The Face of Immortality

The Face of Immortality
Author :
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Total Pages : 222
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780791484241
ISBN-13 : 0791484246
Rating : 4/5 (41 Downloads)

Synopsis The Face of Immortality by : Davide Stimilli

The literature on physiognomy—the art of studying a person's outward appearance, especially the face, in order to determine character and intelligence—has flourished in recent years in the wake of renewed scholarly interest in the history and politics of the body. Virtually no attention, however, has been devoted to the vocabulary and rhetoric of physiognomy. The Face of Immortality addresses this gap, arguing that the trend in Western culture has been to obliterate the face, which is manifested in criticism as a disregard for the letter. Denouncing this trend, Davide Stimilli draws on Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, English, and German sources in order to explore the terminology and historical development of physiognomy. Stimilli takes physiognomy to be the resistance to such an obliteration of the face, and argues that it offers a model for a theory of reading that does not discount the letter as inessential. Elaborating on the work of Walter Benjamin, he defines the task of physiognomical criticism as transliteration (which preserves the letter) rather than translation (which obliterates it). The Face of Immortality is meant to exemplify the method and test the reach of such a criticism, which aims at mediating between philology and philosophy, between literal and allegorical modes of interpretation.

Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics

Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics
Author :
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Total Pages : 281
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780802094759
ISBN-13 : 0802094759
Rating : 4/5 (59 Downloads)

Synopsis Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics by : William Calin

The Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics revisits the work and place of eight scholars roughly contemporary with Anglo-American New Criticism: Leo Spitzer, Ernst Robert Curtius, Erich Auerbach, Albert Béguin, Jean Rousset, C.S. Lewis, F.O. Matthiessen, and Northrop Frye. William Calin first considers the achievements of each critic, examining his methodology and basic presuppositions as well as the critiques marshalled against him. Calin explores their relation to history, to canon-formation, and to our current theoretical debates. He then goes on to show how all eight form a current in the history of criticism related to both humanism and modernism. Underscoring the international, cosmopolitian aspects of literary scholarship in the twentieth century, The Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics brings together humanist critical traditions from Europe, the United Kingdom, and North America and reveals the surprising extent to which, in various languages and academic systems, critics were posing similar questions and offering a gamut of similar responses.

Fichte, German Idealism, and Early Romanticism

Fichte, German Idealism, and Early Romanticism
Author :
Publisher : Rodopi
Total Pages : 386
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9789042030114
ISBN-13 : 9042030119
Rating : 4/5 (14 Downloads)

Synopsis Fichte, German Idealism, and Early Romanticism by : Daniel Breazeale

This volume of 23 previously unpublished essays explores the relationship between the philosophy of J.G. Fichte and that of other leading thinkers associated with German Idealism and the early Romantic movement. Several papers explore the broader question of Fichte's relationship and contribution to “German idealism” and “German romanticism” in general, while others offer comparative studies of the relationship between Fichte's writings and those of Leibniz, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Schleiermacher, and Wilhelm von Humboldt. Taken collectively, this set of essays provides anglophone readers with a new and historically accurate understanding of the origin, development, and reception of Fichte's philosophy in the context of its own era and in relationship to the most important intellectual movements of the time. The authors include both well established and internationally recognized experts in their fields as well as younger scholars with fresh and challenging perspectives to offer. This volume proposes a new interpretation of the history of German idealism in general and of the place therein of Fichte'sWissenschaftslehre. It emphasizes the intimate connection between “transcendental idealism” and “German romanticism” and shows how developments within each of these intellectual movements reflected and in turn influenced developments within the other. Finally, it sheds new light on Fichte's own philosophical development and does so by relating the various stages of his writings to other contemporary movements and authors.

Attunement

Attunement
Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
Total Pages : 300
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780262333337
ISBN-13 : 0262333333
Rating : 4/5 (37 Downloads)

Synopsis Attunement by : Alberto Perez-Gomez

How architecture can move beyond the contemporary enthusiasms for the technically sustainable and the formally dazzling to enhance our human values and capacities. Architecture remains in crisis, its social relevance lost between the two poles of formal innovation and technical sustainability. In Attunement, Alberto Pérez-Gómez calls for an architecture that can enhance our human values and capacities, an architecture that is connected—attuned—to its location and its inhabitants. Architecture, Pérez-Gómez explains, operates as a communicative setting for societies; its beauty and its meaning lie in its connection to human health and self-understanding. Our physical places are of utmost importance for our well-being. Drawing on recent work in embodied cognition, Pérez-Gómez argues that the environment, including the built environment, matters not only as a material ecology but because it is nothing less than a constituent part of our consciousness. To be fully self-aware, we need an external environment replete with meanings and emotions. Pérez-Gómez views architecture through the lens of mood and atmosphere, linking these ideas to the key German concept of Stimmung—attunement—and its roots in Pythagorean harmony and Vitruvian temperance or proportion. He considers the primacy of place over space; the linguistic aspect of architecture—the voices of architecture and the voice of the architect; architecture as a multisensory (not pictorial) experience, with Piranesi, Ledoux, and Hejduk as examples of metaphorical modeling; and how Stimmung might be put to work today to realize the contemporary possibilities of attunement.

Classical and Christian Ideas of World Harmony

Classical and Christian Ideas of World Harmony
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 252
Release :
ISBN-10 : 1621387615
ISBN-13 : 9781621387619
Rating : 4/5 (15 Downloads)

Synopsis Classical and Christian Ideas of World Harmony by : Leo Spitzer

This uniquely fascinating volume is not merely a learned treatise in historical semantics; it is itself a stupendous display of world harmony as a creed-a vivid demonstration that "all is all."

Theology, Music, and Modernity

Theology, Music, and Modernity
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages : 398
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780198846550
ISBN-13 : 019884655X
Rating : 4/5 (50 Downloads)

Synopsis Theology, Music, and Modernity by : Jeremy Begbie

Theology, Music, and Modernity addresses the question: how can the study of music contribute to a theological reading of modernity? It has grown out of the conviction that music has often been ignored in narrations of modernity's theological struggles. Featuring contributions from an international team of distinguished theologians, musicologists, and music theorists, the volume shows how music--and discourse about music--has remarkable powers to bring to light the theological currents that have shaped modern culture. It focuses on the concept of freedom, concentrating on the years 1740-1850, a period when freedom--especially religious and political freedom-became a burning matter of concern in virtually every stratum of Western society. The collection is divided into four sections, each section focusing on a key phenomenon of this period--the rise of the concept of 'revolutionary' freedom; the move of music from church to concert hall; the cry for eschatological justice in the work of black hymn-writer and church leader Richard Allen; and the often fierce tensions between music and language. There is a particular concern to draw on a distinctively 'Scriptural imagination' (especially the theme of New Creation) in order to elicit the key issues at stake, and to suggest constructive ways forward for a contemporary Christian theological engagement with the legacies of modernity today.

The World of Dante

The World of Dante
Author :
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Total Pages : 184
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781442654594
ISBN-13 : 1442654597
Rating : 4/5 (94 Downloads)

Synopsis The World of Dante by : S. Bernard Chandler

In celebration of the 700th anniversary of the birth of Dante in 1265 the Dante Society of Toronto invited six internationally known scholars to address its members. Believing that the greatest tribute to Dante lies in the constant acquisition of a deeper knowledge of his work, the Society prescribed no common theme, but asked only that each paper should present an original contribution to Dante scholarship, deriving from the speaker's individual thought and research. Together, these contributions indicate the range and direction of Dante studies in North America today. The first paper, by Glauco Cambon, deals with Dante's developing attitude to language, which finds its highest and appropriate expression in the Divina Commedia—i.e., dramatic utterance and the becoming of the word. John Freccero shows by a study of the "River of Death" in Inferno II, 108, that the poem was written as a confession of faith for other men; John M. Mahoney, appealing to the Victorine-Augustinian tradition, considers the place of the Purgatorio in the time scheme of the Divina Commedia. Joseph Anthony Mazzeo, through a reading of the Divina Commedia in the light of the Paradiso, concludes that Dante has gradually reduced what are objects of thought—the discourse of philosophers and theologians—to objects of sight, and that the poem ends in silence and vision. Gian Roberto Sarolli, in what he describes as a neopositivist approach, seeks the precise meaning of some of Dante's most problematical terms in their historical and literary context. Finally, Erich von Richthofen studies some key concepts and images, both classical and Christian, referring to justice in the Divina Commedia and Monarchia, particularly in their relation to the preceding epic literature of the Middle Ages. This volume, which makes a valuable and enduring contribution to Dante studies, will appeal to all students of mediaeval culture, and especially to students of Dante.

Humanism and Religion in Early Modern Spain

Humanism and Religion in Early Modern Spain
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 512
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781000460469
ISBN-13 : 1000460460
Rating : 4/5 (69 Downloads)

Synopsis Humanism and Religion in Early Modern Spain by : Terence O’Reilly

Humanism and Religion in Early Modern Spain brings together twenty-five essays by renowned historian Terence O’Reilly. The essays examine the interplay of religion and humanism in a series of writings composed in sixteenth-century Spain. It begins by presenting essential background: the coming together during the reign of the Emperor Charles V of Erasmian humanism and various movements of religious reform, some of them heterodox. It then moves on to the reign of Philip II, focusing on the mystical poetry and prose of St John of the Cross. It explores the influence on his writings of his humanist learning – classical, biblical and patristic. The third part of the book concerns a verse-epistle by John’s contemporary, Francisco de Aldana. One chapter presents the text with a parallel version in English, whilst two others trace its debt to Florentine Neoplatonism, particularly the thought of Marsilio Ficino. The final part is devoted to the humanism of the poet and Scripture scholar Luis de León, and specifically to the confluence in his work of biblical and classical motifs. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of early modern Spanish history, as well those interested in literary studies and the history of religion. (CS 1102).

The Powers of Music

The Powers of Music
Author :
Publisher : Transaction Publishers
Total Pages : 254
Release :
ISBN-10 : 1412838495
ISBN-13 : 9781412838498
Rating : 4/5 (95 Downloads)

Synopsis The Powers of Music by : Ruth Katz

In this cultural history, Ruth Katz conceives of opera as a laboratory dedicated to exploration of the powers hidden in the interaction between words and music. Opera combines not only music and libretto, but the sensuality, acting out, and lyricism that characterize the popular culture of the Italians. The Powers of Music is thus a contribution to cultural studies, providing unique insight into the social meaning of opera in Italy. According to Katz, opera's origins in Renaissance Italy can be traced to numerous characteristics of life at that time. Among them are: the belief of the Humanists that the magical properties of music could be harnessed; the transition from polyphony to monody that gave musical expression to individualism; the melodramatic propensity of Italian culture reflected in its literary and theatrical arts; and the salons of Florentine aristocrats, scientists, and artists whose agenda included the challenge to rediscover how the ancient Greeks succeeded in heightening the rhetorical power of words by allying them with music. Katz discusses each of these factors in detail. In her new introduction, Katz reconsiders her original work by discussing three topics. The first has to do with the perception that there has been a major change in the academic climate for this kind of analysis. The second relates to her concern with the eighteenth-century expansion of the Florentine comparison of the attributes of the arts, from which music emerges as the purest of all, for being freest of external reference. Third, she reconsiders her initial impression that opera was on the wane. The Powers of Music is an intriguing study that will be of interest to sociologists, cultural historians, and scholars of communication and popular culture.

L'Entrée D'Espagne

L'Entrée D'Espagne
Author :
Publisher : Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature
Total Pages : 304
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780907570349
ISBN-13 : 0907570348
Rating : 4/5 (49 Downloads)

Synopsis L'Entrée D'Espagne by : Claudia Boscolo

L’Entrée d’Espagne is a fourteenth century Franco-Italian poem, probably composed by its unknown Paduan author at the early Visconti court, which defined a literary trend of the Renaissance; by transforming a typical epic matter – Charlemagne’s conquest of Spain – into a chivalric poem, it successfully hybridized epic with classical sources, references to the Breton romances, and European conceptions (or misconceptions) of medieval Islam. This study traces the major influences upon this important work of art, including the backdrop of early fourteenth-century Northern Italian politics. It examines the gradual weakening of the figure of Charlemagne in the poem as a reflection, above all, of the diplomatic and military tensions between France and the early rulers of Milan.