Aging Gracefully in the Renaissance

Aging Gracefully in the Renaissance PDF Author: Cynthia Skenazi
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004255729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
In Aging Gracefully in the Renaissance: Stories of Later Life from Petrarch to Montaigne Cynthia Skenazi explores a shift in attitudes towards aging and provides a historical perspective on a crucial problem of our time.

Aging Gracefully in the Renaissance

Aging Gracefully in the Renaissance PDF Author: Cynthia Skenazi
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004255729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
In Aging Gracefully in the Renaissance: Stories of Later Life from Petrarch to Montaigne Cynthia Skenazi explores a shift in attitudes towards aging and provides a historical perspective on a crucial problem of our time.

History of Old Age

History of Old Age PDF Author: Georges Minois
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226530314
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
History of Old Age is the first major study of the ways in which old age has been perceived in western culture throughout history. Georges Minois paints a vast fresco, starting with the first old man to relate his own story—an Egyptian scribe some 4500 years ago—and ending with the deaths of Elizabeth I and Henry IV in the sixteenth century. Tracing the changing conceptions of the nature, value, and burden of the old, Minois argues that western history during this period is marked by great fluctuation in the social and political role of the aged. Minois shows how, in ancient Greece, the cult of youth and beauty on the one hand, and the reverence for the figure of the Homeric sage, on the other, created an ambivalent attitude toward the aged. This ambiguity appears again in the contrast between the active role that older citizens played in Roman politics and their depiction in satirical literature of the period. Christian literature in the Middle Ages also played a large part in defining society's perception of the old, both in the image of the revered holy sage and in the total condemnation of the aged sinner. Drawing on literary texts throughout, Minois considers the interrelation of literary, religious, medical, and political factors in determining the social fate of the elderly and their relationship to society. This book will be of great interest to social and cultural historians, as well as to general readers interested in the subject of the aged in society today.

Cultural Histories of Ageing

Cultural Histories of Ageing PDF Author: Margery Vibe Skagen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000383105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Drawing on sixteenth- to twenty-first-century American, British, French, German, Polish, Norwegian and Russian literature and philosophy, this collection teases out culturally specific conceptions of old age as well as subjective constructions of late-life identity and selfhood. The internationally known humanistic gerontologist Jan Baars, the prominent historian of old age David Troyansky and the distinguished cultural historian and pioneer in the field of literature and science George Rousseau join a team of literary historians who trace out the interfaces between their chosen texts and the respective periods’ medical and gerontological knowledge. The chapters’ in-depth analyses of major and less-known works demonstrate the rich potential of fiction, poetry and autobiographical writing in the construction of a cultural history of senescence. These literary examples not only bear witness to longue durée representations of old age, and epochal transitions regarding cultural attitudes to the aged; they also foreground the subjectivities that produced some of these representations and that continue to communicate with readers of other times and places. By casting a net over a variety of authors, genres, periods and languages, the collection gives a broad sense of how literature is among the richest and most engaging sources for historicizing the ageing self.

The Oxford Handbook of Montaigne

The Oxford Handbook of Montaigne PDF Author: Philippe Desan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190215348
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 841

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Book Description
In 1580, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) published a book unique by its title and its content: Essays"R. A literary genre was born. At first sight, the Essays resemble a patchwork of personal reflections, but they engage with questions that animate the human mind, and tend toward a single goal: to live better in the present and to prepare for death. For this reason, Montaigne's thought and writings have been a subject of enduring interest across disciplines. This Handbook brings together essays by prominent scholars that examine Montaigne's literary, philosophical, and political contributions, and assess his legacy and relevance today in a global perspective. The chapters of this Handbook offer a sweeping study of Montaigne across different disciplines and in a global perspective. One section covers the historical Montaigne, situating his thought in his own time and space, notably the Wars of Religion in France. The political, historical and religious context of Montaigne's Essays requires a rigorous presentation to inform the modern reader of the issues and problems that confronted Montaigne and his contemporaries in his own time. In addition to this contextual approach to Montaigne, the Handbook also establishes a connection between Montaigne's writings and issues and problems directly relevant to our modern times, that is to say, our age of global ideology. Montaigne's considerations, or essays, offer a point of departure for the modern reader's own assessments. The Essays analyze what can be broadly defined as human nature, the endless process by which the individual tries to impose opinions upon others through the production of laws, policies or philosophies. Montaigne's motto -- "What do I know?" -- is a simple question yet one of perennial significance. One could argue that reading Montaigne today teaches us that the angle defines the world we see, or, as Montaigne wrote: "What matters is not merely that we see the thing, but how we see it."

Renaissance People

Renaissance People PDF Author: Robert C. Davis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500293805
Category : Biography
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Renaissance burst forth in all its glory around 1500 and spread throughout Europe. This period of great creativity and productivity in the arts and sciences is illuminated in Renaissance People: Lives That Shaped the Modern Age through the lives of more than ninety of its illustrious intellectuals, artists, literary figures, scientists, and rulers. --from publisher description.

Born to Write

Born to Write PDF Author: Neil Kenny
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192593579
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
It is easy to forget how deeply embedded in social hierarchy was the literature and learning that has come down to us from the early modern European world. From fiction to philosophy, from poetry to history, works of all kinds emerged from and through the social hierarchy that was a fundamental fact of everyday life. Paying attention to it changes how we might understand and interpret the works themselves, whether canonical and familiar or largely forgotten. But a second, related fact is much overlooked too: works also often emanated from families, not just from individuals. Families were driving forces in the production—that is, in the composing, editing, translating, or publishing—of countless works. Relatives collaborated with each other, edited each other, or continued the unfinished works of deceased family members; some imitated or were inspired by the works of long-dead relatives. The reason why this second fact (about families) is connected to the first (about social hierarchy) is that families were in the period a basic social medium through which social status was claimed, maintained, threatened, or lost. So producing literary works was one of the many ways in which families claimed their place in the social world. The process was however often fraught, difficult, or disappointing. If families created works as a form of socio-cultural legacy that might continue to benefit their future members, not all members benefited equally; women sometimes produced or claimed the legacy for themselves, but they were often sidelined from it. Relatives sometimes disagreed bitterly about family history, identity (not least religious), and so about the picture of themselves and their family that they wished to project more widely in society through their written works, whether printed or manuscript. So although family was a fundamental social medium out of which so many works emerged, that process could be conflictual as well as harmonious. The intertwined role of family and social hierarchy within literary production is explored in this book through the case of France, from the late fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century. Some families are studied here in detail, such as that of the most widely read French poet of the age, Clément Marot. But the extent of this phenomenon is quantified too: some two hundred families are identified as each containing more than one literary producer, and in the case of one family an extraordinary twenty-seven.

Galen's Treatise Περὶ Ἀλυπίας (De indolentia) in Context

Galen's Treatise Περὶ Ἀλυπίας (De indolentia) in Context PDF Author: Caroline Petit
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004383301
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
This collective volume arises from a Wellcome-funded conference held at the University of Warwick in 2014 about the “new” Galen discovered in 2005 in a Greek manuscript, De indolentia. In the wake of the latest English translation published by Vivian Nutton in 2013, this book offers a multi-disciplinary approach to the new text, discussing in turn issues around Galen’s literary production, his medical and philosophical contribution to the theme of avoiding distress (ἀλυπία), controversial topics in Roman history such as the Antonine plague and the reign of Commodus, and finally the reception of the text in the Islamic world. Gathering eleven contributions by recognised specialists of Galen, Greek literature and Roman history, it revisits the new text extensively.

Aging Gracefully with Dignity, Integrity and Spunk Intact

Aging Gracefully with Dignity, Integrity and Spunk Intact PDF Author: Norma Roth
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1449021018
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Welcome to a new and exciting concept: Aging Gracefully with Dignity, Integrity & Spunk Intact: Aging Defiantly! Yes, the dawn of a new age is here. Along with the Age of Life Sciences (extending both life and health opportunities for those "entering that age"), new possibilities are on the horizon, limitless boundaries beckons, and a new age dawns: The Age of the Silver Generation. Explore your strengths, develop your hidden treasures, and explore the endless opportunities of your Personal Retrieval System (PRS) within the self. The sum total of knowledge and experience gained over a lifetime may well be available to you for most of the rest of your life. Empower yourself; let no one hold you back. Become the trail blazers and pathfinders. Science, medicine and technology are on your side: EMPOWER YOURSELF... and join in the glitter and sparkle of a rapidly developing new generation. Read this book -- baby boomers too -- and see what is in store for The Age of the Silver Generation and remember: the only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. (Ralph Waldo Emerson).

Health

Health PDF Author: Peter Adamson
Publisher: Oxford Philosophical Concepts
ISBN: 019991642X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
From antiquity to the early modern period, many philosophers also studied anatomy and medicine, or were medical doctors themselves -- yet the history of philosophy and of medicine are pursued as separate disciplines. This book departs from that practice, gathering contributions by both historians of philosophy and of medicine to trace the concept of health from ancient Greece and China, through the Islamic world and to modern thinkers such as Descartes and Freud. Through this interdisciplinary approach, Health demonstrates the synchronicity and overlapping histories of these two disciplines. From antiquity to the Renaissance, contributors explore the Chinese idea of qi or circulating "vital breath," ideas about medical methodology in antiquity and the middle ages, and the rise and long-lasting influence of Galenic medicine, with its insistence that health consists in a balance of four humors and the proper use of six "non-naturals" including diet, exercise, and sex. In the early modern period, mechanistic theories of the body made it more difficult to explain what health is and why it is more valuable than other physical states. However, philosophers and doctors maintained an interest in the interaction between the good condition of the mind and that of the body, with Descartes and his followers exploring in depth the idea of "medicine for the mind" despite their notorious mind-body dualism. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scientific improvements in public health emerged along with new ideas about the psychology of health, notably with the concept of "sensibility" and Freud's psychoanalytic theory. The volume concludes with a critical survey of recent philosophical attempts to define health, showing that both "descriptive," or naturalistic, and "normativist" approaches have fallen prey to objections and counterexamples. As a whole, Health: A History shows that notions of both physical and mental health have long been integral to philosophy and a powerful link between philosophy and the sciences.

Ambition, Art, and Image-Making in an Early Quattrocento Court

Ambition, Art, and Image-Making in an Early Quattrocento Court PDF Author: Sarah Roberts
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040097375
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
This study provides new interpretations of the little-known but fascinating Palazzo Trinci frescoes, relating them for the first time both to their physical context and to their social, political, and cultural environment. Chapters show how a humanist agenda subverted the historical and mythical associations more frequently used to promote powerful families, to point the Trinci family in new directions. It also shows how the artists involved adapted established civic, religious, and chivalric imagery in support of these ideas. The book argues that the resulting decorations are highly unusual for the period, in their serious political and social purpose. Positioning the Trinci as bringers of peace, not war, the family is now associated with culture and education and presented as willing to encourage debate about the character of the virtuous ruler and the nature of good government. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history and Renaissance studies.