Melancholic Joy

Melancholic Joy PDF Author: Brian Treanor
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350177768
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Today, we find ourselves surrounded by numerous reasons to despair, from loneliness, suffering and death at an individual level to societal alienation, oppression, sectarian conflict and war. No honest assessment of life can take place without facing up to these facts and it is not surprising that more and more people are beginning to suspect that the human story will end in tragedy. However, this focus on despair does not paint a complete and accurate picture of reality, which is also inflected with beauty and goodness. Working with examples from poetry and literature, including Virginia Woolf and Jack Gilbert and the films of Terrence Malick, Melancholic Joy offers an honest assessment of the human condition. It unflinchingly acknowledges the everyday frustrations and extraordinary horrors that generate despair and argues that the appropriate response is to take up joy again, not in an attempt to ignore or dismiss evil, but rather as part of a “melancholic joy” that accepts the mystery of a world both beautiful and brutal.

Melancholic Joy

Melancholic Joy PDF Author: Brian Treanor
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350177768
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
Today, we find ourselves surrounded by numerous reasons to despair, from loneliness, suffering and death at an individual level to societal alienation, oppression, sectarian conflict and war. No honest assessment of life can take place without facing up to these facts and it is not surprising that more and more people are beginning to suspect that the human story will end in tragedy. However, this focus on despair does not paint a complete and accurate picture of reality, which is also inflected with beauty and goodness. Working with examples from poetry and literature, including Virginia Woolf and Jack Gilbert and the films of Terrence Malick, Melancholic Joy offers an honest assessment of the human condition. It unflinchingly acknowledges the everyday frustrations and extraordinary horrors that generate despair and argues that the appropriate response is to take up joy again, not in an attempt to ignore or dismiss evil, but rather as part of a “melancholic joy” that accepts the mystery of a world both beautiful and brutal.

Against Happiness

Against Happiness PDF Author: Eric G. Wilson
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429944218
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Americans are addicted to happiness. When we're not popping pills, we leaf through scientific studies that take for granted our quest for happiness, or read self-help books by everyone from armchair philosophers and clinical psychologists to the Dalai Lama on how to achieve a trouble-free life: Stumbling on Happiness; Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment; The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living. The titles themselves draw a stark portrait of the war on melancholy. More than any other generation, Americans of today believe in the transformative power of positive thinking. But who says we're supposed to be happy? Where does it say that in the Bible, or in the Constitution? In Against Happiness, the scholar Eric G. Wilson argues that melancholia is necessary to any thriving culture, that it is the muse of great literature, painting, music, and innovation—and that it is the force underlying original insights. Francisco Goya, Emily Dickinson, Marcel Proust, and Abraham Lincoln were all confirmed melancholics. So enough Prozac-ing of our brains. Let's embrace our depressive sides as the wellspring of creativity. What most people take for contentment, Wilson argues, is living death, and what the majority takes for depression is a vital force. In Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, Wilson suggests it would be better to relish the blues that make humans people.

The Promise of Happiness

The Promise of Happiness PDF Author: Sara Ahmed
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 082239278X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The Promise of Happiness is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including Mrs. Dalloway, The Well of Loneliness, Bend It Like Beckham, and Children of Men, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy.

Sprigs and Twigs

Sprigs and Twigs PDF Author: Terry-Lynn Johnson
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1039115667
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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Book Description
This collection is for poetry lovers – and for those who don’t yet know they love poetry. The poems can be read on a rainy day or over morning coffee. The engaging narrative and rich imagery lends itself to a tone of melancholic joy as the reader reflects on what is common to human experience Themes include nature, spiritualism, death and hope. The Collector’s Edition is a first publication of the author’s selection.

Chapel of Inadvertent Joy

Chapel of Inadvertent Joy PDF Author: Jeffrey McDaniel
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822979128
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
"Reading Jeffrey McDaniel's gorgeously dark and utterly compelling Chapel of Inadvertent Joy reminds me that he is probably the most important poet in America. The book in your hands was written by a master of metaphor and a poet of huge imagination and fierce ingenuity, a fine antidote to realism. Get this voice in your head."—Major Jackson

The Melancholic Gaze

The Melancholic Gaze PDF Author: Piotr Śniedziewski
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
ISBN: 9783631675267
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The book consists of nine chapters devoted to representations of melancholia in 19th-century art and literature. The book not only provides a survey of images and modes of behaviour of 19th-century individuals, but also discusses the meanings of melancholia as they appeared in European culture over time.

Aflame

Aflame PDF Author: Subhash Jaireth
Publisher: Gazebo Books
ISBN: 0645103004
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
Aflame begins in Soviet Moscow and ends with a Tibetan Buddhist monk's self-immolation; residing between them - improvisations after celebrated Japanese Haikus. Written in an intricate and polyphonic structure, Subhash Jaireth's rare and carefully crafted rhythms reveal the creeping melancholic joy of silence and life's elusive beauty.

Carnal Hermeneutics

Carnal Hermeneutics PDF Author: Richard Kearney
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823265900
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 572

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Book Description
Building on a hermeneutic tradition in which accounts of carnal embodiment are overlooked, misunderstood, or underdeveloped, this work initiates a new field of study and concern. Carnal Hermeneutics provides a philosophical approach to the body as interpretation. Transcending the traditional dualism of rational understanding and embodied sensibility, the volume argues that our most carnal sensations are already interpretations. Because interpretation truly goes “all the way down,” carnal hermeneutics rejects the opposition of language to sensibility, word to flesh, text to body. In this volume, an impressive array of today’s preeminent philosophers seek to interpret the surplus of meaning that arises from our carnal embodiment, its role in our experience and understanding, and its engagement with the wider world.

Short-Tempered Melancholic and Other Stories

Short-Tempered Melancholic and Other Stories PDF Author: Arina Tanemura
Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
ISBN: 1421551063
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Short-Tempered Melancholic Kajika Yamano is a female ninja whose job is to protect her family's legendary weapon. But when a boy she has a crush on tells her she should be more ladylike, she vows to give up all ninja deeds. This Love is Nonfiction Yuri sends her pen pal Ryo a picture of herself--but it's really of her best friend Karin, who is prettier than she is. Now Ryo wants to meet her, so she has no choice but to send Karin instead! Rainy Afternoons are for Romantic Heroines Minori falls in love with Takato, a boy who shared his umbrella with her one rainy afternoon. Now she "forgets" her umbrella every time it rains in hopes of becoming closer to him. The Style of the Second Love Mana secretly likes her friend's boyfriend, but Nakamura, a younger boy, is determined to win Mana's heart. -- VIZ Media

Acute Melancholia and Other Essays

Acute Melancholia and Other Essays PDF Author: Amy Hollywood
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231527438
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 603

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Book Description
Acute Melancholia and Other Essays deploys spirited and progressive approaches to the study of Christian mysticism and the philosophy of religion. Ideal for novices and experienced scholars alike, the volume makes a forceful case for thinking about religion as both belief and practice, in which traditions marked by change are passed down through generations, laying the groundwork for their own critique. Through a provocative integration of medieval sources and texts by Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Talal Asad, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, this book redefines what it means to engage critically with history and those embedded within it.