Chapter 5 explores transitivity systems and structures. It concentrates on the evidence used to motivate descriptions of paradigmatic relations. At stake here is the weight given to evidence of different kinds, including arguing from above, around and below. This chapter also foregrounds the cline of delicacy with respect to both system and structure, exploring what happens when general transitivity classes are explored in greater detail and issues that arise with respect to how much subclassification should be reflected in function structure labelling.

The products of Artefaction are not just made things but making things. Included in this class are tangible things with a capacity for rhetorical performance – for example a statue or a flag – as well as intangible things, of which the preeminent example is the word. Where words combine in sentences and in speech, they can attain monumental status and influence. Contemplating Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which Burke argued that a word like ‘freedom’ is only as good as the use to which it is put, Richard Dawson observes that for Burke, words are ‘evolving cultural artefacts that shape us and are shaped by us as we use them’. This serves as an excellent definition of the Making Sense informing the term ‘Artefaction’ as it is used in this chapter, as does James Boyd White’s idea (as summarized by Dawson) that language is ‘an evolving cultural artefact for making and remaking ourselves and our world – the real world’. In defence of ‘underwater basket weaving’, this chapter turns to material culture to consider the relationship between the weaving of words and such handcrafts as the weaving of baskets.

This chapter discusses the conceptual benefits and drawbacks of the notion of the material constitution from the standpoint of a sympathetic critic. It proceeds by identifying three separate but overlapping registers in which the concept is invoked; as an ideologically inflected and often politically charged rhetorical contrast with the formal legal constitution, as the theoretical fulcrum of a particular explanatory scheme and as a general methodological orientation towards generous consideration of the bearing of non-legal factors upon constitutional outcomes. The rhetorical roots and the narrower theoretical understandings of the concept can leave it mired in disagreement and even confusion over the fluid terms and implications of the binary opposition typically drawn with the non-material dimension of the constitution. As a general methodological framework it holds much more promise, although questions remain over whether broader adjectival concerns with the various dimensions of material constitutionality might provide a more flexible methodological opening than a focus on the ‘material constitution’ as a discrete polity-specific object.

Chapter 1 introduces the overall argument of the book: that the scribes of manuscripts of English literature in the fifteenth century were interested in their own craft conventions, in abstract conventions of page design and in the text as an abstract verbal artefact, and were less concerned to exploit the material features of the manuscript. It sets out the implications of the argument for the study of material texts and material agency, and advocates the value of craft theory for bringing to life the scribes’ work. It ends by noting the methods of the book, which combine codicology and textual criticism, quantitative methods and literary critical interpretation.

The Conclusion suggests some implications of this book’s observations on scribes’ concerns for future research on medieval English literary manuscripts: notably, a renewed interest in the scribes’ craft practices and a renewed interest in the ‘work’ as a verbal entity that could transcend the material text, even in edited form.

What does ‘write what you know’ mean? The bedrock of human experience is essentially the same in any age and this is part of what writers ‘know’. We bring imagination – and sometimes research – to our own experience when we write. Everything we have lived through is potentially valuable material; writing involves transforming this material. Even inspiration comes from within. The need to top up our own personal reservoir of experience. All ideas begin ‘What if…’ The importance of pushing beyond what we know we can do easily: creativity thrives when we are outside our comfort zone.

‘The magic isn’t out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered: the ingredients are in you right now, in your experience and in your imagination, waiting for you to make the unique connections that will enable you to discover it.’

Shortly after publishing three poems in the New Statesman in 1964, Seamus Heaney received a letter from Charles Monteith, poetry editor of the prestigious London publishing house Faber and Faber, which he later said ‘was like getting mail from the Almighty God’. Heaney went on to publish not only with Faber, but also with numerous small presses, foremost among them the Gallery Press in Ireland. Concentrating on the publication of Heaney’s poetry in book form, from Death of a Naturalist (Faber, 1966) to The Last Walk (Gallery, 2013), this chapter considers how the poet’s self-reflexive engagement with print both expressed and furthered his faith in literature. This consideration pairs attention to Heaney’s metaphors for publication, including in such poems as ‘Broagh’ and ‘The Bookcase’, with a few striking instances of the material forms his work has taken.

Chapter 5 begins with a description of a median Bible from the period, a quarto printed in 1728, its suprising contents, and the layout of a typical page of text. The ideal reader called for by this Bible is compared to reading practices prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer, which was often bound in as a kind of preface to eighteenth-century Bibles; certain physical features of the Bible, such as cross-referenced verses and chronological years typically printed in the margins; and the reading practices prescribed by devotional works such as The Whole Duty of Man. The ideal Bible reader turns out to be intensely self-critical, purposefully withdrawn from the narrative movement of both scripture and ordinary time. In other words, the typical eighteenth-century Bible and its accompanying devotional practices teach readers to resist narrative, to keep the world at arm’s length, enabling them to step back from the flow of biblical narrative and, for the moment of reading, the flow of their own lives.

Chapter 7 addresses the manner in which the International Court of Justice interprets and applies compensation as a remedy of international law. The definition, function and categories of compensation are issues that this chapter addresses, along with its relationship to other remedies of international law, in particular to restitution in kind. Further, the requests that states submit before the Court demonstrate that two main types of requests regarding compensation are usually included in pleadings: requests for determined compensation and requests for undetermined compensation. The mechanisms used by the Court to address compensation for material and/or moral damages and for damages caused directly to states and/or damages caused to individuals are relevant for clarifying this remedy of international law. Through cases such as the Corfu Channel Case, the Diallo Case and the Chorzow Factory Case, the Court has shaped the manner in which compensation is assessed for disputes relating to damages caused to the environment or to addressing moral damages caused to individuals through equitable considerations.

Chapter 1: introduces the subject – starting by endeavouring to define what the term ’photonics’ might mean and following this with a very brief exploration of the basic concepts. There is then a brief discussion about applications which impact upon our everyday lives. An outline of the book and the reasons for its being presented in this particular format follows. Finally, there is a very brief mention of the background in other complementary disciplines which complement photonics.