Centering his analysis on the consequences for self-representation of the epistemic shift to modernity, Dr. Hembree reassesses the cultural importance of one of the early seventeenth-century's neglected masterpieces of prose fiction, Honoré d'Urfé's L'Astrée. He argues that the narrative, published in five volumes from 1607 to 1627, provides an intellectual bridge between the rejection of ontological guarantees of identity and meaning in Montaigne's Essais, and the formulation of subjective consciousness as a new foundation for self-knowledge in the writings of Descartes. Suspended between medieval and modern paradigms of self-representation, L'Astrée contributed to the reconceptualization of the self and the social symbolic order that occurred in the early modern period. Therein lies its relevance for twentieth-century readers who, like d'Urfé's contemporaries, are caught in a semiotic crisis engendered by yet another cultural divide.

The 17 original essays of this volume explore the relevance of the phenomenological approach to contemporary debates concerning the role of embodiment in our cognitive, emotional and practical life. The papers demonstrate the theoretical vitality and critical potential of the phenomenological tradition both through critically engagement with other disciplines (medical anthropology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, the cognitive sciences) and through the articulation of novel interpretations of classical works in the tradition, in particular the works of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. The concrete phenomena analyzed in this book include: chronic pain, anorexia, melancholia and depression.

Love, Subjectivity, and Truth engages in a lively manner with the overlapping areas of philosophy and literature, philosophy of emotions, and existential thought. "Subjective truth," a phrase used in Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time, is rich with existential connotations. It invokes Kierkegaard above all, but significantly Nietzsche as well, and other philosophers who thematize love, subjectivity, and truth. In Search of Lost Time is especially concerned about what we can know about others through love. Insofar as it conveys and analyzes experience, the novel is capable not only of exploring existential issues but also of doing something like phenomenology. What we know is shaped by our way of knowing, just as the properties of visible, colored objects are determined by the wavelengths of light our eyes can see. Nowhere does the subjective basis of our awareness appear so evident as it does when we view things through loving eyes. In Proust's novel we find skeptical views about love expressed again and again. However, we also note countercurrents, in which love is shown to provide a unique sort of insight. At those times, love seems to be a prerequisite of veridical apprehension. Love, Subjectivity, and Truth investigates this tension as it is played out in Proust's fiction.

Beginning with Deleuze's concept of the sign as a "search for truth," the author argues that the sign phenomenon is fundamentally an existential quandary. He also demonstrates how Deleuze reconciles his existential semiotics with Spinoza's ontology.

The Subject of Love: Hélène Cixous and the Feminine Divine is about abundant, generous, other-regarding love. In the history of Western ideas of love, such a configuration has been inseparable from our ideas about divinity and the sacred; often reserved only for God; and rarely thought of as a human achievement. This book is a substantial engagement with her philosophies of love, inviting the reader to reflect on the conditions of subjectivity that just might open us to something like a divine love of the other. Renshaw follows this thread in this genealogy of abundant love: the thread that connects the subject of love from 5th century B.C.E. Greece and Plato, to the 20th century protestant theology of agapic love of Anders Nygren, to the late 20th century poetico-philosophy of Hélène Cixous. This study will be of particular interest to academics and students of the history of gender, cultural studies, criticism and gender studies

One of the great joys of the academic life is to pay homage in a Festschrift to a scholar who has influenced both colleagues and students over years of interaction and friendship both professional and personal. This volume honors a scholar and theologian of historical theology, a theorist and a practitioner of religion and the arts, and a keen analyst of cultural trends both ancient and modern. . . . [Margaret R.] Miles's prodigious production as a scholar has legendary qualities. Her dozen-plus books alone explore history, patristics, ancient philosophy, art and art history, spiritual formation and religious practice, critical theory, film, ethics and values, personal growth, gender and women's studies, as well as her true academic loves, Augustine and Plotinus. . . . The breadth and depth of her own work and her influence upon others demands an expansive volume, which the editors of this Festschrift unfortunately had to restrict to four categories--Historical Theology, Religion and Culture, Religion and Gender, and Religion and the Visual Arts--in order to capture the heart of our appreciation for her. --from the Introduction

Gerald Bond explores the rise of a new secular identity that took place in French elite culture at the turn of the twelfth century. While the period is widely recognized as pivotal, and much revisionary work has been done on it, Bond notes that in order to see the changes in the conception of the private secular self the focus must be shifted away from epics and saints' lives, the traditional targets of literary inquiry, to lyric, letters, and marginal texts and images. Such texts and images can be found at regional courts reasonably independent of the weak and limited monarchy and at schools far removed from the traditional Christian curriculum, where a new and distinctly secular group contested inherited values of class, gender, and person and created distinct patterns and codes of dress, behavior, talk, and pleasure. Translating and using sources that for the most part have never been explored, Bond examines the Bayeux Tapestry and such figures as Marbod of Rennes, Baudri of Bourgueil, William of Poitiers, and Adela of Blois to frame a complex view of the contested reconception of the secular self and its value.

Taking both knowledge of evolution and belief in God as Creator into account, Henriksen's Life, Love, and Hope articulates a vision for understanding the relationship between God and human experience in contemporary terms. Henriksen maintains that evolutionary theory does not account for all that can and must be said about human life and experience. Conversely, he also argues that any belief in God as Creator can be informed and deepened by knowledge of evolution.--Publisher's website.

In this wide-ranging study of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, Roger Frie develops a critical account of recent conceptions of the subject in philosophy and pdychoanalytic theory. Using a line of analysis strongly grounded in the European tradition, Frie examines the complex relationship between the theories of subjectivity, intersubjectivity, language and love in the work of a diverse body of philosophers and psychoanalyists. He provides lucid interpretations of the work of Sartre, Binswanger, Lacan, Habermas, Heidegger, Freud and others. Because it integrates perspectives from continental philosophy, analytical philosophy, and psychoanalytic theory, this book will appeal to a wide audience in the areas of philosophy, history of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and social theory.

An encounter between Deleuze the philosopher, Proust the novelist, and Beckett the writer creating interdisciplinary and inter-aesthetic bridges between them, covering textual, visual, sonic and performative phenomena, including provocative speculation about how Proust might have responded to Deleuze and Beckett.