The Aesthetics of Darkness

The Aesthetics of Darkness PDF Author: Evina Sistakou
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789042926547
Category : Greek literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Darkness in literature manifests itself as a fascination with the evil passions of man, an emphasis on the ugly and the monstrous, an obsession with morbidity and death, a blurring of the boundaries between reality and imagination; its effect ranges from pleasure in the representation of horror to the overwhelming sense of the sublime. The premise that these trends find their most powerful expression in Romantic literature forms the basis for the exploration of darkness in Hellenistic poetry in the present study: Apollonius' Argonautica, a dark romance building around a heroic quest, is read against the background of fantasy literature and the Gothic novel; Lycophron's Alexandra, a dark remake of Kassandra's prophecy, is seen as an extreme paradigm of Gothic aesthetics; Nicander's Theriaca and Alexipharmaca, two didactic poems on snakes and their antidotes, are reviewed in the light of Romantic science and the aesthetics of Decadence. The introduction provides the theoretical framework where key notions are discussed-the fantastic, the Gothic, the grotesque, the uncanny-, whereas the afterword offers an explanation for the parallelism between the Hellenistic and the Romantic era by reference to their ideological and cultural contexts. The Aesthetics of Darkness is a comparative study which combines the 'close reading' of the Greek texts with literary criticism as well as with specific examples drawn from nineteenth century literature; by thus transcending the boundaries of conventional scholarship, the book attempts to capture the Romantic awakenings of post-Classical literature.

The Aesthetics of Darkness

The Aesthetics of Darkness PDF Author: Evina Sistakou
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789042926547
Category : Greek literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Darkness in literature manifests itself as a fascination with the evil passions of man, an emphasis on the ugly and the monstrous, an obsession with morbidity and death, a blurring of the boundaries between reality and imagination; its effect ranges from pleasure in the representation of horror to the overwhelming sense of the sublime. The premise that these trends find their most powerful expression in Romantic literature forms the basis for the exploration of darkness in Hellenistic poetry in the present study: Apollonius' Argonautica, a dark romance building around a heroic quest, is read against the background of fantasy literature and the Gothic novel; Lycophron's Alexandra, a dark remake of Kassandra's prophecy, is seen as an extreme paradigm of Gothic aesthetics; Nicander's Theriaca and Alexipharmaca, two didactic poems on snakes and their antidotes, are reviewed in the light of Romantic science and the aesthetics of Decadence. The introduction provides the theoretical framework where key notions are discussed-the fantastic, the Gothic, the grotesque, the uncanny-, whereas the afterword offers an explanation for the parallelism between the Hellenistic and the Romantic era by reference to their ideological and cultural contexts. The Aesthetics of Darkness is a comparative study which combines the 'close reading' of the Greek texts with literary criticism as well as with specific examples drawn from nineteenth century literature; by thus transcending the boundaries of conventional scholarship, the book attempts to capture the Romantic awakenings of post-Classical literature.

The Dark Side of Camp Aesthetics

The Dark Side of Camp Aesthetics PDF Author: Ingrid Hotz-Davies
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351809512
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
"Camp" is often associated with glamour, surfaces and an ostentatious display of chic, but as these authors argue, there is an underside to it that has often gone unnoticed: camp’s simultaneous investment in dirt, vulgarity, the discarded and rejected, the abject. This book explores how camp challenges and at the same time celebrates what is arguably the single most important and foundational cultural division, that between the dirty and the clean. In refocusing camp as a phenomenon of the dark underside as much as of the glamorous surface, the collection hopes to offer an important contribution to our understanding of the cultural politics and aesthetics of camp.

Ribbon of Darkness

Ribbon of Darkness PDF Author: Barbara Maria Stafford
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022663051X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Over the course of her career, Barbara Stafford has established herself the preeminent scholar of the intersections of the arts and sciences, articulating new theories and methods for understanding the sublime, the mysterious, the inscrutable. Omnivorous in her research, she has published work that embraces neuroscience and philosophy, biology and culture, pinpointing connections among each discipline’s parallel concerns. Ribbon of Darkness is a monument to the scope of her work and the range of her intellect. At times associative, but always incisive, the essays in this new volume take on a distinctly contemporary purpose: to uncover the ethical force and moral aspects of overlapping scientific and creative inquiries. This shared territory, Stafford argues, offers important insights into—and clarifications of—current dilemmas about personhood, the supposedly menial nature of manual skill, the questionable borderlands of gene editing, the potentially refining value of dualism, and the limits of a materialist worldview. Stafford organizes these essays around three concepts that structure the book: inscrutability, ineffability, and intuitability. All three, she explains, allow us to examine how both the arts and the sciences imaginatively infer meaning from the “veiled behavior of matter,” bringing these historically divided subjects into a shared intellectual inquiry and imbuing them with an ethical urgency. A vanguard work at the intersection of the arts and sciences, this book will be sure to guide readers from either realm into unfamiliar yet undeniably fertile territory.

The Dark Side of Game Play

The Dark Side of Game Play PDF Author: Torill Elvira Mortensen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131757446X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Games allow players to experiment and play with subject positions, values and moral choice. In game worlds players can take on the role of antagonists; they allow us to play with behaviour that would be offensive, illegal or immoral if it happened outside of the game sphere. While contemporary games have always handled certain problematic topics, such as war, disasters, human decay, post-apocalyptic futures, cruelty and betrayal, lately even the most playful of genres are introducing situations in which players are presented with difficult ethical and moral dilemmas. This volume is an investigation of "dark play" in video games, or game play with controversial themes as well as controversial play behaviour. It covers such questions as: Why do some games stir up political controversies? How do games invite, or even push players towards dark play through their design? Where are the boundaries for what can be presented in a games? Are these boundaries different from other media such as film and books, and if so why? What is the allure of dark play and why do players engage in these practices?

Spirit in the Dark

Spirit in the Dark PDF Author: Josef Sorett
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199844933
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
While many of the most significant black intellectual movements of the second half of the twentieth century have been perceived as secular, Josef Sorett demonstrates in this book that religion was actually a fertile, fluid and formidable force within these movements. Spirit in the Dark examines how African American literary visions were animated and organized by religion and spirituality, from the New Negro Renaissance of the 1920s to the Black Arts movement of the 1960s.

Crimson Peak: The Art of Darkness

Crimson Peak: The Art of Darkness PDF Author: Mark Salisbury
Publisher: Titan Books
ISBN: 9781783293711
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
A powerful blend of psychological thriller, gothic horror, and romance, 'Crimson Peak' sees del Toro return to the genre he helped define. This book chronicles the creative journey behind the film, showing how del Toro's sublimely sinister story was dynamically rendered for the screen. It features a number of special removable items, interviews with the director and crew and a broad range of spectacular concept art.

What Is Darkness?

What Is Darkness? PDF Author: Nicky Huys
Publisher: Nicky Huys Books
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Book Description
"What is Darkness?" delves into the enigmatic nature of darkness and its impact on the human psyche. Through a collection of captivating stories and thought-provoking essays, this book explores the primal fear of the unknown, the psychological effects of darkness, and the eternal struggle between light and dark. From the depths of the human mind to the vast expanse of the universe, "What is Darkness?" invites readers to confront their fears and contemplate the profound mysteries that shroud the concept of darkness. This compelling work offers a unique blend of fiction and philosophy, shedding light on the profound significance of darkness in our lives.

The Politics and Aesthetics of Hunger and Disgust

The Politics and Aesthetics of Hunger and Disgust PDF Author: Michel Delville
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315472198
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
This study examines how hunger narratives and performances contribute to a reconsideration of neglected or prohibited domains of thinking which only a full confrontation with the body’s heterogeneity and plasticity can reveal. From literary motif or psychosomatic symptom to revolutionary gesture or existential malady, the double crux of hunger and disgust is a powerful force which can define the experience of embodiment. Kafka’s fable of the "Hunger Artist" offers a matrix for the fast, while its surprising last-page revelation introduces disgust as a correlative of abstinence, conscious or otherwise. Grounded in Kristeva’s theory of abjection, the figure of the fraught body lurking at the heart of the negative grotesque gathers precision throughout this study, where it is employed in a widening series of contexts: suicide through overeating, starvation as self-performance or political resistance, the teratological versus the totalitarian, the anorexic harboring of death. In the process, writers and artists as diverse as Herman Melville, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Christina Rossetti, George Orwell, Knut Hamsun, J.M. Coetzee, Cindy Sherman, Pieter Breughel, Marina Abramovic, David Nebreda, Paul McCarthy, and others are brought into the discussion. By looking at the different acts of visceral, affective, and ideological resistance performed by the starving body, this book intensifies the relationship between hunger and disgust studies while offering insight into the modalities of the "dark grotesque" which inform the aesthetics and politics of hunger. It will be of value to anyone interested in the culture, politics, and subjectivity of embodiment, and scholars working within the fields of disgust studies, food studies, literary studies, cultural theory, and media studies.

The Secret History

The Secret History PDF Author: Donna Tartt
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1400031702
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK • INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A contemporary literary classic and "an accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling" (Village Voice), from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Goldfinch. Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality. “A remarkably powerful novel [and] a ferociously well-paced entertainment.... Forceful, cerebral, and impeccably controlled.” —The New York Times

Aesthetics

Aesthetics PDF Author: Ivan Brunetti
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300184409
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
Presents a collection of the author's works, including concept art and finished products.