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With Playing God, Andy Crouch opens the subject of power, elucidating its subtle activity in our relationships and institutions. He gives us much more than a warning against abuse, though. Turning the notion of "playing God" on its head, Crouch celebrates power as the gift by which we join in God's creative, redeeming work in the world.
This book offers a novel interpretation of politics and identity in Ovid's epic poem of transformations, the Metamorphoses. Reexamining the emphatically fictional character of the poem, Playing Gods argues that Ovid uses the problem of fiction in the text to redefine the power of poetry in Augustan Rome. The book also provides the fullest account yet of how the poem relates to the range of cultural phenomena that defined and projected Augustan authority, including spectacle, theater, and the visual arts. Andrew Feldherr argues that a key to the political as well as literary power of the Metamorphoses is the way it manipulates its readers' awareness that its stories cannot possibly be true. By continually juxtaposing the imaginary and the real, Ovid shows how a poem made up of fictions can and cannot acquire the authority and presence of other discursive forms. One important way that the poem does this is through narratives that create a "double vision" by casting characters as both mythical figures and enduring presences in the physical landscapes of its readers. This narrative device creates the kind of tensions between identification and distance that Augustan Romans would have felt when experiencing imperial spectacle and other contemporary cultural forms. Full of original interpretations, Playing Gods constructs a model for political readings of fiction that will be useful not only to classicists but to literary theorists and cultural historians in other fields.
Gods at Play: An Eyewitness Account of Great Moments in American Sports by Tom Callahan Pdf
A beautifully observed narrative of American sport: character, grit, tragedy, unremarked heroism, and, always, the illuminating story behind the story. As a columnist for Time magazine, among many other publications, Tom Callahan witnessed an extraordinary number of defining moments in American sport across four decades. He takes us from Roberto Clemente clinching his 3,000th, and final, regular-season hit in Pittsburgh; to ringside for the Muhammad Ali–George Foreman fight in Zaire; and to Arthur Ashe announcing, at a news conference, that he’d tested positive for HIV. There are also little-known private moments: Joe Morgan whispering thank you to a virtually blind Jackie Robinson on the field at the 1972 World Series, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar saying he was more interested in being a good man than in being the greatest basketball player. Brimming with colorful vignettes and enlivened by Callahan’s eye for detail, Gods at Play offers surprising portraits of the most celebrated names in sports. Roger Rosenblatt calls Callahan “the most complete sportswriter in America. He knows the most and writes the best."
The riveting story of the rivalry between the two most renowned actresses of the nineteenth century: legendary Sarah Bernhardt, whose eccentricity on and off the stage made her the original diva, and mystical Eleonora Duse, who broke all the rules to popularize the natural style of acting we celebrate today. Audiences across Europe and the Americas clamored to see the divine Sarah Bernhardt swoon—and she gave them their money’s worth. The world’s first superstar, she traveled with a chimpanzee named Darwin and a pet alligator that drank champagne, shamelessly supplementing her income by endorsing everything from aperitifs to beef bouillon, and spreading rumors that she slept in a coffin to better understand the macabre heroines she played. Eleonora Duse shied away from the spotlight. Born to a penniless family of itinerant troubadours, she disappeared into the characters she portrayed—channeling their spirits, she claimed. Her new, empathetic style of acting revolutionized the theater—and earned her the ire of Sarah Bernhardt in what would become the most tumultuous theatrical showdown of the nineteenth century. Bernhardt and Duse seduced each other’s lovers, stole one another’s favorite playwrights, and took to the world’s stages to outperform their rival in her most iconic roles. A scandalous, enormously entertaining history full of high drama and low blows, Playing to the Gods is the perfect “book for all of us who binge-watched Feud” (Daniel de Visé, author of Andy & Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show).
This book studies the close connections between politics, culture, art, and philosophy in seventeenth-century Europe. As an emblem of this interrelationship, the author has chosen the phenomenon of the splendid festive performance of spectacular plays and operas given at absolutist courts in Rome, Madrid, Paris, Versailles, and Vienna between 1631 and 1668. Gods of Play fills voids in the scholarly literature on the seventeenth-century, on absolutism, on courtly theatricality, and on the philosophy of play. Aercke demonstrates that such splendid performances were not just frivolous entertainment for the courtly class but were serious activities with far-ranging political consequences.
Author : Courtney J. P. Friesen Publisher : Taylor & Francis Page : 184 pages File Size : 43,6 Mb Release : 2023-07-07 Category : Literary Criticism ISBN : 9781000910292
Acting Gods, Playing Heroes, and the Interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and Greek Drama in the Early Common Era by Courtney J. P. Friesen Pdf
While many ancient Jewish and Christian leaders voiced opposition to Greek and Roman theater, this volume demonstrates that by the time the public performance of classical drama ceased at the end of antiquity the ideals of Jews and Christians had already been shaped by it in profound and lasting ways. Readers are invited to explore how gods and heroes famous from Greek drama animated the imaginations of ancient individuals and communities as they articulated and reinvented their religious visions for a new era. In this study, Friesen demonstrates that Greek theater’s influence is evident within Jewish and Christian intellectual formulations, narrative constructions, and practices of ritual and liturgy. Through a series of interrelated case studies, the book examines how particular plays, through texts and performances, scenes, images, and heroic personae, retained appeal for Jewish and Christian communities across antiquity. The volume takes an interdisciplinary approach involving classical, Jewish, and Christian studies, and brings together these separate avenues of scholarship to produce fresh insights and a reevaluation of theatrical drama in relation to ancient Judaism and Christianity. Acting Gods, Playing Heroes, and the Interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and Greek Drama in the Early Common Era allows students and scholars of the diverse and evolving religious landscapes of antiquity to gain fresh perspectives on the interplay between the gods and heroes—both human and divine—of Greeks and Romans, Jews and Christians as they were staged in drama and depicted in literature.
A New Expanded And Illustrated Edition Of The Work First Published In 1980. Relates Two Festivals-Durgapuja In Some Of Goddess Durga, And Gajan In Honour Of Lord Siva. Presents An Inside New Of Society And Is The Only Complete Ethnographic Account Of A Major Ritual Cycle In India. 4 Chapters And 4 Appendices.
Gods' Games We Play, Vol. 1 (light novel) by Kei Sazane Pdf
Let the games begin! In their (overabundance of) free time, the gods grew bored and decided to create challenging battles of wits to spice things up! Their opponent? Humanity! A select few players called “apostles” meet the gods on the spiritual realm’s playing field to beat the deities at their own games. A former god named Leshea has woken after sleeping for thousands of years, and her first demand is to meet “this era’s very best player!” She is introduced to Fay, an acclaimed rookie apostle. Together, they plan to challenge the gods and win the ultimate prize, but no one in human history has managed to clear ten games—because the gods can be capricious, outrageous, and sometimes downright incomprehensible! In the face of absurdity, what can the apostles do but enjoy the contest to its fullest?
Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins by Ingvild Sælid Gilhus Pdf
Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins analyses how laughter has been used as a symbol in myths, rituals and festivals of Western religions, and has thus been inscribed in religious discourse. The Mesopotamian Anu, the Israelite Jahweh, the Greek Dionysos, the Gnostic Christ and the late modern Jesus were all laughing gods. Through their laughter, gods prove both their superiority and their proximity to humans. In this comprehensive study, Professor Gilhus examines the relationship between corporeal human laughter and spiritual divine laughter from c`ussical antiquity, to the Christian West and the modern era. She combines the study of the history of religion with social-scientific approaches, to provide an original and pertinent exploration of a universal human phenomenon, and its significance for the development of religions.
We had the Fray of the Gods. Now we have the Play of the Gods - a tale of lust for gold, lust for power, and lust for cheese dip. The Gods themselves watch this story from the above so it must be good enough for you. This handsome paperback volume collects all four issues of the series: in one package, you get a lot of Groo doing real stupid things and causing mass destruction. Just what you wanted!
In this book, the author shows how Hegelian dialectic as developed by the philosophers of the Frankfurt School offers a tool for the comprehension of a contradictory world and a creative way to see this world as whole again. Contents: The Place of Aesthetics in Society; The Meaning of Meaning; DialecticsóThinking the Thoughts of the Dice-Playing God; The Search for Truth; On Aesthetic Immediacy; Acting as Creation of Meaning; The Birth of Aestheticism; On Authority; Healing the Fracture; From Communicative Action to Dialectical Communication; Mimesis and Redemption; Community Creation and Art; From Technical Rationality to Dialectical Wholeness; Toward a Materialist Spirituality.
A deeply thoughtful, deeply irreverent look at the mythology of play, Gods and Games ties together Joseph Campbell's approach to myth and religion with Johan Huizinga's view of our species as Homo ludens — "Man the Game-player" — which suggests that play is a central aspect of the human spirit and human culture. "A comprehensive and clear review.... loaded with quotations both pertinent and entertaining that may be eye-openers both to traditional religionists and readers who may never have thought about play in a philosophical or religious sense." —Publishers Weekly
Do the old myths still have something to tell us? What experiences could the figures from the Trojan War convey to us today? The author wanted to find out. He set out to talk to them. They answered his questions. He was able to win over prominent interlocutors such as Cassandra, Penthesilea and Odysseus. You can look forward to the answers and immerse yourself in the magical world of Greek mythology. This book "The Gods do not play dice" takes you into fictional dialogs with figures and creatures who are willing to share their stories and their lives with you. Homer's "Illiad" is considered humanity's first war report. However, he did not always clearly separate what had been handed down from poetry. My dialogues through time deal with this period through the person of Cassandra. I was sometimes surprised at how little the means and methods of war have changed to this day. "Writing is public thinking. "Look what I was thinking!" There will always be someone later who is convinced that they could have formed these sentences, these thoughts better. But then it is too late, then the order and the selection are fixed and therein lies the writer's crime. The reader accuses him of this whenever possible. Excerpt: "The gods don't play dice" – ("Kassandra") "So you learned that Menelaus would never let a spoiled boy take his wife. You had seen it and you had warned them. You had told them again and again. Beware of the Greeks, you are said to have shouted, more likely to stammer in one of these fits, even when they bring gifts. But they didn't believe you. Apollo's curse has long since worked against you. Your father punished you for these words. They were not beneficial for Troy, he had said. The truth is of little use in war. And doubts, whether justified or not, only ever benefit the enemy. You had to learn these words, war and enemy and before that, attack. That seemed to have become the most important word in Troy: "assault," or rather "cowardly assault." His question then hit you with full force, whether you wanted the victory of the Greeks and the downfall of Troy. It hit you like an ax and split your mind. How could he have thought that question? Then how could he even pronounce them? Had he denied you your love for him, for yours, at that moment? Really? Whether asked this way or another, this question silenced you forever. You never spoke out loud to others again. You never really confided in others again. Hints, fragments at best, and then immediately being silent again. Your dearest brother, Helenos, your twin, was still on your side. He saw what you saw, saw the inevitable. But he remained silent in the face of his angry father. He seemed blind, like his priests. All men who only whispered to the king what he was ready to hear. Hecuba often scolded her for this and left no doubt about Priam's decisions, which were actually hers. You had often overheard them, Kassandra, heard them talking when they were conferring together, when they were conferring in the palace. You could still move freely. After all, you were one of them. It was like that until the first time you loudly disagreed with them. You heard that they knew that your father's sister Hesione was not stolen by the Greeks, but willingly became Telamon's wife. You heard that this marriage without the king's consent was treason in your father's eyes. He could not allow a Greek to come to an agreement with a Trojan of her status without his consent. That had to be seen as an insult... ...But then he made his most fatal mistake. Your brother Paris was commissioned to bring Hesione to Troy without properly informing him. He couldn't do that with this dispatch accompanying him. So he decided, untrained in dealing with kings and politics, to kidnap Helena in return for the perceived insult. As if he could make up for one mistake with another."
WITH 8 PAGES OF BLACK-AND-WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS How—and why—do we obsess over movie stars? How does fame both reflect and mask the person behind it? How have the image of stardom and our stars’ images altered over a century of cultural and technological change? Do we create celebrities, or do they create us? Ty Burr, film critic for The Boston Globe, answers these questions in this lively and fascinating anecdotal history of stardom, with all its blessings and curses for star and stargazer alike. From Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin to Archie Leach (a.k.a. Cary Grant) and Marion Morrison (a.k.a. John Wayne), Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts, and such no-cal stars of today as the Kardashians and the new online celebrity (i.e., you and me), Burr takes us on an insightful and entertaining journey through the modern fame game at its flashiest, most indulgent, occasionally most tragic, and ultimately, its most revealing.