Chaos From The Ancient World To Early Modernity

Author : Andreas Höfele,Christoph Levin,Reinhard Müller,Björn Quiring
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2020-11-23
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9783110655001

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Chaos from the Ancient World to Early Modernity by Andreas Höfele,Christoph Levin,Reinhard Müller,Björn Quiring Pdf

Chaos is a perennial source of fear and fascination. The original "formless void" (tohu-wa-bohu) mentioned in the book of Genesis, chaos precedes the created world: a state of anarchy before the establishment of cosmic order. But chaos has frequently also been conceived of as a force that persists in the cosmos and in society and threatens to undo them both. From the cultures of the ancient Near East and the Old Testament to early modernity, notions of the divine have included the power to check and contain as well as to unleash chaos as a sanction for the violation of social and ethical norms. Yet chaos has also been construed as a necessary supplement to order, a region of pure potentiality at the base of reality that provides the raw material of creation or even constitutes a kind of alternative order itself. As such, it generates its own peculiar 'formations of the formless'. Focusing on the connection between the cosmic and the political, this volume traces the continuities and re-conceptualizations of chaos from the ancient Near East to early modern Europe across a variety of cultures, discourses and texts. One of the questions it poses is how these pre-modern 'chaos theories' have survived into and reverberate in our own time.

Author : Matthew C. Augustine,Giulio J. Pertile,Steven N. Zwicker
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 620 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2023-04-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780192884725

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Imagining Andrew Marvell at 400 by Matthew C. Augustine,Giulio J. Pertile,Steven N. Zwicker Pdf

Augustine, Pertile and Zwicker celebrate the work of Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) in the quatercentenary year of his birth, combining the best historical scholarship with a varied and ambitious programme of cognitive, affective, and aesthetic inquiry. The essays have been specially commissioned for the quatercentenary and include the work of a range of scholars from Britain and North America. Acknowledged masterpieces such as the 'Horatian Ode', 'The Garden', and 'Upon Appleton House' are here read in light of historical and material evidence that has emerged in recent decades. At the same time, the volume offers many fresh points of entry into Marvell's work, with particular attention to the poet's lyric economies, Marvell's engagement with popular print, and, not least, the polyglot and transnational dimensions of his writing. The quatercentenary also represents an important anniversary for Marvell studies, marking one hundred years since T. S. Eliot's appreciation of the poet inaugurated modern Marvell criticism. As Imagining Andrew Marvell at 400 reassesses Marvell's writings it also reflects on the profession of English literature, taking stock of the discipline itself, where it has been and where it might be going as scholars continue to map the pleasures and challenges of reading and re-reading Andrew Marvell.

Author : Olaf Almqvist
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2022-01-13
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781350221864

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Chaos, Cosmos and Creation in Early Greek Theogonies by Olaf Almqvist Pdf

Cosmological narratives like the creation story in the book of Genesis or the modern Big Bang are popularly understood to be descriptions of how the universe was created. However, cosmologies also say a great deal more. Indeed, the majority of cosmologies, ancient and modern, explore not simply how the world was made but how humans relate to their surrounding environment and the often thin line which separates humans from gods and animals. Combining approaches from classical studies, anthropology, and philosophy, this book studies three competing cosmologies of the early Greek world: Hesiod's Theogony; the Orphic Derveni theogony; and Protagoras' creation myth in Plato's eponymous dialogue. Although all three cosmologies are part of a single mythic tradition and feature a number of similar events and characters, Olaf Almqvist argues they offer very different answers to an ongoing debate on what it is to be human. Engaging closely with the ontological turn in anthropology and in particular with the work of Philippe Descola, this book outlines three key sets of ontological assumptions – analogism, pantheism, and naturalism – found in early Greek literature and explores how these competing ontological assumptions result in contrasting attitudes to rituals such as prayer and sacrifice.

Author : Roman Alexander Barton,Eva von Contzen,Anne Rüggemeier
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 143 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2023-05-23
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783031283727

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Literary Lists by Roman Alexander Barton,Eva von Contzen,Anne Rüggemeier Pdf

This book provides a concise introduction to lists in literature from the early modern period to the twenty-first century. Tracing the changing functions of the literary list across time, it offers a broad range of case studies which situate selected enumerations in their respective contexts and demonstrate the versatility and creative potential of the list form. Starting with a review of previous research on the literary list, the book discusses four main constellations of enumeration: series and the great chain of being; itemization and enumerative realism; ‘letteracettera’ and experimental list-making; ‘white noise’ and creative exploits of enumeration between formal playfulness and existential exploration. The epilogue offers an analytical toolkit for the study of literary lists based on rhetorical theory.

Author : Marc Föcking,Susanne A. Friede,Florian Mehltretter,Angela Oster
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2023-03-06
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9783110783438

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A Companion to Anticlassicisms in the Cinquecento by Marc Föcking,Susanne A. Friede,Florian Mehltretter,Angela Oster Pdf

Author : John Bone
Publisher : Policy Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2024-05-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9781529213034

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The Great Decline by John Bone Pdf

Drawing on modern history, politics, economics, psychology, sociology and neuroscience, John Bone argues that our current turmoil leaves us ill prepared to deal with two of the greatest challenges that are confronting humanity: the rise of AI and automation and how we deal with climate change.

Author : Michael Kimaid
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2015-03-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9781317565437

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Modernity, Metatheory, and the Temporal-Spatial Divide by Michael Kimaid Pdf

This book is about how modernity affects our perceptions of time and space. Its main argument is that geographical space is used to control temporal progress by channeling it to benefit particular political, economic and social interests, or by halting it altogether. By incorporating the ancient Greek myth of the Titanomachy as a conceptual metaphor to explore the elemental ideas of time and space, the author argues that hegemonic interests have developed spatial hierarchy into a comprehensive system of technocratic monoculture, which interrupts temporal development in order to maintain exclusive power and authority. This spatial stasis is reinforced through the control of historical narratives and geographical settings. While increasingly comprehensive, the author argues that this state of affairs can best be challenged by focusing on the development of "unmappable places" which presently exist within the socio-spatial matrix of the modern world.

Author : Siam Bhayro,Catherine Rider
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 447 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2017-02-06
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004338548

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Demons and Illness from Antiquity to the Early-Modern Period by Siam Bhayro,Catherine Rider Pdf

Demons and Illness from Antiquity to the Early-Modern Period explores the relationship between demons and illness from the ancient world to the early modern period. Its twenty chapters range from Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt to seventeenth-century England and Spain, and include studies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Author : B. Ann Tlusty
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 188 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2021-05-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9781350199620

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Alcohol in the Early Modern World by B. Ann Tlusty Pdf

This book examines how the profound religious, political, and intellectual shifts that characterize the early modern period in Europe are inextricably linked to cultural uses of alcohol in Europe and the Atlantic world. Combining recent work on the history of drink with innovative new research, the eight contributing scholars explore themes such as identity, consumerism, gender, politics, colonialism, religion, state-building, and more through the revealing lens of the pervasive drinking cultures of early modern peoples. Alcohol had a place at nearly every European table and a role in much of early modern experience, from building personal bonds via social and ritual drinking to fueling economies at both micro and macro levels. At the same time, drinking was also at the root of a host of personal tragedies, including domestic violence in the home and human trafficking across the Atlantic. Alcohol in the Early Modern World provides a fascinating re-examination of pre-modern beliefs about and experiences with intoxicating beverages.

Author : Robert Cooper
Publisher : Demos
Page : 21 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : International relations
ISBN : 9781841800103

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The Post-modern State and the World Order by Robert Cooper Pdf

Author : Kelly J. Stage
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 372 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2018-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781496204875

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Producing Early Modern London by Kelly J. Stage Pdf

Early seventeenth-century London playwrights used actual locations in their comedies while simultaneously exploring London as an imagined, ephemeral, urban space. Producing Early Modern London examines this tension between representing place and producing urban space. In analyzing the theater's use of city spaces and places, Kelly J. Stage shows how the satirical comedies of the early seventeenth century came to embody the city as the city embodied the plays. Stage focuses on city plays by George Chapman, Thomas Dekker, William Haughton, Ben Jonson, John Marston, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster. While the conventional labels of "city comedy" or "citizen comedy" have often been applied to these plays, she argues that London comedies defy these genre categorizations because the ruptures, expansions, conflicts, and imperfections of the expanding city became a part of their form. Rather than defining the "city comedy," comedy in this period proved to be the genre of London. As the expansion of London's social space exceeded the strict confines of the "square mile," the city burgeoned into a new metropolis. The satiric comedies of this period became, in effect, playgrounds for urban experimentation. Early seventeenth-century playwrights seized the opportunity to explore the myriad ways in which London worked, taking the expected--a romance plot, a typical father-son conflict, a cross-dressing intrigue--and turning it into a multifaceted, complex story of interaction and proximity.

Author : Justin Pack
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2019-10-17
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781498591355

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Amor Mundi and Overcoming Modern World Alienation by Justin Pack Pdf

Love in many premodern cultures extended to and permeated the world or even the cosmos, but love in contemporary consumerist society tends to be sexualized, romanticized, and individualized. As a result, ancient visions of ethical love are difficult for moderns to comprehend, especially those rooted in premodern Western thought, or Native American thinkers that describe a love of the natural world that would help us live more responsibly on the Earth. This volume retrieves the significant narratives of love of the world and the concomitant ethical ramifications of those visions and argues that our age of science and technology has destroyed the ancient, living cosmos of previous visions and replaced it with a mechanical universe. This shift has resulted in various forms of destruction, diminishment, and forgetfulness. Overcoming modern world alienation requires recovering a sense of what it means to love the world and changing our practices to reflect our interconnection with it and our interdependency on it.

Author : George McClure
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 283 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2018-06-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108470278

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Doubting the Divine in Early Modern Europe by George McClure Pdf

The classical tradition -- Renaissance antihero: Leon Battista Alberti's Momus, the novel -- Momus and the Reformation -- The execution of Giordano Bruno -- Milton's Lucifer -- God of modern criticks -- Momus and modernism

Author : Helen L. Parish
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 409 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2014-11-20
Category : History
ISBN : 9781441100320

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Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe: A Reader by Helen L. Parish Pdf

Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe brings together a rich selection of essays which represent the most important historical research on religion, magic and superstition in early modern Europe. Each essay makes a significant contribution to the history of magic and religion in its own right, while together they demonstrate how debates over the topic have evolved over time, providing invaluable intellectual, historical, and socio-political context for readers approaching the subject for the first time. The essays are organised around five key themes and areas of controversy. Part One tackles superstition; Part Two, the tension between miracles and magic; Part Three, ghosts and apparitions; Part Four, witchcraft and witch trials; and Part Five, the gradual disintegration of the 'magical universe' in the face of scientific, religious and practical opposition. Each part is prefaced by an introduction that provides an outline of the historiography and engages with recent scholarship and debate, setting the context for the essays that follow and providing a foundation for further study. This collection is an invaluable toolkit for students of early modern Europe, providing both a focused overview and a springboard for broader thinking about the underlying continuities and discontinuities that make the study of magic and superstition a perennially fascinating topic.

Author : Nicholas Popper
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2012-11-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226675022

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Walter Ralegh's History of the World and the Historical Culture of the Late Renaissance by Nicholas Popper Pdf

Imprisoned in the Tower of London after the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, Sir Walter Ralegh spent seven years producing his massive History of the World. Created with the aid of a library of more than five hundred books that he was allowed to keep in his quarters, this incredible work of English vernacular would become a best seller, with nearly twenty editions, abridgments, and continuations issued in the years that followed. Nicholas Popper uses Ralegh’s History as a touchstone in this lively exploration of the culture of history writing and historical thinking in the late Renaissance. From Popper we learn why early modern Europeans ascribed heightened value to the study of the past and how scholars and statesmen began to see historical expertise as not just a foundation for political practice and theory, but as a means of advancing their power in the courts and councils of contemporary Europe. The rise of historical scholarship during this period encouraged the circulation of its methods to other disciplines, transforming Europe’s intellectual—and political—regimes. More than a mere study of Ralegh’s History of the World, Popper’s book reveals how the methods that historians devised to illuminate the past structured the dynamics of early modernity in Europe and England.