Eros And Magic In The Renaissance

Author : Ioan P. Culianu
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1987-11-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226123165

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Eros and Magic in the Renaissance by Ioan P. Culianu Pdf

It is a widespread prejudice of modern, scientific society that "magic" is merely a ludicrous amalgam of recipes and methods derived from primitive and erroneous notions about nature. Eros and Magic in the Renaissance challenges this view, providing an in-depth scholarly explanation of the workings of magic and showing that magic continues to exist in an altered form even today. Renaissance magic, according to Ioan Couliano, was a scientifically plausible attempt to manipulate individuals and groups based on a knowledge of motivations, particularly erotic motivations. Its key principle was that everyone (and in a sense everything) could be influenced by appeal to sexual desire. In addition, the magician relied on a profound knowledge of the art of memory to manipulate the imaginations of his subjects. In these respects, Couliano suggests, magic is the precursor of the modern psychological and sociological sciences, and the magician is the distant ancestor of the psychoanalyst and the advertising and publicity agent. In the course of his study, Couliano examines in detail the ideas of such writers as Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola and illuminates many aspects of Renaissance culture, including heresy, medicine, astrology, alchemy, courtly love, the influence of classical mythology, and even the role of fashion in clothing. Just as science gives the present age its ruling myth, so magic gave a ruling myth to the Renaissance. Because magic relied upon the use of images, and images were repressed and banned in the Reformation and subsequent history, magic was replaced by exact science and modern technology and eventually forgotten. Couliano's remarkable scholarship helps us to recover much of its original significance and will interest a wide audience in the humanities and social sciences.

Author : Ted Anton
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Magic
ISBN : 0810113961

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Eros, Magic, & the Murder of Professor Culianu by Ted Anton Pdf

Anton (writing, DePaul U.) synthesizes the research he has done since the beginning on the still-unsolved May 1991 murder of Chicago Divinity School professor Ioan Culianu, a protege of pioneering mythologist Mircea Eliade. Culianu had been taunting the communist government of his native Romania, and Anton suggests the murder was political. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author : Peter Marshall,Alexandra Walsham
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2006-08-31
Category : History
ISBN : 9780521843324

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Angels in the Early Modern World by Peter Marshall,Alexandra Walsham Pdf

This volume explores the role of belief in the existence of angels in the early modern world.

Author : John S. Mebane
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 1992-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 080328179X

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Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age by John S. Mebane Pdf

For all their pride in seeing this world clearly, the thinkers and artists of the English Renaissance were also fascinated by magic and the occult. The three greatest playwrights of the period devoted major plays (The Tempest, Doctor Faustus, The Alchemist) to magic, Francis Bacon often referred to it, and it was ever-present in the visual arts. In Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age John S. Mebane reevaluates the significance of occult philosophy in Renaissance thought and literature, constructing the most detailed historical context for his subject yet attempted.

Author : Donald Beecher,Massimo Ciavolella
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : European literature
ISBN : STANFORD:36105004067612

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Eros and Anteros by Donald Beecher,Massimo Ciavolella Pdf

Author : I.P. Couliano
Publisher : Shambhala Publications
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2001-05-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781570626500

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Out of This World by I.P. Couliano Pdf

This book takes the reader on a fantastic journey through a wide range of cultures and traditions to examine the phenomenon of ecstatic visionary experiences—from Sumerian Gilgamesh and the Taoist Immortals to the imaginative fiction of Jorge Luis Borges. The author provides a comprehensive tour of otherworldly journeys common from immemorial times among shamans, magicians, and witches, and illustrates their connection with such modern phenomena as altered states of consciousness, out-of-body experiences, and near-death experiences.

Author : Guido Ruggiero
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 1989
Category : Families
ISBN : 9780195056969

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The Boundaries of Eros by Guido Ruggiero Pdf

Using the records of several Venetian courts that dealt with sex crimes, Ruggiero traces the evolution of both licit and illicit sexuality during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, providing insight into Venetian society and, ultimately, the Renaissance itself.

Author : Eugenio Garin
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 1997-05-09
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226283562

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Renaissance Characters by Eugenio Garin Pdf

Compared to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance is brief—little more than two centuries, extending roughly from the mid-fourteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century—and largely confined to a few Italian city states. Nevertheless, the epoch marked a great cultural shift in sensibilities, the dawn of a new age in which classical Greek and Roman values were "reborn" and human values in all fields, from the arts to civic life, were reaffirmed. With this volume, Eugenio Garin, a leading Renaissance scholar, has gathered the work of an international team of scholars into an accessible account of the people who animated this decisive moment in the genesis of the modern mind. We are offered a broad spectrum of figures, major and minor, as they lived their lives: the prince and the military commander, the cardinal and the courtier, the artist and the philosopher, the merchant and the banker, the voyager, and women of all classes. With its concentration on the concrete, the specific, even the anecdotal, the volume offers a wealth of new perspectives and ideas for study.

Author : Allen G. Debus
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 1978-10-31
Category : History
ISBN : 0521293286

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Man and Nature in the Renaissance by Allen G. Debus Pdf

An introduction to science and medicine during the earlier phrases of the scientific revolution.

Author : Guido Ruggiero
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 576 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2008-04-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780470751619

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A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance by Guido Ruggiero Pdf

This volume brings together some of the most exciting renaissance scholars to suggest new ways of thinking about the period and to set a new series of agendas for Renaissance scholarship. Overturns the idea that it was a period of European cultural triumph and highlights the negative as well as the positive. Looks at the Renaissance from a world, as opposed to just European, perspective. Views the Renaissance from perspectives other than just the cultural elite. Gender, sex, violence, and cultural history are integrated into the analysis.

Author : Verity Harte,Raphael Woolf
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 323 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2017-12-28
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781107194977

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Rereading Ancient Philosophy by Verity Harte,Raphael Woolf Pdf

Revisits central texts and themes in ancient philosophy in order to throw fresh light on some familiar passages and debates.

Author : Jonathan Bate
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 378 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2019-04-16
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780691161600

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How the Classics Made Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate Pdf

From one of our most eminent and accessible literary critics, a groundbreaking account of how the Greek and Roman classics forged Shakespeare’s imagination Ben Jonson famously accused Shakespeare of having “small Latin and less Greek.” But he was exaggerating. Shakespeare was steeped in the classics. Shaped by his grammar school education in Roman literature, history, and rhetoric, he moved to London, a city that modeled itself on ancient Rome. He worked in a theatrical profession that had inherited the conventions and forms of classical drama, and he read deeply in Ovid, Virgil, and Seneca. In a book of extraordinary range, acclaimed literary critic and biographer Jonathan Bate, one of the world’s leading authorities on Shakespeare, offers groundbreaking insights into how, perhaps more than any other influence, the classics made Shakespeare the writer he became. Revealing in new depth the influence of Cicero and Horace on Shakespeare and finding new links between him and classical traditions, ranging from myths and magic to monuments and politics, Bate offers striking new readings of a wide array of the plays and poems. At the heart of the book is an argument that Shakespeare’s supreme valuation of the force of imagination was honed by the classical tradition and designed as a defense of poetry and theater in a hostile world of emergent Puritanism. Rounded off with a fascinating account of how Shakespeare became our modern classic and has ended up playing much the same role for us as the Greek and Roman classics did for him, How the Classics Made Shakespeare combines stylistic brilliance, accessibility, and scholarship, demonstrating why Jonathan Bate is one of our most eminent and readable literary critics.

Author : Joshua Trachtenberg
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2012-10-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780812208337

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Jewish Magic and Superstition by Joshua Trachtenberg Pdf

Alongside the formal development of Judaism from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, a robust Jewish folk religion flourished—ideas and practices that never met with wholehearted approval by religious leaders yet enjoyed such wide popularity that they could not be altogether excluded from the religion. According to Joshua Trachtenberg, it is not possible truly to understand the experience and history of the Jewish people without attempting to recover their folklife and beliefs from centuries past. Jewish Magic and Superstition is a masterful and utterly fascinating exploration of religious forms that have all but disappeared yet persist in the imagination. The volume begins with legends of Jewish sorcery and proceeds to discuss beliefs about the evil eye, spirits of the dead, powers of good, the famous legend of the golem, procedures for casting spells, the use of gems and amulets, how to battle spirits, the ritual of circumcision, herbal folk remedies, fortune telling, astrology, and the interpretation of dreams. First published more than sixty years ago, Trachtenberg's study remains the foundational scholarship on magical practices in the Jewish world and offers an understanding of folk beliefs that expressed most eloquently the everyday religion of the Jewish people.

Author : Richard Kieckhefer
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2021-09-09
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108494717

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Magic in the Middle Ages by Richard Kieckhefer Pdf

A revised and expanded edition of this fascinating interdisciplinary study of magic in the Middle Ages.

Author : H Darrel Rutkin
Publisher : Springer
Page : 515 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2019-04-24
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783030107796

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Sapientia Astrologica: Astrology, Magic and Natural Knowledge, ca. 1250-1800 by H Darrel Rutkin Pdf

This book explores the changing perspective of astrology from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era. It introduces a framework for understanding both its former centrality and its later removal from legitimate knowledge and practice. The discussion reconstructs the changing roles of astrology in Western science, theology, and culture from 1250 to 1500. The author considers both the how and the why. He analyzes and integrates a broad range of sources. This analysis shows that the history of astrology—in particular, the story of the protracted criticism and ultimate removal of astrology from the realm of legitimate knowledge and practice—is crucial for fully understanding the transition from premodern Aristotelian-Ptolemaic natural philosophy to modern Newtonian science. This removal, the author argues, was neither obvious nor unproblematic. Astrology was not some sort of magical nebulous hodge-podge of beliefs. Rather, astrology emerged in the 13th century as a richly mathematical system that served to integrate astronomy and natural philosophy, precisely the aim of the “New Science” of the 17th century. As such, it becomes a fundamentally important historical question to determine why this promising astrological synthesis was rejected in favor of a rather different mathematical natural philosophy—and one with a very different causal structure than Aristotle's.