hope a more sophisticated way. I will argue that Geoffrey was not as isolated or as alienated from Jews and Jewishness-although he was very probably alienated completely from Judaism as an organized, institutionalized and coherent religious practice-as would first seem from the usual assumptions made about England in his life time.
The first qualification, then, is that, if Chaucer were such an offspring of English Marranos, he was in his beliefs and even in his heart a good Roman Catholic in the same way as the majority of the British men and women of the period, this majority consisting as much the aristocracy and the clergy as the crowds in the streets of towns and villages. The next qualification is that, despite his conscious beliefs as a Christian, he probably had reservations about the demonization and persecution of the Jews, taking a position closer to that of the high church officials who saw Jews as a necessary historical link to the Old Testament and the presence and events of the New Testament. Third, Chaucer-and a few others cosmopolitan intellectuals like himself in England-were aware that real Jews in Europe in the fourteenth century could not be unquestionably equated with either the Hebrews of the Old Testament or, in a somewhat more problematic sense, with the distorted caricatures in the New Testament, except perhaps in a sympathetic way with Jesus and the Holy Family and the band of the original disciples. Fourthly, thanks the journeys to and communications with Spain, Italy, France and other parts of Western Europe, Chaucer would have known at first hand about the real condition of Jews-their intellectual life centered on the Oral Torah and the performance of mitzvot, and the persecution at the hands of uneducated mobs, fanatical minor clergy, and cynical civil and royal officials. Fifth, not only does Chaucer in his poetry show a sympathy and understanding of the social difficulties of real Jews living in Western Europe under increasingly hostile conditions-the expulsion from England was just the beginning of the way cities and kingdom expelled the Jewish communities-but also demonstrates an understanding of peculiarly rabbinic ways of thinking and reading, including a familiarity with the mystical thought of systematic kabbalah being then written in Spain, Southern France, Italy, and parts of the Levant...
Excerpt: This book is divided into three sections. In the first section, composed of Chapters 1 to 3, which might be called "All To-Tore", from an expression the Canon's Yeoman uses, I will examine the notion of both Chaucer's life and his works being "composed" in a process of fragmentation and disguise, and introduce the idea of midrash as a modem tool of literary exegesis. It might be possible to call this approach a particular kind of rabbinical aesthetic deriving from the kabbalistic notion of the breaking of the vessels, but at this stage in our discussion we can only survey the biography of the man and then, midrashically, find new contexts for him as an individual and as a type of New
Christian living in England and serving his royal masters on the Continent. It is also important here to survey both the life of the author and the Chaucerian canon, searching for exemplary instances of the breaking apart of the text, the focus on gaps and non sequiturs, and the disappearance or displacement of themes, images, and structural elements within the various verse and prose documents. The primary text to be examined will be The Wyf of Bath's Prologue, Introduction and Tale from the Canterbury Tales, seeing it in relation to the concluding praise-poem to the Good Wife in the Book of Proverbs, credited to Lemuel rather than Solomon, and exploring its treatment of women, whether satirical social types or romantic ideals, or even figures of the biblical Queen Esther, later the precious saint of the Spanish and Portuguese Crypto-Jews, and the mystical figure of the Shekhina, the mystical shadow of God's presence and his consort whom he seeks while she lives with the Children of Israel in their long and painful exile. These first three chapters will also start to deal with a question of deafness, marked into the body and life of the Wyf of Bath as a physical injury, but evident throughout the author's life and throughout his works in several other senses: (1) a low-level defect in interpretation wherein what is heard is presumed to be all there is to know, with everything surrounding it fading into a kind of marginal static normally unperceived and unheard; (2) a higher degree of awareness that begins with a sense of gaps and lapses in the perceived and ordinarily experienced environment accompanied by attempts to fill in those points of silence and invisibility, holes and black-spots, through imaginative-symbolic, allusive and intuitive-insertions, supplements, displacements and recontextualizations; and (3) a very different order of interpretation, in which the earlier surface text, with its deformities and fragmentation, is understood as a texture composed of diverse languages simultaneously being played out and requiring new kinds of attention, intensities of focus, and coordination between logic and fantasy.
The next two chapters, 4 and 5, form a second section that confronts head-on the problematic of Chaucer's alleged anti-Jewishness, particularly exemplified in the Prioress's Prologue and Tale also from the Canterbury Tales. I could name section "The Little Clergeon's Song" and sub-title it "What They Heard and Didn't Hear" because of the way the Latin hymn Alma Redemptoris Mater brings to the surface questions related to children, language, ritual murder and retributive collective punishment. Here, too, we must take time to weigh up the evidence for the way in which Jews are thought of, depicted, and perhaps recollected in a supposedly Judenrein England, as well as on the Continent where the Black Plague and other natural disasters provokes wave on wave of persecution and slander against the Jews. Where and how could a Crypto-Jewish presence be found in England at this time, and how would it be related to the communities under pressure and in exile elsewhere in western Europe? The Prioress's Tale, rather than a manifestation of the hate literature common to Spain, France, Italy and elsewhere, appears instead as a very intense and confused statement of faith by the nun who calls herself Eglantine: the setting of her little martyr's legend is displaced to Asia, where both Christians and Jews live as minorities subject to an unnamed Muslim ruler, its vicious slanders against the Jews do not include charges of ritual murder or the blood libel, and it presents a confusion of authorities both within and outside the fictional narrative itself, so much so that there seems to be a rationalization of the crime committed against the poor little Clergeon as he walks through the Jewish quarter of the city. Then, as we fold back this discussion and the Prioress' two texts her confessional Prologue and her pious Tale back over the Wyf of Bath, as another variant of an articulate woman with an ax to grind, the discussion leads us into a deeper exploration of how the midrashic aesthetic functions both as a means of Chaucer's creativity and our own optic of analysis; and further, how it relates the three dimensions of deafness mentioned before can help us understand the various generic categories radiated through the major works of Chaucer : particularly parody, satire, grotesque and cynical diatribe.
Chapters 6-8 take as their central text is The Book of the Duchess-which may, by kabbalistic letter combinations, be termed the Sepher Chesed, a Book of Grace and Mercy. Thus this third section of the book could be entitled "Dreams and Fantasies". After examining the other dream vision poems and coordinating them towards a deepening understanding of midrashic analysis, we ford this courtly poem to be Chaucer's most kabbalistic enterprise. Long taken as his first major achievement, written as a young man in honour of his patron, John of Gaunt's grief for his beloved bride Blanche of Castile, The Book of the Duchess, I argue by internal and external evidence, is also one of Chaucer's last performative poems, in the sense that it was so popular over decades that it was re-performed and re-written for later memorial services to the Duke of Lancaster's wives and other great ladies of the court at their passing. It is thus a kind of palimpsest of the author's lengthy career as poet and trusted official of the court and state.
The book may also be approached as a secret document expressing the man Chaucer's concealed and unconscious beliefs and attitudes towards Jewishness and Judaism, insofar as he came to understand them during his travels and readings of rabbinical and kabbalistic texts that came his way in France, Italy and Spain. Finally, in the ninth chapter, we try to draw together some of the threads we have spun and at the same time point to further directions for study.
This present monograph could also be approached as another kind of secret book, in the sense that, as I went through the final stages of writing and editing, especially when inserting the various head and sub-heading texts, I realized that what was happening went beyond either historical or literary critical boundaries. The book was responding to the realities around me in the last years of the twentieth century and the earliest of the twenty-first, a time when dangers to the Jewish people became increasingly evident in words and actions not seen since the end of World War II. Even more, as I attempted to speak to friends and colleagues about the threats to Israel and the problems facing Jewish academics in the climate of fear and intimidation, many reacted in ways that at first seemed totally irrational and inexplicable-until it started to become clear that many of these erstwhile confidants and associates who drew back, turned away, or openly attacked Jews and Judaism in the contemporary world were behaving in terms that had been cautiously and hesitatingly opened up by this study of Chaucer (as well as the earlier book on Sir Gawain and the Green Chapel). For that reason, the large number of citations of apparently incongruous authors sets out the territory of literary, historical, social, and psychological themes this book actually comes to deal with. To a certain extent, therefore, I am asking my audience to study this book as they would an exegetical text in the midrashic mode. If that is too much to ask of a contemporary student of Chaucer, then I apologize.

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A New Midrashic Reading of Geoffrey Chaucer; His Life and Works.
Norman Simms
Manufacturer: Edwin Mellen Pr.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000N65YUW

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