Author: Simon Goldhill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521479349
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Get Book Here
Book Description
The sexy, witty and often bizarre novels, poetry and dialogues of the first centuries of this era (works such as Longus' Daphnis and Chloe, Achilles Tatius' Leukippe and Cleitophon and Plutarch's Amatorius) were being composed at the same time as fundamental ideas about the body, gender and sexuality were being set in place with the rise of Christianity and the Church to dominate the pagan world. Modern writers on the history of sexuality have largely ignored this literature in favour of prose treatises, philosophy and Christian homilies. Simon Goldhill, writing with the same wit and verve as the ancient writers with whom he engages, sets out to put these texts back into the history of sexuality. The result is a dazzling celebration of sex and sexuality in the Greek literature of the first centuries CE.
Author: Michel Foucault
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 152474803X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 417
Get Book Here
Book Description
"Brought to light at last--the fourth volume in the famous History of Sexuality series by one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, his final work, which he had completed, but not yet published, upon his death in 1984 Michel Foucault's philosophy has made an indelible impact on Western thought, and his History of Sexuality series--which traces cultural and intellectual notions of sexuality, arguing that it is profoundly shaped by the power structures applied to it--is one of his most influential works. At the time of his death in 1984, he had completed--but not yet edited or published--the fourth volume, which posits that the origins of totalitarian self-surveillance began with the Christian practice of confession. This is a text both sweeping and deeply personal, as Foucault--born into a French Catholic family--undoubtedly wrestled with these issues himself. Since he had stipulated "Pas de publication posthume," this text has long been secreted away. However, the sale of the Foucault archives in 2013--which made this text available to scholars--prompted his nephew to seek wider publication. This attitude was shared by Foucault's longtime partner, Daniel Defert, who said, "What is this privilege given to Ph.D students? I have adopted this principle: It is either everybody or nobody.""--
Author: Timothy O'Leary
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847144039
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Get Book Here
Book Description
The work of Michel Foucault has been extremely influential in fields as varied as philosophy, history, cultural studies, sociology and sexuality studies. In his later work, Foucault turned to the question of ethics. Working back through history, through the Christian interrogation of desire to the origins of the self in the texts of classical Greece, Foucault attempted to conceive of ethics as an art of the self, as an aesthetics of existence and as a practice of liberty. Foucault and the Art of Ethics argues that Foucault's exploration of the history of sexuality and his reinterpretation of the critical philosophical tradition combine to frame a new approach both to the way we understand the tasks of philosophy and to the way we live our lives. The book is essential reading for all those working at the intersection of contemporary debates in philosophy, ethics, politics and cultural studies.
Author: Mary F. Foskett
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253108969
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Get Book Here
Book Description
The virginity of Mary has been an influential tenet of Christian belief, a catalyst for Marian devotion, and a foundation for the construction of female Christian piety and practice. In contrast to previous biblical interpreters who have drawn on either linguistic or historical evidence to ponder whether Mary the parthenos is indeed a "virgin," in this study Mary F. Foskett takes a different course. Rather than investigating the meaning and implications of the Virgin as a reified symbol, A Virgin Conceived examines the portrayal of Mary as a virgin in two important early Christian narratives: the canonical Luke-Acts and the second-century Protevangelium of James. Foskett explores the multiple meanings and images that parthenos and virginity display in two sources and describes how they exploit this range of possible meanings in their representations of Mary. Her study departs from earlier biblical interpretation by emphasizing neither the ambiguity of the term parthenos nor the history of tradition concerning Mary. Instead, it displays the multiple meanings of "virginity" and their implications for understanding representations of the Virgin Mary.
Author: Julia Kelto Lillis
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520389018
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Get Book Here
Book Description
Women's virginity held tremendous significance in early Christianity and the Mediterranean world. Early Christian thinkers developed diverse definitions of virginity and understood its bodily aspects in surprising, often nonanatomical ways. Eventually Christians took part in a cross-cultural shift toward viewing virginity as something that could be perceived in women's sex organs. Treating virginity as anatomical brought both benefits and costs. By charting this change and situating it in the larger landscape of ancient thought, Virgin Territory illuminates unrecognized differences among early Christian sources and historicizes problematic ideas about women's bodies that still persist today.
Author: John Neubauer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351312987
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 419
Get Book Here
Book Description
Both as historian and maker of culture, Foucault infused numerous disciplines of study with a new conceptual vocabulary and an agenda for future research. His ideas have called central assumptions in Western culture into question and altered the ways in which scholars and social scientists approach such issues as discourse theory, theory of knowledge, Eros, technologies of the Self and Other, punishment and prisons, and asylums and madness.The contributors to this volume indicate Foucault's achievements and the suggestive power of his work, as well as his methodological weaknesses, historical inaccuracies, and ambiguities. Above all, they attempt to show how one can use Foucault to go beyond him in opening new approaches to cultural history. Though comprehensiveness was not attempted, their essays broach the major controversial aspects of Foucauldian cultural history--the position of the subject, the fusion of power and knowledge, sexuality, the historical structures and changes--and they explicitly analyze them with respect to antiquity, the Renaissance, and the nineteenth century.In this collection, Neubauer presents analyses by historians, literary scholars, and philosophers of the entire, transdisciplinary range of Foucault's oeuvre, emphasizing the rich suggestiveness of its agenda. The breadth of the undertaking makes it suitable for seminars and graduate courses in numerous departments.
Author: Vigdis Songe-Møller
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441153721
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 197
Get Book Here
Book Description
For most of its history, western philosophy has regarded woman as an imperfect version of man. Like so many aspects of western culture, this tradition builds on foundations laid in ancient Greece. Yet the first philosophers of antiquity were hardly agreed on first principles. Songe-M°ller shows how the Greeks made intellectual choices that would prove fateful for half of humankind.
Author: David H.J. Larmour
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691224072
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Get Book Here
Book Description
In this collection of provocative essays, historians and literary theorists assess the influence of Michel Foucault, particularly his History of Sexuality, on the study of classics. Foucault's famous work presents a bold theory of sexuality for both ancient and modern times, and yet until now it has remained under-explored and insufficiently analyzed. By bringing together the historical knowledge, philological skills, and theoretical perspectives of a wide range of scholars, this collection enables the reader to explore Foucault's model of Greek culture and see how well his interpretation accounts for the full range of evidence from Greece and Rome. Not only do the essays bring to light the assumptions, ideas, and practices that constituted the intimate lives of men and women in the ancient Mediterranean world, but they also demonstrate the importance of the History of Sexuality for fields as diverse as Greco-Roman antiquity, women's history, cultural studies, philosophy, and modern sexuality. The essays include "Situating The History of Sexuality" (the editors), "Taking the Sex Out of Sexuality: Foucault's Failed History" (Joel Black), "Incipit Philosophia" (Alain Vizier), "The Subject in Antiquity after Foucault" (Page duBois), "This Myth Which Is Not One: Construction of Discourse in Plato's Symposium" (Jeffrey S. Carnes), "Foucault's History of Sexuality: A Useful Theory for Women?" (Amy Richlin), "Catullan Consciousness, the 'Care of the Self,' and the Force of the Negative in History" (Paul Allen Miller), "Reversals of Platonic Love in Petronius' Satyricon" (Daniel B. McGlathery), and an essay from Dislocating Masculinity (Lin Foxhall).
Author: Kate Cooper
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674939509
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 198
Get Book Here
Book Description
Rejecting Roman feminine virtue in its pure form, Christianity claimed a moral superiority in its ideals of romance, and portrayed women seeking more spiritual goals. Cooper studies how this connected with social and religious change.
Author: J.D. McLarty
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 022717657X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Get Book Here
Book Description
Thecla's Devotion studies plot and character within the Thekla episode of the Acts of Paul, reading the text against contemporary pagan romance in order to explore Christian identity formation.
