The "Thirteenth Sphere" or the "Thieteenth Cone" in Yeats' A Vision has been treated lightly by most critics because it is not defined clearly or integrated into the system of A Vision exactly. However, I think we should not treat it lightly without looking into it closely. The aim of this paper is to make clear the essence of the "Thirteenth Sphere" If we can do so, we will know the reason why it is not defined clearly or integrated exactly. As a result it will not be treated lightly without proper reason. In the first chapter, I explain the essence of the "Thirteenth Sphere" in terms of the duality of divinity and humanity. In the second chapter, I direct a spotlight on the human aspect of it and make clear the reason why it is not integrated into the system of A Vision exactly. In the third chapter, I throw light on the divine aspect of it and make clear the reason why it is not defined clearly. On the whole, this paper aims at the restoration of the "Thirteenth Sphere".

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Oscar Wilde's Salome is generally regarded as the most illustrative of Wilde's particular style and the most aesthetic drama of his works. Although over a century has passed since the play was written, Salome has entranced modern theatre-artists and continues to be produced or directed by them. This paper will analyse several notable productions from the performance history of Salome in Britain, focusing on one of the most important elements of the play: the presentation of 'the dance of the seven veils.' This papaer will also examine how the text has been staged in these productions, and how interpretations of the play and the veiled dance have changed. Finally, this paper will conclude with some account of my own ideal way of directing Salome.

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This paper posits a central theme of Shakespeare's King Lear as being the relationship between truth and insanity. This theme can be gleaned from the study of the rhetorical aspect of oxymorons, such as "unpriz'd precious maid" (I.I.25I) and "Proper deformity [shows] not in the fiend/So horrid as in woman." (4.2.60- 6I) This paper clarifies how oxymorons produce powerful meanings and how fruitful they are in assisting protagonists in finding the truth. The reason for Shakespeare's use of oxymorons, which 'are especially present in King Lear, is his desire not to display a one-sided definition, but to leave the defining interpretation an uncertainty, a mystery. Shakespeare makes it clear that truth and insanity, right and wrong, rapture and sorrow, are not antinomic just because they are placed back to back- they are left open for relative interpretation. Only those who suffer deeply throughout the play, such as Lear and Gloucester, can truly experience delight and truth. One-sided viewpoints are not accepted in the great tragedy of King Lear. It is apparent from Shakespeare's use of oxymorons that Lear's insane world transforms into one of truth, Gloucester's dark world changes into one of light. It is also apparent that Kent's, the King of France's, and the other characters' worlds change from despairing into hopeful ones. Shakespeare thought truth and insanity, misery and sublimity, are ultimately one.

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Medical theories during Elizabethan period were based upon the medieval physiological concept of four humors. It was then believed that the macrocosm as well as the microcosm was fundamentally composed of the four elements - air, fire, water, and earth, while the microcosm (human body) had four humors - blood, yellow bile, phlegm, and black bile, each being thought to correspond with each of the four elements: for example, blood corresponds with air. Diseases were thought to be the result of the imbalance of these four humors. The humor doctrine was dominant not only in medical theories, but in the field of culinary art. Every foodstuff, as it is a part of the macrocosm, was also believed to be composed of the same four elements, each of which, when ingested, turn to each of the four humors. Consequently, it was understood that, if a body is short of blood, a foodstuff full of air such as milk should be taken. This tells us that the Elizabethans believed the microcosm could be a part of the macrocosm through the act of eating - you are what you eat. In Macbeth there are so many metaphors expressing inability to eat, and in the 'Banquet Scene' all the guests cannot eat because they are hosted by the mad king. To my thinking, when Macbeth shouts, "let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer," Shakespear dramatized the total collapse of the two cosmos that was in one through the act of ingestion.

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The present author describes the close encounter of Martin Secker (a publisher) with D.H. Lawrence. He compares their relationship in contrast with that of Edward Garnett (a publishers' reader) and the writer. The friendly environment among the three is compared and examined. The author concludes that Garnett and Secker both indispensable to the increase in Lawreace's fame played an important role.

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In many of Muriel Spark's novels, plots are focused on death, or death is caricatured. The dead tell stories and walk with vigorous strides in the world of her fiction. The boundary between life and death is obscure, and narrators, who come and go across it, make living people's existence insecure. Spark weaves and manipulates plots very consciously as the omniscient author. Her characters plan and act on their own accord, believing they have their free will, but their activities are seen through and controlled by the author. In Spark's fiction, 'plot' means conspiracy by the author, and her conscious manipulation of plot is closely related to her fiction's metafictional nature. In this manipulation of plot, death plays an important role. Spark makes use of death cruelly and indifferently as fictional devices. Death forms an essential factor in Sparkian plot manipulated by the author as a fictional device. Ghosts reveal the relationship between death and creation in Spark's novels. Writing fiction is an operation made through spiritual beings. Reality itself is uncertain for Spark, and life becomes real only when it is cut off by death and made distinct in contrast to death. Because death mediates between this world and another world, the Sparkian world of fiction can be created.

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My reading of Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve concerns the way the novel engages itself with the current feminist discourse. In my view, Carter in The Passion of New Eve not only criticises the patriarchal definition of women by parodically rewriting the traditional images of women in Judaeo-Christian culture such as Eve, Lilith, and Virgin Mary, but also questions the kind of feminist thought that invokes the ancient figure of the mother goddess as an empowering image for women. For Carter, to return to matriarchy only ends up in the inverted form of sexism, and to do so means to be caught up again in the system of binary oppositions. In this novel about a man who involuntarily undergoes a physical and psychological transformation into a woman, Carter suggests that the possibility of freedom for both women and men should lie only in the constant interchange between the two, i.e., man and woman, father and mother, consciousness and unconsciousness, self and the other, and so on.

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Today nobody can deny that the global flows of the new media, which have already penetrated people's daily lives, are immense. The recent growth and maturity of the Internet clearly envisages a future of the perfectly computerised information society. On the other hand, it is also a fact that the menace to local identity as a counter-phenomenon of globalisation has been an object of argument. For example, since the preceding media such as radio and television became popular world-wide, it has been pointed out that the wave of Americanisation has undermined people's senses of national identity in other cultures. While the resistance against Americanisation has been overt in France, it is fairly obscure in the United Kingdom, as British people have taken an advantage of sharing 'English' in any Way. This ambivalent position of Britain-where some are keenly conscious of the threat of America's cultural colonisation- further leads us to the problem concerning the Internet, now prevailing on a global scale: we lose the sense of 'whereness' by getting accustomed to the Internet. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the Internet on national identities and cultures. In particular, I shall concentrate on the lack of 'whereness' when using computer networks, while comparing their situation and characteristics with other new media. At the same time, the way in which a deceptive notion of 'national' identity as a political/territorial matter, forged by states, is re-examined. By doing so, a positive perspective on the Internet is presented here, instead of giving a warning to the user not to lose his/her national identity: for the Internet is one of the ways to go beyond the restraints of the forced 'national' identities of the government or the nation-state, and to cultivate 'cultural' identity in 'imagined communities'.

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We sometimes have a question like this: "How many words does a second-language learner need?" and then, "What are the words he/she needs?" Especially the beginners of English want to know the answer to these questions. According to The Ministry of Education of Japan, junior- and senior-high school students are expected to learn about 3,000 English words over a period of six years. However, we can find only 507 words listed in "A Course of Study for Lower Secondary Schools in Japan." The Ministry of Education does not assign specific words; rather, it simply mentions that around 2,500 words is the aim. First, I selected five different English word lists. Each word list is composed of 2,000 to 2,500 defined words used to explain head words in English dictionaries. Next, I tried to prove whether or not we can read English sentences if we know only 2,000 words. Then I input the five- vocabulary data of more than 10,000 words into the Ms excel software. The results indicated 3,456 head words, which became my derived basic word list. I input the basic English word data into HT3 software which searches for those words in 11 different English patterns. The average of 11 patterns is as follows: if English learners know 3,456 words, they can read 89% of general reading material. As we can see from the results, these basic English words are very important. I hope my basic vocabulary list will make students confident in understanding English and will serve as a motivation to mastering it.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine how teachers and students can communicate naturally and meaningfully in English without any resort to the students' native language. In such cases, the teacher often modifies his or her speech in various ways, in order to make sure the students understand. However, students who are accustomed to such modified speech often have difficulty engaging in conversations outside the classroom, for example in an English speaking country. Some suggestions are made for teachers in these circumstances, including speaking and non-verbal cues.

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The purpose of this research is to confirm the relationship between the learners' strategies and the learner's proficiency in speaking task. The research consists of three studies. The first study is to identify what kind of strategies the Japanese learners use in speaking tasks. The second is to see how higher proficiency language learners use strategies differently in order to aid communication. The third is to compare the strategy use between Japanese learners and other nationalities. The results confirmed that there is a close relationship between the proficiency and strategies, and the proficient learners who use Metacognitive strategy most employ a wider variety of strategies than less proficient learners. Also Japanese strategy use is not very different from that of Hispanic nationalities.

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Several researchers point out that the cause of minority students' failure at schools in the United States stems from the traditional way of teaching in which school discourse and their home discourse are disconnected (Delpit 1983; Fine 1987). Successful cases of altering pedagogy to fit and value students' home culture have been introduced by Erickson (1990) and Philips (1983). Belenky (1986) also proposes a new teaching method called the "midwife model," which perceives students as resources and solicits ideas from their own experience. This participatory research examines the collaborative learning experience in a special education class where classroom texts were close to students' home culture and the teacher employed the "midwife model." In the fall of 1994, two Japanese graduate students (the authors) worked together with the teacher and the students at Olney High School in Philadelphia to make pedagogical changes from traditional "transmission model," to the learner-centered "midwife model." Data collection included observational field notes, students' journal entries and other written materials as well as interviews with the teacher. The data reveal positive effects on students' participation in the class. These changes can help the students gain the ability to empower themselves by valuing their own experience and help increase their participation and literacy level.

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