Beasts, Humans, and Transhumans in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Beasts, Humans, and Transhumans in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance PDF Author: J. Eugene Clay
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503590639
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
From shape-shifting Merlin to the homunculi of Paracelsus, the nine fascinating essays of this collection explore the contested boundaries between human and non-human animals, between the body and the spirit, and between the demonic and the divine. Drawing on recent work in animal studies, posthumanism, and transhumanism, these innovative articles show how contemporary debates about the nature and future of humanity have deep roots in the myths, literature, philosophy, and art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The authors of these essays demonstrate how classical stories of monsters and metamorphoses offered philosophers, artists, and poets a rich source for reflection on marriage, resurrection, and the passions of love. The ambiguous and shifting distinctions between human, animal, demon, and angel have long been contentious. Beasts can elevate humanity: for Renaissance courtiers, horsemanship defined nobility. But animals are also associated with the demonic, and medieval illuminators portrayed Satan with bestial features. Divided into three sections that examine metamorphoses, human-animal relations, and the demonic and monstrous, this volume raises intriguing questions about the ways humans have understood their kinship with animals, nature, and the supernatural.

Beasts, Humans, and Transhumans in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Beasts, Humans, and Transhumans in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance PDF Author: J. Eugene Clay
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503590639
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book

Book Description
From shape-shifting Merlin to the homunculi of Paracelsus, the nine fascinating essays of this collection explore the contested boundaries between human and non-human animals, between the body and the spirit, and between the demonic and the divine. Drawing on recent work in animal studies, posthumanism, and transhumanism, these innovative articles show how contemporary debates about the nature and future of humanity have deep roots in the myths, literature, philosophy, and art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The authors of these essays demonstrate how classical stories of monsters and metamorphoses offered philosophers, artists, and poets a rich source for reflection on marriage, resurrection, and the passions of love. The ambiguous and shifting distinctions between human, animal, demon, and angel have long been contentious. Beasts can elevate humanity: for Renaissance courtiers, horsemanship defined nobility. But animals are also associated with the demonic, and medieval illuminators portrayed Satan with bestial features. Divided into three sections that examine metamorphoses, human-animal relations, and the demonic and monstrous, this volume raises intriguing questions about the ways humans have understood their kinship with animals, nature, and the supernatural.

The Beast Within

The Beast Within PDF Author: Joyce E. Salisbury
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113576431X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Praise for the first edition: "...a brave and fascinating exploration of an area that has so far been rather neglected by both historical and literary critics. The Beast Within provides extremely valuable information on the legal and cultural background of the human-animal relationship..." -- Studies in the Age of Chaucer This important book offers a unique exploration of the use of and attitude towards animals from the 4th to the 14th centuries. The Beast Within explores the varying roles of animals as property, food and sexual objects, and the complex relationship that this created with the people and world around them. Joyce E. Salisbury takes an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, weaving a historical narrative that includes economic, legal, theological, literary and artistic sources. The book shows how by the end of the Middle Ages the lines between humans and animals had blurred completely, making us recognise the beast that lay within us all. This new edition has been brought right up to date with current scholarship, and includes a brand new chapter on animals on trial and animals as human companions, as well as expanded and updated discussions on fables and saints, and a new section on ‘bestial humans’. This important and provocative book remains a key work on the historical study of animals, as well as in the field of environmental history more generally, and also provides crucial context to ongoing debates on animal rights and the environment.

Multilingualism in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age

Multilingualism in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110471442
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Bi- and multilingualism are of great interest for contemporary linguists since this phenomenon deeply reflects on language acquisition, language use, and sociolinguistic conditions in many different circumstances all over the world. Multilingualism was, however, certainly rather common already, if not especially, in the premodern world. For some time now, research has started to explore this issue through a number of specialized studies. The present volume continues with the investigation of multilingualism through a collection of case studies focusing on important examples in medieval and early modern societies, that is, in linguistic and cultural contact zones, such as England, Spain, the Holy Land, but also the New World. As all contributors confirm, the numerous cases of multilingualism discussed here indicate strongly that the premodern period knew considerably less barriers between people of different social classes, cultural background, and religious orientation. But we also have to acknowledge that already then human communication could fail because of linguistic hurdles which prevented mutual understanding in religious and cultural terms.

Minority Religions in Europe and the Middle East

Minority Religions in Europe and the Middle East PDF Author: George D. Chryssides
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317095677
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Minority religions, not only New Religious Movements, are explored in this innovative book including the predicament of ancient religions such as Zoroastrianism, ‘old new’ religions such as Baha’i, and traditional religions that are minorities elsewhere. The book is divided into two parts: the gathering of data on religious minorities ("mapping"), and the ways in which governments and interest groups respond to them ("monitoring"). The international group examine which new religions exist in particular countries, what their uptake is, and how allegiance can be ascertained. They explore a range of issues faced by minority religions, encompassing official state recognition and registration, unequal treatment in comparison with a dominant religion, how changes in government can affect how they fare, the extent to which members are free to practise their faith, how they sometimes seek to influence politics, and how they can be affected by harassment and persecution. Bringing together debates concerning the social and political issues facing new religions in Europe and the Middle East, this collection extends its focus to Middle Eastern minority faiths, enabling exposition of spiritual movements such as the Gülen Movement, Paganism in Israel, and the Zoroastrians in Tehran.

Animals in the Middle Ages

Animals in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Nona C. Flores
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135546770
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
These interdisciplinary essays focus on animals as symbols, ideas, or images in medieval art and literature.

Performance and Theatricality in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Performance and Theatricality in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance PDF Author: Mark Cruse
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503579870
Category : Performance
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume is a contribution to the cross-cultural study of theater and performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The studies gathered here examine material from Austria, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, and Spain from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. Underlying all of these essays is the understanding that performance shapes reality--that in all of the cultural contexts included here, performance opened a space in which patrons, rulers, writers, painters, spectators, and readers could see themselves or their societies differently, and thereby could assume different identities or construct alternative communities. Addressing confession and private devotion, urban theater and pageantry, royal legitimacy and religious debate, and a wide range of genres and media, this volume offers a panoramic mosaic of the world-making role of theater and performance in medieval and early modern European societies.

Holy and Noble Beasts

Holy and Noble Beasts PDF Author: David Salter
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 0859916243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
It argues that through their depictions of animals, medieval writers were not only able to reflect upon their own humanity, but were also able to explore the meaning of more abstract values and ideas (such as civility, sanctity and nobility) that were central to the culture of the time."--BOOK JACKET.

Beasts

Beasts PDF Author: Elizabeth Morrison
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 9780892368884
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
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The Mark of the Beast

The Mark of the Beast PDF Author: Debra Hassig
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113566045X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The medieval bestiary was a contribution to didactic religious literature, addressing concerns central to all walks of Christian and secular life. These essays analyze the bestiary from both literary and art historical perspectives, exploring issues including kinship, romance, sex, death, and the afterlife.

Building the Kingdom

Building the Kingdom PDF Author: Christine Hunnikin Smith
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503525815
Category : Architectural criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Building the Kingdom examines how Giannozzo Manetti (1396-1459), by interpreting the great architectural projects of his day within historical, literary, and spiritual contexts, articulated their relevance for his contemporaries as cultural paradigms of the Early Italian Renaissance. Manetti, wealthy, learned, devout, and politically active, was perhaps the most admired lay thinker of his generation, a leader within the new intellectual currents of his native Florence and prominent in Rome at the court of Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455). Manetti's detailed accounts both of the consecration of Florence Cathedral in 1436 ('De secularibus et pontificalibus pompis' [Concerning the Secular and Pontifical Parades]) and of the ambitious building projects planned by Nicholas for a revival of papal splendor in Rome (book 2 of his 'Life of Nicholas V Supreme Pontiff') are among the most elaborate architectural ekphrases of the fifteenth century. In these, he surpasses his better-known rival, Leon Battista Alberti. These important Latin texts are presented here in new critical editions, with English translations and commentaries, preceded by chapters situating them within Manetti's other writings, his vast reading, and his historical moment. A close reading of the texts, coupled with an in-depth examination of the sites described and the ceremonies conducted there, shows how Manetti's distinctive fusion of Scholastic and Humanist ideas became authoritative for an Early Renaissance understanding of the cultural and spiritual power of buildings.