Chapter IV discusses another important feature of Tolkien’s work, that is, the vast amount of narrative parallelism, both intra- and intertextual, focusing on some case studies (including the relation between the hero Beren and the hobbit Frodo in particular). These parallels are related to Tolkien’s belief in “the seamless web of story”, that is to say, to the view that there is only one single Tree of Tales, criss-crossing primary and secondary realities, which sprouts again and again with new branches and leaves, all different and yet all similar. This ‘organic’ image is helpful to understand key aspects of Tolkien’s literary ‘theory’, including his famous aversion to allegory, which is here related to his belief that literature embodies in new “modes” the same universal “motives” but in a way that is ‘unexpected’ and ‘unconscious’, and the conviction that all stories correlate with each other in a narrative chain having its centre in the Gospel Story.

This chapter extend the discussion of the basic principles of stylistics by introducing some of its core activities. In particular, it considers the origins of stylistics in Russian formalism. The chapter shows how the principles that underpinned this literary movement were combined with the emerging descriptive techniques of linguistics to offer an insight into meaning that placed the text at the heart of the interpretative enterprise.

J. Blake Couey, in “Isaiah as Poetry,” begins with the basic fact that nearly all of the book is written as poetry and encourages readers to approach it as such. He surveys its erudite vocabulary, its creative use of sound, and its parallelism and larger strophic structures. He closes with an extended appreciation of the “imaginative worlds” evoked in the book through the use of imagery and metaphors. He observes of its poetic vision that “its scope is nearly boundless.”

The rhetorical devices used in a language reflect both its linguistic characteristics and the cultural patterns of its users. Due to the extensive homophony in Chinese, punning is extensively exploited. The predilection for even numbers may account for the fondness for symmetry and parallelism. The special characteristics of Chinese characters naturally lend themselves to clever manipulation of graphic shape. As expected, rhetorical devices are seen more often in public writing such as advertisements and civic banners but less in strictly functional ones like road signs.

This chapter includes civic signs and political banners, which seem to be particularly numerous in China. They are used to extol civic and cultural values reflecting the current social and political climate. From their contents, one can get a sense of what are considered important at a particular time. Like couplets, the rhetorical device of parallelism is frequently employed.

This chapter samples ads of three types: commercials, classified ads, and the so-called ‘small ads’. Ads can appeal to senses of good value, tradition and authenticity, novelty and popularity. To attract attention, they often employ rhetorical devices such as punning, parallelism, allusions to shared cultural knowledge, and unexpected juxtaposition for humorous effect.

Chapter 4 describes the field of cognitive science, which is the arena where all those who study “intelligent systems” (“minds“) get together to compare notes. A shared idea is that the mind can be understood as an information-processing computational system. We will see how during the 1960s renewed interest in the mind from different academic disciplines emerged as a reaction to the denial of the mind of an approach to psychology called behaviorism. We then discuss the various strands of thinking in a variety of different fields that led to this “cognitive revolution.” We learn that there are fundamental, opposing views in this field that are relevant to the nature–nurture debate. Despite differences, a general understanding within cognitive science is that the mind can be studied at different levels of abstractness and from different angles which to some extent compete but also complement each other.

Chapter 2 discusses “systemic effect,” which refers to the impact of the Rome Statute and the ICC on domestic legal systems. The systemic effect of the Rome Statute is presumed to be mainly through the application of the “complementarity” framework. The chapter argues that complementarity is not the main avenue to systemic effect, mainly because it is a court-centric notion that has often resulted in an adversarial relationship between the Court and national authorities. This has meant that at times the Court and national authorities compete for cases, as the national authorities seek to avoid the Court’s intervention. Instead of true complementarity, it may be more accurate to speak of “parallelism”: If national authorities are not able to arrest suspects (Uganda) or investigate (Afghanistan), neither is the ICC. Complementarity does not address wider rule of law challenges, and in some cases, it allows for unfair trials on the domestic level, as was the case in Libya. The flaws of complementarity may inhibit the Court’s impact.

The International Criminal Court seeks to end impunity for the world’s worst crimes, in order to contribute to their prevention. But what is its impact to date? This book takes an in-depth look at four countries under scrutiny of the ICC: Afghanistan, Colombia, Libya and Uganda. It puts forward an analytical framework to assess the impact of the ICC on four levels: on the domestic legal systems (systemic effect); on peace negotiations and agreements (transformative effect); on victims (reparative effect); and on the perceptions of affected populations (demonstration effect). It concludes that the ICC, through its expressive function, is having a normative impact on domestic legal systems and peace agreements, but it has brought little reparative justice for victims and it does not necessarily correspond with affected populations view justice priorities. The book concludes that justice for the world’s worst crimes has no “universal formula” that can easily be captured in law.

Chapter 8 concludes that the ICC’s existence has not resulted in a short-term reduction in atrocities. It is not a shortcut to Utopia, but its long-term preventive impact is too early to assess. Through its expressive function, the Court is having normative impact. In terms of “systemic effect,” the Court may have the most impact where it is the least needed, or its impact may be hindered by “parallelism.” At the same time, there is potential in the internalization of the Rome Statute by domestic legal systems over time. In two peace negotiations, a measure of punishment for perpetrators was included, although this did not necessarily mean imprisonment. However, its normative impact is undermined by its lack of societal impact, including a lack of impact on victims. In this respect the ICC represents “law” rather than “justice.” Victims’ rights are recognized in the Rome Statute, but these have not yielded concrete remedies. The Court also suffers from negative perceptions among affected populations. To move from law to justice, the Court should seek to maximize its impact, through a better understanding of the local context and through a focus on fewer situations. However, justice has no “universal formula” and may require approaches beyond the ICC.

The International Criminal Court seeks to end impunity for the world’s worst crimes, in order to contribute to their prevention. But what is its impact to date? This book takes an in-depth look at four countries under scrutiny of the ICC: Afghanistan, Colombia, Libya and Uganda. It puts forward an analytical framework to assess the impact of the ICC on four levels: on the domestic legal systems (systemic effect); on peace negotiations and agreements (transformative effect); on victims (reparative effect); and on the perceptions of affected populations (demonstration effect). It concludes that the ICC, through its expressive function, is having a normative impact on domestic legal systems and peace agreements, but it has brought little reparative justice for victims and it does not necessarily correspond with affected populations view justice priorities. The book concludes that justice for the world’s worst crimes has no “universal formula” that can easily be captured in law.

To model system implementations, we define the language of Simple Processes. In this language, systems are defined in the classical style of giving a separate program for each process. Process programs use send and receive actions that need to match during execution in order to achieve a communication. We discuss how implementations of choreographies from the previous chapter can be written in terms of this language. We also formulate in our setting the key properties of parallelism, communication safety, and starvation-freedom, respectively: the capability of executing independent communications in any order; the property that processes never attempt to interact by performing incompatible actions; and the property that every running process eventually gets to act.

Plutarch’s parallel structure of the Lives, pitting a Greek protagonist against a Roman hero, offers a fascinating array of interpretative possibilities where cultural and political resistance to Rome and Roman imperialism are two of its more interesting manifestations. This chapter suggests that Plutarch’s text, encoded with devices of figured speech (e.g. allegory, irony and innuendo), was meant to be read and understood by two distinct audiences simultaneously: a Greek readership and a Roman one. Thus, on one hand, to his Roman readers Plutarch can implicitly present the flaws of historical Greeks, which may come out through the overarching comparison, and which his typical Hellenocentric addressees might miss. On the other hand, the reading and circulation of Plutarch’s text would also constitute a sophisticated form of resistance to the contemporary imperial environment. The text therefore contains non-conformist elements which Roman readers completely overlooked. Two such subversive elements directed against Rome are discussed: (a) cultural resistance, with the employment of cross-cultural irony to propose the mismatch of Greek paideia in (barbaric) Rome; (b) political resistance through a subtle reading of the past, in particular the grafting of the Greco-Persian Wars onto the imperial reality and through a sophisticated comment on one instance of Greek active opposition to Rome.

Chapter 2 explains the conditions on imports for the imposition of safeguard measures, including the requirement of unforeseen developments, the effect of GATT obligations, the product scope, the increase in imports in absolute and relative terms, and the notion of importation in special conditions. Chapter 2 also explains the application of safeguards on a general basis, the question of potential exclusions and the notion of parallelism.