The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages

The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages PDF Author: Penelope Reed Doob
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501738461
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Ancient and medieval labyrinths embody paradox, according to Penelope Reed Doob. Their structure allows a double perspective—the baffling, fragmented prospect confronting the maze-treader within, and the comprehensive vision available to those without. Mazes simultaneously assert order and chaos, artistry and confusion, articulated clarity and bewildering complexity, perfected pattern and hesitant process. In this handsomely illustrated book, Doob reconstructs from a variety of literary and visual sources the idea of the labyrinth from the classical period through the Middle Ages. Doob first examines several complementary traditions of the maze topos, showing how ancient historical and geographical writings generate metaphors in which the labyrinth signifies admirable complexity, while poetic texts tend to suggest that the labyrinth is a sign of moral duplicity. She then describes two common models of the labyrinth and explores their formal implications: the unicursal model, with no false turnings, found almost universally in the visual arts; and the multicursal model, with blind alleys and dead ends, characteristic of literary texts. This paradigmatic clash between the labyrinths of art and of literature becomes a key to the metaphorical potential of the maze, as Doob's examination of a vast array of materials from the classical period through the Middle Ages suggests. She concludes with linked readings of four "labyrinths of words": Virgil's Aeneid, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Chaucer's House of Fame, each of which plays with and transforms received ideas of the labyrinth as well as reflecting and responding to aspects of the texts that influenced it. Doob not only provides fresh theoretical and historical perspectives on the labyrinth tradition, but also portrays a complex medieval aesthetic that helps us to approach structurally elaborate early works. Readers in such fields as Classical literature, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, comparative literature, literary theory, art history, and intellectual history will welcome this wide-ranging and illuminating book.

The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages

The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages PDF Author: Penelope Reed Doob
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150173847X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Ancient and medieval labyrinths embody paradox, according to Penelope Reed Doob. Their structure allows a double perspective—the baffling, fragmented prospect confronting the maze-treader within, and the comprehensive vision available to those without. Mazes simultaneously assert order and chaos, artistry and confusion, articulated clarity and bewildering complexity, perfected pattern and hesitant process. In this handsomely illustrated book, Doob reconstructs from a variety of literary and visual sources the idea of the labyrinth from the classical period through the Middle Ages. Doob first examines several complementary traditions of the maze topos, showing how ancient historical and geographical writings generate metaphors in which the labyrinth signifies admirable complexity, while poetic texts tend to suggest that the labyrinth is a sign of moral duplicity. She then describes two common models of the labyrinth and explores their formal implications: the unicursal model, with no false turnings, found almost universally in the visual arts; and the multicursal model, with blind alleys and dead ends, characteristic of literary texts. This paradigmatic clash between the labyrinths of art and of literature becomes a key to the metaphorical potential of the maze, as Doob's examination of a vast array of materials from the classical period through the Middle Ages suggests. She concludes with linked readings of four "labyrinths of words": Virgil's Aeneid, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Chaucer's House of Fame, each of which plays with and transforms received ideas of the labyrinth as well as reflecting and responding to aspects of the texts that influenced it. Doob not only provides fresh theoretical and historical perspectives on the labyrinth tradition, but also portrays a complex medieval aesthetic that helps us to approach structurally elaborate early works. Readers in such fields as Classical literature, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, comparative literature, literary theory, art history, and intellectual history will welcome this wide-ranging and illuminating book.

The Monster Loves His Labyrinth

The Monster Loves His Labyrinth PDF Author: Charles Simic
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
ISBN: 1619320592
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
“Nabokovian in his caustic charm and sexy intelligence, Simic perceives the mythic in the mundane and pinpoints the perpetual suffering that infuses human life with both agony and bliss. . . . And he is the master of juxtaposition, lining up the unlikeliest of pairings and contrasts as he explores the nexuses of madness and prophecy, hell and paradise, lust and death.”—Donna Seaman, Booklist "As one reads the pithy, wise, occasionally cranky epigrams and vignettes that fill this volume, there is the definite sense that we are getting a rare glimpse into several decades worth of private journals--and, by extension are privy to the tickings of an accomplished and introspective literary mind."—Rain Taxi Written over many years, this book is a collection of notebook entries by our current Poet Laureate. Excerpts: Stupidity is the secret spice historians have difficulty identifying in this soup we keep slurping. Ars poetica: trying to make your jailers laugh. American identity is really about having many identities simultaneously. We came to America to escape our old identities, which the multiculturalists now wish to restore to us. Ambiguity is the world’s condition. Poetry flirts with ambiguity. As a “picture of reality” it is truer than any other. This doesn’t mean that you’re supposed to write poems no one understands. The twelve girls in the gospel choir sang as if dogs were biting their asses. What an outrage! This very moment gone forever!

The Boy in the Labyrinth

The Boy in the Labyrinth PDF Author: Oliver de la Paz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781629221724
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
In a long sequence of prose poems, questionnaires, and standardized tests, The Boy in the Labyrinth interrogates the language of autism and the language barriers between parents, their children, and the fractured medium of science and school. Structured as a Greek play, the book opens with a parents' earnest quest for answers, understanding, and doubt. Each section of the Three Act is highlighted by "Autism Spectrum Questionnaires" which are in dialogue with and in opposition to what the parent perceives to be their relationship with their child. Interspersed throughout each section are sequences of standardized test questions akin to those one would find in grade school, except these questions unravel into deeper mysteries. The depth of the book is told in a series of episodic prose poems that parallel the parable of Theseus and the Minotaur. In these short clips of montage the unnamed "boy" explores his world and the world of perception, all the while hearing the rumblings of the Minotaur somewhere in the heart of an immense Labyrinth. Through the medium of this allusion, de la Paz meditates on failures, foundering, and the possibility of finding one's way.

The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages

The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages PDF Author: Penelope Reed Doob
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501738461
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ancient and medieval labyrinths embody paradox, according to Penelope Reed Doob. Their structure allows a double perspective—the baffling, fragmented prospect confronting the maze-treader within, and the comprehensive vision available to those without. Mazes simultaneously assert order and chaos, artistry and confusion, articulated clarity and bewildering complexity, perfected pattern and hesitant process. In this handsomely illustrated book, Doob reconstructs from a variety of literary and visual sources the idea of the labyrinth from the classical period through the Middle Ages. Doob first examines several complementary traditions of the maze topos, showing how ancient historical and geographical writings generate metaphors in which the labyrinth signifies admirable complexity, while poetic texts tend to suggest that the labyrinth is a sign of moral duplicity. She then describes two common models of the labyrinth and explores their formal implications: the unicursal model, with no false turnings, found almost universally in the visual arts; and the multicursal model, with blind alleys and dead ends, characteristic of literary texts. This paradigmatic clash between the labyrinths of art and of literature becomes a key to the metaphorical potential of the maze, as Doob's examination of a vast array of materials from the classical period through the Middle Ages suggests. She concludes with linked readings of four "labyrinths of words": Virgil's Aeneid, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Chaucer's House of Fame, each of which plays with and transforms received ideas of the labyrinth as well as reflecting and responding to aspects of the texts that influenced it. Doob not only provides fresh theoretical and historical perspectives on the labyrinth tradition, but also portrays a complex medieval aesthetic that helps us to approach structurally elaborate early works. Readers in such fields as Classical literature, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, comparative literature, literary theory, art history, and intellectual history will welcome this wide-ranging and illuminating book.

The Poetic Theology of Love

The Poetic Theology of Love PDF Author: Thomas Hyde
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874132731
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
This book argues that current criticism tends to take the mythology of love either too innocently or too skeptically and therefore distorts the complex roles played by the god of love in longer narrative poems and discursive works of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Why I Wrote This Poem

Why I Wrote This Poem PDF Author: William Walsh
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476684057
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
An anthology of a different sort, this volume presents a representative sample of contemporary American poems in 2023, with a road map of their origins. Bringing a diversity of styles and sensibilities, 62 poets from across the United States--some well known, some up-and-coming--illuminate their craft. Each poet contributes one poem, accompanied by an essay discussing their creative process and how the verse came to fruition.

Kierkegaard, Aesthetics, and Selfhood

Kierkegaard, Aesthetics, and Selfhood PDF Author: Peder Jothen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317109201
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
In the digital world, Kierkegaard's thought is valuable in thinking about aesthetics as a component of human development, both including but moving beyond the religious context as its primary center of meaning. Seeing human formation as interrelated with aesthetics makes art a vital dimension of human existence. Contributing to the debate about Kierkegaard's conception of the aesthetic, Kierkegaard, Aesthetics, and Selfhood argues that Kierkegaard's primary concern is to provocatively explore how a self becomes Christian, with aesthetics being a vital dimension for such self-formation. At a broader level, Peder Jothen also focuses on the role, authority, and meaning of aesthetic expression within religious thought generally and Christianity in particular.

Companion to Literary Myths, Heroes and Archetypes

Companion to Literary Myths, Heroes and Archetypes PDF Author: Pierre Brunel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317387147
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1242

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Book Description
First published in French in 1988, and in English in 1992, this companion explores the nature of the literary myth in a collection of over 100 essays, from Abraham to Zoroaster. Its coverage is international and draws on legends from prehistory to the modern age throughout literature, whether fiction, poetry or drama. Essays on classical figures, as well as later myths, explore the origin, development and various incarnations of their subjects. Alongside entries on western archetypes, are analyses of non-European myths from across the world, including Africa, China, Japan, Latin America and India. This book will be indispensable for students and teachers of literature, history and cultural studies, as well as anyone interested in the fascinating world of mythology. A detailed bibliography and index are included. ‘The Companion provides a fine interpretive road map to Western culture’s use of archetypal stories.’ Wilson Library Review ‘It certainly is a comprehensive volume... extremely useful.’ Times Higher Education Supplement

Endymion and the "labyrinthian Path to Eminence in Art"

Endymion and the Author: Christoph Loreck
Publisher: Königshausen & Neumann
ISBN: 9783826031632
Category : Endymion (Greek mythology)
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description


The Continuity of Poetic Language

The Continuity of Poetic Language PDF Author: Josephine Miles
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520348982
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1951.