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 Here

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 Here

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.

Beast, Humans, and Transhumans

Beast, Humans, and Transhumans PDF Author: J. Eugene Clay
Publisher:
ISBN: 9782503590646
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


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: 311047090X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book Here

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.

Reading the Natural World in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Reading the Natural World in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance PDF Author: Thomas Willard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9782503590448
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book Here

Book Description
The environment--together with ecology and other aspects of the way people see their world--has become a major focus of pre-modern studies. The thirteen contributions in this volume discuss topics across the millennium in Europe from the late 600s to the early 1600s. They introduce applications to older texts, art works, and ideas made possible by relatively new fields of discourse such as animal studies, ecotheology, and Material Engagement Theory. From studies of medieval land charters and epics to the canticles sung in churches, the encyclopedic natural histories compiled for the learned, the hunting parks described and illustrated for the aristocracy, chronicles from the New World, classical paintings from the Old World, and the plays of Shakespeare, the authors engage with the human responses to nature in times when it touched their lives more intimately than it does for people today, even though this contact raised concerns that are still very much alive today.

Religion and Secular Modernity in Russian Christianity, Judaism, and Atheism

Religion and Secular Modernity in Russian Christianity, Judaism, and Atheism PDF Author: Ana Siljak
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501778188
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book Here

Book Description
Religion and Secular Modernity in Russian Christianity, Judaism, and Atheism is a multifaceted account of the engagement between religion and the secular in Russia's Christian, Jewish, and atheist traditions. Ana Siljak brings together an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars to present unique perspectives on the secularization dynamic in Russia and the Soviet Union, telling stories about theologians, sects, churches, poets, and artists. From the Jewish Christian priest Alexander Men, to the cross-dressing poet Zinaida Gippius, to the Soviet promoter of Yiddish theater Solomon Mikhoels, Religion and Secular Modernity in Russian Christianity, Judaism, and Atheism gives a voice to a variety of actors who have grappled with the possibilities of faith and unbelief in an industrialized, modern, and seemingly secular world. Now more than ever, as one narrative of Russia's religious history dominates official Russian accounts, alternative perspectives of the relationship between Russian religion and secularism should be highlighted and emphasized.

Reinventing the Middle Ages & the Renaissance

Reinventing the Middle Ages & the Renaissance PDF Author: William F. Gentrup
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
The fourteen essays presented in this volume contribute substantially to the study of the reinvention of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. They take an historicized approach to constructions of the past, and most address the relatively new field of Medievalism. All of them focus on how and why the present of any period uses the past to promote its own opinions, beliefs, doctrines or views. In particular, the volume demonstrates that reinventions of past eras or figures can be motivated by a nationalistic desire to create cultural 'roots', to discover origins that justify a regime or group's self-identity, to appropriate a cultural icon or neglected author for a particular political agenda, or to reflect on contemporary social issues via a remote time and place. Reworkings or adaptations of earlier culture often tell us more about the age in which they were produced than the one revived or revisited. This volume features five essays that treat medieval subjects; four focus on Tudor and Stuart figures, religion or politics; and five concentrate on nineteenth-century uses of medieval or early modern events, literary conventions, settings and themes.

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 : 356

Get Book Here

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.

Poetry of Charles D'Orléans and His Circle

Poetry of Charles D'Orléans and His Circle PDF Author: Carlo (duca d'Orléans)
Publisher: Acmrs (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies)
ISBN: 9782503533827
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 957

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first complete, modern critical edition of the personal copy of the poetry of Charles, duc Orléans (BnF MS. fr. 25458), a manuscript made up primarily of lyrics. The duke also included lyrics composed by members of his household, his family, his friends, his peers, and various visitors to his court at Blois. The manuscript was almost certainly commissioned in London near the end of the duke's captivity (1439-1440). The edition contains the first translation (facing-page) of the duke's collection into English. It is intended to supersede Pierre Champion's 1923 edition of the same manuscript. Before Champion, editions of the duke's poetry simply reproduced the poems in manuscript order; his edition offered a new order based on his observations of the manuscript's construction. This new edition corrects that order by basing it on a recent codicological study of the manuscript, "The poet's notebook", by Mary-Jo Arn

The Hospital of Incurable Madness

The Hospital of Incurable Madness PDF Author: Tomaso Garzoni
Publisher: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS)
ISBN: 9780866984003
Category : Psychiatry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This translation of Tomaso Garzoni's Renaissance "best-seller" provides a rich and revealing window on 16th-century views of madness, foolishness, and social deviance. Garzoni's encyclopedic work is perhaps the most important contribution of the last half of the century to the "fools" genre to which Erasmus' Praise of Folly and Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools also belong. Garzoni provides a spoof of academic writing on madness, with extensive "reviews of the medical literature" on certain types of madness. A final, intriguing section on the varieties of madness to be found in Garzoni's female "patients" reveals much about late-Renaissance attitudes towards women. --Book Jacket.

Coptic Legal Documents

Coptic Legal Documents PDF Author: Leslie S. B. MacCoull
Publisher: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS)
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume makes available for the first time fifty Coptic legal documents on a range of subjects from the sixth to eighth centuries, with an introduction that places them in historical context. The volume contains annotated English translations of fifty selected legal documents originally written in the Coptic language, dating from the mid-sixth to the mid-eighth centuries. They include land transfers, sales, wills, property divisions, and intergenerational disputes. The choice of which language to use in recording their transactions was meaningful for the documents' framers. The introduction sets the texts in their historical contexts of the changing society of Egypt, first under Byzantine rule, then under Islamic rule. Since the originals are in a language not known to most classicists and medievalists, making the documents available in English should enable them to be read, studied, and appreciated by a wider audience.