Shaping Heroic Virtue

Shaping Heroic Virtue
Author: Stefano Fogelberg Rota
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2015-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004303782

In his Nichomachean Ethics (VII.I.I), Aristotle suggests the possibility of a perfection of virtue so extreme that it could be characterized as “heroic” or “divine”. In Shaping Heroic Virtue, eight scholars from different fields of the humanities explore the reception of this notion within a broad range of artistic, political and religious contexts and map its enduring importance in the self-fashioning of monarchs and political elites. The case studies included in the volume span from Late Antiquity to the 18th century and include material from different parts of Europe, with a particular emphasis on Scandinavia. Contributors include Erik Eliasson, Stefano Fogelberg Rota, Andreas Hellerstedt, Kristine Kolrud, Jennie Nell, Nils Holger Petersen, Tania Preste and Biörn Tjällén.

Luther and the Gift

Luther and the Gift
Author: Risto Saarinen
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2017-06-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9783161549700

Dust jacket, back cover: In this book, Risto Saarinen studies Martin Luther's understanding of the gift and related issues such as favours and benefits, faith and justification, virtues and merits, ethics and doctrine, law and Christ. He shows that Luther both continues and criticizes the classical discusssions regarding the differences and parallels between gifts and sales.

Rubens and the Dominican Church in Antwerp

Rubens and the Dominican Church in Antwerp
Author: Adam Sammut
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 556
Release: 2023-05-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9004276386

This book is about the Dominican church in Antwerp (today St Paul’s). It is structured around three works of art, made or procured by Peter Paul Rubens: the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary cycle (in situ), Caravaggio’s Rosary Madonna (Vienna) and the Wrath of Christ high altarpiece (Lyon). Within the artist’s lifetime, the church and monastery were completely rebuilt, creating one of the most spectacular sacred spaces in Northern Europe. In this richly illustrated book, Adam Sammut reconceptualises early modern churches as theatres of political economy, advancing an original approach to cultural production in a time of war. Using methodologies at the cutting edge of the humanities, the place of St Paul’s is restored to the crux of Antwerp’s commercial, civic and religious life.

Dreaming with Open Eyes

Dreaming with Open Eyes
Author: Ayana O. Smith
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0520421108

Dreaming with Open Eyes examines visual symbolism in late seventeenth-century Italian opera, contextualizing the genre amid the broad ocularcentric debates emerging at the crossroads of the early modern period and the Enlightenment. Ayana O. Smith reevaluates significant aspects of the Arcadian reform aesthetic and establishes a historically informed method of opera criticism for modern scholars and interpreters. Unfolding in a narrative fashion, the text explores facets of the philosophical and literary background and concludes with close readings of text and music, using visual symbolism to create readings of gender and character in two operas: Alessandro Scarlatti's La Statira (Rome, 1690), and Carlo Francesco Pollarolo's La forza della virtù (Venice, 1693). Smith’s interdisciplinary approach enhances our modern perception of this rich and underexplored repertory, and will appeal to students and scholars not only of opera, but also of literature, philosophy, and visual and intellectual cultures.

Orienting Virtue

Orienting Virtue
Author: Bethany Williamson
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2022-10-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813947626

What does it mean for a nation and its citizens to be virtuous? The term "virtue" is ubiquitous in eighteenth-century British literature, but its definition is more often assumed than explained. Bringing together two significant threads of eighteenth-century scholarship—one on republican civic identity and the mythic legacy of the freeborn Briton and the other on how England’s global encounters were shaped by orientalist fantasies— Orienting Virtue examines how England’s sense of collective virtue was inflected and informed by Eastern empires. Bethany Williamson shows how England’s struggle to define and practice national virtue hinged on the difficulty of articulating an absolute concept of moral value amid dynamic global trade networks. As writers framed England’s story of exceptional liberties outside the "rise and fall" narrative they ascribed to other empires, virtue claims encoded anxieties about England’s tenuous position on the global stage, especially in relation to the Ottoman, Mughal, and Far Eastern empires. Tracking valences of virtue across the century’s political crises and diverse literary genres, Williamson demonstrates how writers consistently deployed virtue claims to imagine a "middle way" between conserving ancient ideals and adapting to complex global realities. Orienting Virtue concludes by emphasizing the ongoing urgency, in our own moment, of balancing competing responsibilities and interests as citizens both of nations and of the world.

Body, Gender, Senses

Body, Gender, Senses
Author: Carin Franzén
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2024-03-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110799332

The body, touch and its sensations are present, sometimes viewed in contradictory ways, both expressed, visualized, and rejected, in early modern art and literature. In seven essays moving from the 16th to the mid-18th century, and from Italy and Spain to France and Sweden, this volume explores strategies used by early modern women poets, philosophers, and artists in order to create subversive expressions of the body, gender and the senses. Showing how body and soul, the carnal and the divine, the senses and the mind, could be represented as intertwined and dependent on each other in various ways, it gives due attention to European women writers and artists that in unconventional ways responded to the period's two main intellectual and philosophical attitudes - Epicurean and Stoic - towards the body and its senses. These attitudes not only intersect in the period's discussions of virtue and other moral phenomena, but are central to critical assessment of the relations between emotions, perception, and reason. By following this topic from a gender perspective, the book highlights other forms of subjectivity than the ones usually related to the early modern period's dominating subjectivation of female bodies, thinking and desires.

Empty Tomb, Apotheosis, Resurrection

Empty Tomb, Apotheosis, Resurrection
Author: John Granger Cook
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
Total Pages: 733
Release: 2018-09-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3161565037

Back cover: In this work, John Granger Cook argues that there is no fundamental difference between Paul's conception of the resurrection body and that of the Gospels; and, the resurresction and translation stories of antiquity help explain the willingness of Mediterranean people to accept the Gospel of a risen savior.

Symbolic Identity and the Cultural Memory of Saints

Symbolic Identity and the Cultural Memory of Saints
Author: Anu Mänd
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2018-07-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1527515710

This volume examines the relationship between medieval cults of saints and regional and national identity formation in Europe both during and, to some extent, beyond the Middle Ages. It studies how collective identities have been expressed through saints’ cults and their appropriations in texts, visual representations, and music. Attention is given to various aspects of the role of medieval saints’ cults in European identity formation, as saints were used in the service of both religious and political agendas. Focusing on a range of European regions, this volume uses cults of medieval saints and their religious, cultural and political appropriations over time as a vehicle for studying changing cultural and social values. The articles here report research carried out under the European Science Foundation’s collaborative EuroCORECODE project: Symbols that Bind and Break Communities: Saints’ Cults as Stimuli and Expressions of Local, Regional, National and Universalist Identities (2010–2013/14), an international, interdisciplinary research venture funded by the National Research Councils of five countries: Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, and Norway.

Destruction, Ethics, and Intergalactic Love

Destruction, Ethics, and Intergalactic Love
Author: Peter Admirand
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2022-12-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000750337

Destruction, Ethics, and Intergalactic Love: Exploring Y: The Last Man and Saga offers a creative and accessible exploration of the two comic book series, examining themes like nonviolence; issues of gender and war; heroes and moral failures; forgiveness and seeking justice; and the importance of diversity and religious pluralism. Through close interdisciplinary reading and personal narratives, the author delves into the complex worlds of Y and Saga in search of an ethics, meaning, and a path resonant with real-world struggles. Reading these works side by side, the analysis draws parallels and seeks common themes around the four central ideas of seeking and making meaning in a meaningless world; love and parenting through oppression and grief; peacefulness when surrounded by violence; and the perils and hopes of diversity and communion. This timely and thoughtful study will resonate with scholars and students of comic studies, media and cultural studies, philosophy, theology, literature, psychology, and popular culture studies.

Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences

Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences
Author: Dana Jalobeanu
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 2267
Release: 2022-08-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319310690

This Encyclopedia offers a fresh, integrated and creative perspective on the formation and foundations of philosophy and science in European modernity. Combining careful contextual reconstruction with arguments from traditional philosophy, the book examines methodological dimensions, breaks down traditional oppositions such as rationalism vs. empiricism, calls attention to gender issues, to ‘insiders and outsiders’, minor figures in philosophy, and underground movements, among many other topics. In addition, and in line with important recent transformations in the fields of history of science and early modern philosophy, the volume recognizes the specificity and significance of early modern science and discusses important developments including issues of historiography (such as historical epistemology), the interplay between the material culture and modes of knowledge, expert knowledge and craft knowledge. This book stands at the crossroads of different disciplines and combines their approaches – particularly the history of science, the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of science, and intellectual and cultural history. It brings together over 100 philosophers, historians of science, historians of mathematics, and medicine offering a comprehensive view of early modern philosophy and the sciences. It combines and discusses recent results from two very active fields: early modern philosophy and the history of (early modern) science. Editorial Board EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Dana Jalobeanu University of Bucharest, Romania Charles T. Wolfe Ghent University, Belgium ASSOCIATE EDITORS Delphine Bellis University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Zvi Biener University of Cincinnati, OH, USA Angus Gowland University College London, UK Ruth Hagengruber University of Paderborn, Germany Hiro Hirai Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Martin Lenz University of Groningen, The Netherlands Gideon Manning CalTech, Pasadena, CA, USA Silvia Manzo University of La Plata, Argentina Enrico Pasini University of Turin, Italy Cesare Pastorino TU Berlin, Germany Lucian Petrescu Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Justin E. H. Smith University de Paris Diderot, France Marius Stan Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA Koen Vermeir CNRS-SPHERE + Université de Paris, France Kirsten Walsh University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada