Golgonooza, City of Imagination

Golgonooza, City of Imagination PDF Author: Kathleen Raine
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 9780940262423
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Kathleen Raine's seven studies are the culmination of more than forty years of research into the meaning of Blake's symbolic themes by a scholar-poet who is recognized internationally as one of the most profound interpreters of his works. They are written in a way that reaches into the very heart of Blake's symbolic thought and, for this reason, may be read as an introduction to the whole of his imaginative vision. This is an essential work for understanding this giant of Imagination and English literature.

Golgonooza, City of Imagination

Golgonooza, City of Imagination PDF Author: Kathleen Raine
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 9780940262423
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Kathleen Raine's seven studies are the culmination of more than forty years of research into the meaning of Blake's symbolic themes by a scholar-poet who is recognized internationally as one of the most profound interpreters of his works. They are written in a way that reaches into the very heart of Blake's symbolic thought and, for this reason, may be read as an introduction to the whole of his imaginative vision. This is an essential work for understanding this giant of Imagination and English literature.

Jerusalem!

Jerusalem! PDF Author: Tobias Churton
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
ISBN: 1780287887
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
‘Truly astonishing in its detail … this must be one of the most illuminating and enlightening biographies to date.’ Michael Eavis cbe, Founder of the Glastonbury Festival A brilliant new biography of the mystic poet and artist William Blake – and the first to explore his startlingly original quest for spiritual truth, as well as the profound lessons he has for us all today. The hymn ‘Jerusalem’, with its famous words by William Blake, stirs our hearts with its evocation of a new holy city built in ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. However, until now, the spiritual essence of William Blake has been buried under myriad inadequate biographies, college dissertations and arts commentaries, written by people who have missed the luminescent keys to Blake’s symbolism and liberating spirit. Any attempt to uncover the ‘real’ Blake is thwarted by his status as a legend or ‘national treasure’. In Jerusalem! Tobias Churton expertly takes you beyond this superficial façade, showing you Blake the esoteric genius – a myth-maker, brilliantly using symbols and theology to express his unique insights into the nature of body, mind and spirit. Churton is not only deeply knowledgeable about Blake’s life and times, but also uses his shared values with Blake to enter into his labyrinth of thought and feeling. Challenging the conventional views of Blake as either a ‘romantic poet’ or a rebel with ideas about free sex, Tobias Churton’s startling new biography reveals, at last, the real William Blake in all his glory, so that anyone who sings ‘Jerusalem’ in future will see its beauty with renewed understanding. With access to a large body of never-before-published records – letters, diaries, pamphlets and books – Tobias Churton casts unprecedented light and perspective on William Blake’s life and times. Blake’s writing – heartfelt, vivid and profound – accounts for his status as one of the best-loved poets writing in English. Americans need no reminding that Blake inspired Ralph Waldo Emerson and American visionary Walt Whitman. Yet he spent the larger part of his creative career being ridiculed and suppressed. In Jerusalem! Churton conjures a superb portrait of Blake’s London, and in particular the rivalries of the cultural community in which the poet-artist was often misunderstood. He argues that Blake believed Man does not ‘belong’ to society; rather,we are all members of the Divine Body, co-existent with God. He was concerned with a total spiritual revival – what had gone wrong with Man, and how to put it right. Blake’s message has proved to be as challenging to today’s readers as it was to his contemporaries. Blake perceived, so far ahead of his time, that the philosophy of materialism would dominate the world – a culture from which we now yearn to break free. Jerusalem! is unashamedly ambitious in its scope and objective. Churton ends once and for all the persistent notion of Blake as a startling peculiarity, whilst emancipating him from the labels of ‘Romantic poet’ or ‘national treasure’. Even if it means sacrificing some cherished illusions or uncovering a few painful surprises, this compelling biography reveals, for the first time, the true spirit of William Blake.

The Insect-populated Mind

The Insect-populated Mind PDF Author: David Spooner
Publisher: Hamilton Books:Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780761831754
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
In The Insect-Populated Mind, author David Spooner proposes a close connection between aspects of insect evolution and the human intellect. By examining seemingly disparate subjects, such as entomology, language, theory, genetics, astronomy, literature, and music, Spooner proves that synthesis is indeed possible. Once this fusion is achieved, the human species can be seen as connected not just to the great apes, but also via consciousness to metamorphic insects. While considering Richard Dawkins' and Susan Blackmore's expositions of memes, Spooner suggests that the concept of memes remains a peripheral understanding of religion and the arts. The book also presents arguments on the roots and nature of the mind in the work of Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker. Book jacket.

Defining Magic

Defining Magic PDF Author: Bernd-Christian Otto
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317545036
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Magic has been an important term in Western history and continues to be an essential topic in the modern academic study of religion, anthropology, sociology, and cultural history. Defining Magic is the first volume to assemble key texts that aim at determining the nature of magic, establish its boundaries and key features, and explain its working. The reader brings together seminal writings from antiquity to today. The texts have been selected on the strength of their success in defining magic as a category, their impact on future scholarship, and their originality. The writings are divided into chronological sections and each essay is separately introduced for student readers. Together, these texts - from Philosophy, Theology, Religious Studies, and Anthropology - reveal the breadth of critical approaches and responses to defining what is magic. CONTRIBUTORS: Aquinas, Augustine, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Dennis Diderot, Emile Durkheim, Edward Evans-Pritchard, James Frazer, Susan Greenwood, Robin Horton, Edmund Leach, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Christopher Lehrich, Bronislaw Malinowski, Marcel Mauss, Agrippa von Nettesheim, Plato, Pliny, Plotin, Isidore of Sevilla, Jesper Sorensen, Kimberley Stratton, Randall Styers, Edward Tylor

William Blake, the Single Vision, and Newton's Sleep

William Blake, the Single Vision, and Newton's Sleep PDF Author: Keith Davies
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000913368
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The history and philosophy of scientific ideas and the role poiēsis and imagination play in our understanding of science and progress are widely explored in this book. By examining the views of William Blake and other poets in the context of twentieth-century philosophers Hannah Arendt, Jacob Bronowski, Martin Heidegger, Bruno Latour and Karl Popper, amongst others, the book takes an eclectic approach drawing on examples from biology, history, literature, philosophy and economics, arguing for the reestablishment of imagination as a central attribute of science that may help to resolve some of our most pressing ecological problems as seen in the context of science and technology studies and what is loosely developing into the discipline of environmental humanities. Today, influential scientists looking at consciousness dismiss imagination regarding it at best as a mere epiphenomenon, a ghost in the machine, or at worst non-existent and to be denied. In this book, Keith G. Davies, who sees C. P. Snow’s debate on the separation of the arts and sciences as alive and well, traces the schism back to Plato but more importantly to the seventeenth century and David Hume’s removal of imagination in the conjunction between our observation of causes and their effects. Through extensive research and use of poetry, this book offers an alternate understanding of science with imagination and its continued significance in today’s world. This book is an excellent reference book for postgraduate students, professional researchers, William Blake scholars and the pejoratively labelled interested laymen with concerns in ecology and environmental humanities through offering a new perspective on the history of science and the role of imagination within this field.

Magical Consciousness

Magical Consciousness PDF Author: Susan Greenwood
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317517210
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
How does a mind think magically? The research documented in this book is one answer that allows the disciplines of anthropology and neurobiology to come together to reveal a largely hidden dynamic of magic. Magic gets to the very heart of some theoretical and methodological difficulties encountered in the social and natural sciences, especially to do with issues of rationality. This book examines magic head-on, not through its instrumental aspects but as an orientation of consciousness. Magical consciousness is affective, associative and synchronistic, shaped through individual experience within a particular environment. This work focuses on an in-depth case study using the anthropologist’s own experience gained through years of anthropological fieldwork with British practitioners of magic. As an ethnographic view, it is an intimate study of the way in which the cognitive architecture of a mind engages the emotions and imagination in a pattern of meanings related to childhood experiences, spiritual communications and the environment. Although the detail of the involvement in magical consciousness presented here is necessarily specific, the central tenets of modus operandi is common to magical thought in general, and can be applied to cross-cultural analyses to increase understanding of this ubiquitous human phenomenon.

No End to Snowdrops

No End to Snowdrops PDF Author: Philippa Bernard
Publisher: Shepheard-Walwyn
ISBN: 0856833533
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Exploring the life of Kathleen Raine, who played an important role in the literary history of 20th-century England, this authorized biography tells how she developed from a small girl who only wanted to be a poet into a world-renowned poet and literary scholar. Starting with Kathleen’s struggle against the constrictions of her suburban childhood, the story of her life then continues with her exciting days at Girton College in the 1920s, where she became friends with many brilliant writers, artists, and scientists. She published Blake and Tradition, marking her as a leading William Blake scholar, and works on Coleridge, Yeats, and Thomas Taylor subsequently followed. Late in life, she founded the journal Temenos with the help of Prince Charles and was honored with the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry. Using letters, documents, and personal interviews, the extensive research shows how a woman from a modest background used her talents and ambition, in spite of the problems that they may cause, to achieve worldwide distinction in her chosen field. This complete picture of a complex and brilliant individual sympathetically assesses Kathleen Raine's work while throwing a critical light on her private life, which was often at odds with her achievements.

The Mystery of God: Early Jewish Mysticism and the New Testament

The Mystery of God: Early Jewish Mysticism and the New Testament PDF Author: Christopher Rowland
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047428765
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 716

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Book Description
This book brings together the perspectives of apocalypticism and early Jewish mysticism to illuminate aspects of New Testament theology. The first part begins with a consideration of the mystical character of apocalypticism and then uses the Book of Revelation and the development of views about the heavenly mediator figure of Enoch to explore the importance of apocalypticism in the Gospels and Acts, the Pauline Letters and finally the key theological themes in the later books of the New Testament. The second and third parts explore the character of early Jewish mysticism by taking important themes in the early Jewish mystical texts such as the Temple and the Divine Body to demonstrate the relevance of this material to New Testament interpretation.

The Book of Ezekiel and its Influence

The Book of Ezekiel and its Influence PDF Author: Johannes Tromp
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351893807
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
The Book of the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel (6th century B.C.E.) is a book of forceful language and impressive images. Its message is often clear, sometimes mysterious. The book had great impact in Jewish and early Christian literature as well as in western art. This book deals with the intentions of the book of Ezekiel, but also focuses on its use by subsequent writers, editors or artists. It traces Ezekiel's influence in Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God, in Paul, the Gospels, and Revelation, and also shows that Ezekiel's imagery, via Jewish mysticism, influenced the visionary art of William Blake. Presenting contributions from leading biblical scholars in Oxford and Leiden, based on their unique collaborative research, this book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars working in the field of biblical studies, including those studying the Hebrew Bible, its early versions, 'inter-testamental' Judaism, New Testament and Early Christianity, and the reception of Biblical literature in later centuries.

Milton Across Borders and Media

Milton Across Borders and Media PDF Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192659111
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Milton Across Borders and Media is an unprecedented collaboration that demonstrates the breadth of John Milton's international reception across diverse media from the seventeenth century through today. This volume presents new essays on the adaptation of Milton's works into various languages and media around the world. Part I poses questions about how we can effectively situate and engage with Milton's works within the multimedia networks of the present day. Part II 'Interlingual Borders' keys in on the cultural, technological, and temporal elements of interlingual translation that make them intersemiotic. Part III 'Verbal Borders' features media that draw out the themes and characters of Milton's writing through verbal expression. Part IV focuses on the transference of Milton's verbal artwork into visual artwork, from book illustration to stained glass. Part V 'Auditory Media' extends the focus on multimedia, with aural media as the chief feature.