The Pope's Body

The Pope's Body
Author: Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2000-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780226034379

In contrast to the role traditionally fulfilled by secular rulers, the pope has been perceived as an individual person existing in a body subject to decay and death, yet at the same time a corporeal representation of Christ and the Church, eternity and salvation. Using an array of evidence from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries, Agostino Paravicini- Bagliani addresses this paradox. He studies the rituals, metaphors, and images of the pope's body as they developed over time and shows how they resulted in the expectation that the pope's body be simultaneously physical and metaphorical. Also included is a particular emphasis on the thirteenth century when, during the pontificate of Boniface VIII (1294-1303), the papal court became the focus of medicine and the natural sciences as physicians devised ways to protect the pope's health and prolong his life. Masterfully translated from the Italian, this engaging history of the pope's body provides a new perspective for readers to understand the papacy, both historically and in our own time.

Africa Since 1935

Africa Since 1935
Author: Unesco. International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 1076
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520067035

The hardcover edition of volume 8 was published in 1994. This paperback edition is the eighth and final volume to be published in the UNESCO General History of Africa. Volume 8 examines the period from 1935 to the present, and details the role of African states in the Second World War and the rise of postwar Africa. This is one of the most important books in the entire series, and as such, it is an unabridged paperback.

Opera In The Flesh

Opera In The Flesh
Author: Sam Abel
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2019-06-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000308154

Verdi, Wagner, polymorphous perversion, Puccini, Brunnhilde, Pinkerton, and Parsifal all rub shoulders in this delightful, poetic, insightful, sexual book sprung by one man's physical response to the power and exaggeration we call opera. Sam Abel applies a light touch as he considers the topic of opera and the eroticized body: Why do audiences respond to opera in a visceral way? How does opera, like no other art form, physically move watchers? How and why does opera arouse feelings akin to sexual desire? Abel seeks the answers to these questions by examining homoerotic desire, the phenomenon of the castrati, operatic cross-dressing, and opera as presented through the media. In this deeply personal book, Abel writes, ‘These pages map my current struggles to pin down my passion for opera, my intense admiration for its aesthetic forms and beauties, but much more they express my astonishment at how opera makes me lose myself, how it consumes me.’ In so doing, Abel uncovers what until now, through dry musicology and gossipy history, has been left behind a wall of silence: the physical and erotic nature of opera. Although Abel can speak with certainty only about his own response to opera, he provides readers with a language and a resonance with which to understand their own experiences. Ultimately, Opera in the Flesh celebrates the power of opera to move audiences as no other book has done. It is indeed a treasure of scholarship, passion, and poetry for everyone with even a passing interest in this fascinating art form.

Monsieur

Monsieur
Author: Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2008
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 156478505X

The hero, Monsieur, is a successful young executive in Paris whose daily life is examined with precision. He is nothing if not unremarkable. Here, he muses on everything from the night sky to a Rotring pen. And he is very funny.

Myth and Law Among the Indo-Europeans

Myth and Law Among the Indo-Europeans
Author: Jaan Puhvel
Publisher:
Total Pages: 298
Release: 1970
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

This Book Is A Result Of The Ongoing Activity Centered On Discovering And Understanding The Mythic, Religions, Social And Legal Underpinnings Of The Ancient Indo-European-Speaking Continuum In Terms Of Their Oldest Or Most Archaic Manifestations. Without Dustcover, Spine Slightly Damaged At Bottom, Ex-Libris, Usual Library Stamps And Markings, Text Absolutely Clean, Condition Good.

The Philosophy of Umberto Eco

The Philosophy of Umberto Eco
Author: Sara G. Beardsworth
Publisher: Open Court Publishing
Total Pages: 758
Release: 2017-05-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0812699653

The Philosophy of Umberto Eco stands out in the Library of Living Philosophers series as the volume on the most interdisciplinary scholar hitherto and probably the most widely translated. The Italian philosopher’s name and works are well known in the humanities, both his philosophical and literary works being translated into fifteen or more languages. Eco is a founder of modern semiotics and widely known for his work in the philosophy of language and aesthetics. He is also a leading figure in the emergence of postmodern literature, and is associated with cultural and mass communication studies. His writings cover topics such as advertising, television, and children’s literature as well as philosophical questions bearing on truth, reality, cognition, language, and literature. The critical essays in this volume cover the full range of this output. This book has wide appeal not only because of its interdisciplinary nature but also because of Eco’s famous “high and low” approach, which is deeply scholarly in conception and very accessible in outcome. The short essay “Why Philosophy?” included in the volume is exemplary in this regard: it will appeal to scholars for its wit and to high school students for its intelligibility.

Elements of Neurogeometry

Elements of Neurogeometry
Author: Jean Petitot
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2017-11-08
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3319655914

This book describes several mathematical models of the primary visual cortex, referring them to a vast ensemble of experimental data and putting forward an original geometrical model for its functional architecture, that is, the highly specific organization of its neural connections. The book spells out the geometrical algorithms implemented by this functional architecture, or put another way, the “neurogeometry” immanent in visual perception. Focusing on the neural origins of our spatial representations, it demonstrates three things: firstly, the way the visual neurons filter the optical signal is closely related to a wavelet analysis; secondly, the contact structure of the 1-jets of the curves in the plane (the retinal plane here) is implemented by the cortical functional architecture; and lastly, the visual algorithms for integrating contours from what may be rather incomplete sensory data can be modelled by the sub-Riemannian geometry associated with this contact structure. As such, it provides readers with the first systematic interpretation of a number of important neurophysiological observations in a well-defined mathematical framework. The book’s neuromathematical exploration appeals to graduate students and researchers in integrative-functional-cognitive neuroscience with a good mathematical background, as well as those in applied mathematics with an interest in neurophysiology.

Blind

Blind
Author: Sophie Calle
Publisher: Actes Sud Editions
Total Pages: 103
Release: 2011
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9782330000585

No stranger to the art of staging and to the act of disclosure, Sophie Caile returns again here to the theme of autobiography and to the notion of the Other, revealing in all their difference and singularity those who have been blind since birth or who have gone blind following an accident. By establishing a dialectic between the testimonies of several generations of blind people and the photographs taken by her on the basis on these accounts, Sophie Caile offers readers a reflection on absence, on the loss of one sense and the compensation of another, on the notion of the visible and the invisible. In this publication, she revisits three earlier works constructed and conceived around the idea ofblindness, setting up a dialogue between them; in Les Aveugles (The Blind), created in 1986, she questioned blind people on their representation of beauty; in 1991, in La Couleur aveugle (Blind Colour), she asked non-sighted people what they perceived and compared their descriptions to artists musings on the monochrome; La Dernière Image (The Last Image), produced in 2010 in Istanbul, historically dubbed the city of the blind, gives a voice to men and women who have lost their sight, questioning them on the last image they can remember, their last memory of the visible world. The work, which is structured as an introspective triptych, uncovers sensibilities, perceptions and events that are painful, sincere. Sophie Calles idea is to underline the permanence and irony of a particular situation, with the aim of redeeming and highlighting the importance of sight.

Cognitive Morphodynamics

Cognitive Morphodynamics
Author: Jean Petitot
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Cognitive grammar
ISBN: 9783034304757

This book - written in collaboration with René Doursat, director of the Complex Systems Institute, Paris - adds a new dimension to Cognitive Grammars. It provides a rigorous, operational mathematical foundation, which draws from topology, geometry and dynamical systems to model iconic «image-schemas» and «conceptual archetypes». It defends the thesis that René Thom's morphodynamics is especially well suited to the task and allows to transform the morphological structures of perception into Gestalt-like, abstract, proto-linguistic schemas that can act as inputs into higher-level specific linguistic routines. Cognitive Grammars have drawn upon the view that the deep syntactic and semantic structures of language, such as prepositions and case roles, are grounded in perception and action. This study raises difficult problems, which thus far have not been addressed as a mathematical challenge. Cognitive Morphodynamics shows how this gap can be filled.