The Pleasures of the Imagination

The Pleasures of the Imagination
Author: John Brewer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 566
Release: 2013-03-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 113591236X

The Pleasures of the Imagination examines the birth and development of English "high culture" in the eighteenth century. It charts the growth of a literary and artistic world fostered by publishers, theatrical and musical impresarios, picture dealers and auctioneers, and presented to th public in coffee-houses, concert halls, libraries, theatres and pleasure gardens. In 1660, there were few professional authors, musicians and painters, no public concert series, galleries, newspaper critics or reviews. By the dawn of the nineteenth century they were all aprt of the cultural life of the nation. John Brewer's enthralling book explains how this happened and recreates the world in which the great works of English eighteenth-century art were made. Its purpose is to show how literature, painting, music and the theatre were communicated to a public increasingly avid for them. It explores the alleys and garrets of Grub Street, rummages the shelves of bookshops and libraries, peers through printsellers' shop windows and into artists' studios, and slips behind the scenes at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. It takes us out of Gay and Boswell's London to visit the debating clubs, poetry circles, ballrooms, concert halls, music festivals, theatres and assemblies that made the culture of English provincial towns, and shows us how the national landscape became one of Britain's greatest cultural treasures. It reveals to us a picture of English artistic and literary life in the eighteenth century less familiar, but more suprising, more various and more convincing than any we have seen before.

Pleasure Activism

Pleasure Activism
Author: adrienne maree brown
Publisher: AK Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2019-03-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1849353271

How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls "Pleasure Activism," a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, including Audre Lourde's invitation to use the erotic as power and Toni Cade Bambara's exhortation that we make the revolution irresistible, the contributors to this volume take up the challenge to rethink the ground rules of activism. Writers including Cara Page of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice, Sonya Renee Taylor, founder of This Body Is Not an Apology, and author Alexis Pauline Gumbs cover a wide array of subjects—from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs—they create new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has a complex politics of its own. Building on the success of her popular Emergent Strategy, brown launches a new series of the same name with this volume, bringing readers books that explore experimental, expansive, and innovative ways to meet the challenges that face our world today. Books that find the opportunity in every crisis!

Spinoza and the Cunning of Imagination

Spinoza and the Cunning of Imagination
Author: Eugene Garver
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2018-10-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 022657573X

Spinoza’s Ethics, and its project of proving ethical truths through the geometric method, have attracted and challenged readers for more than three hundred years. In Spinoza and the Cunning of Imagination, Eugene Garver uses the imagination as a guiding thread to this work. Other readers have looked at the imagination to account for Spinoza’s understanding of politics and religion, but this is the first inquiry to see it as central to the Ethics as a whole—imagination as a quality to be cultivated, and not simply overcome. ?Spinoza initially presents imagination as an inadequate and confused way of thinking, always inferior to ideas that adequately represent things as they are. It would seem to follow that one ought to purge the mind of imaginative ideas and replace them with rational ideas as soon as possible, but as Garver shows, the Ethics don’t allow for this ultimate ethical act until one has cultivated a powerful imagination. This is, for Garver, “the cunning of imagination.” The simple plot of progress becomes, because of the imagination, a complex journey full of reversals and discoveries. For Garver, the “cunning” of the imagination resides in our ability to use imagination to rise above it.

How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like

How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like
Author: Paul Bloom
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2010-06-14
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 039307711X

"Engaging, evocative…[Bloom] is a supple, clear writer, and his parade of counterintuitive claims about pleasure is beguiling." —NPR Why is an artistic masterpiece worth millions more than a convincing forgery? Pleasure works in mysterious ways, as Paul Bloom reveals in this investigation of what we desire and why. Drawing on a wealth of surprising studies, Bloom investigates pleasures noble and seamy, lofty and mundane, to reveal that our enjoyment of a given thing is determined not by what we can see and touch but by our beliefs about that thing’s history, origin, and deeper nature.

Place-making for the Imagination: Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill

Place-making for the Imagination: Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill
Author: Marion Harney
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2016-04-08
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317080491

Drawing together landscape, architecture and literature, Strawberry Hill, the celebrated eighteenth-century ’Gothic’ villa and garden beside the River Thames, is an autobiographical site, where we can read the story of its creator, Horace Walpole. This 'man of taste' created private resonances, pleasure and entertainment - a collusion of the historic, the visual and the sensory. Above all, it expresses the inseparable integration of house and setting, and of the architecture with the collection, all specific to one individual, a unity that is relevant today to all architects, landscape designers and garden and country house enthusiasts. Avoiding the straightforward architectural description of previous texts, this beautifully illustrated book reveals the Gothic villa and associated landscape to be inspired by theories that stimulate 'The Pleasures of the Imagination' articulated in the series of essays by Joseph Addison (1672-1719) published in the Spectator (1712). Linked to this argument, it proposes that the concepts behind the designs for Strawberry Hill are not based around architectural precedent but around eighteenth-century aesthetics theories, antiquarianism and matters of 'Taste'. Using architectural quotations from Gothic tombs, Walpole expresses the mythical idea that it was based on monastic foundations with visual links to significant historical figures and events in English history. The book explains for the first time the reasons for its creation, which have never been adequately explored or fully understood in previous publications. The book develops an argument that Walpole was the first to define theories on Gothic architecture in his Anecdotes of Painting (1762-71). Similarly innovative, The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening (1780) is one of the first to attempt a history and theory of gardening. The research uniquely evaluates how these theories found expression at Strawberry Hill. This reassessment of the villa and its associated l

The Pleasure Is All Yours

The Pleasure Is All Yours
Author: Rachel Allyn
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2021-07-27
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1611808588

Reconnect to your inner sense of pleasure and joy through embodiment practices, which put you in touch with the natural wisdom of your body and enhance your ability to connect with others. In this time of increased fatigue, loneliness, and anxiety, disconnection from our bodies and from each other is at the core of our personal pain and our collective suffering. Women in particular are rewarded for, and expected to participate in self-denial. By weaving together historical and cultural commentary, humorous and poignant anecdotes, and experiential tools backed by science, The Pleasure Is All Yours is a step-by-step guide to help you release barriers to receiving life’s pleasures and deeper connections with others. In this timely guide, holistic psychologist, relationship and sex therapist, and yoga teacher Dr. Rachel Allyn introduces bodyfulness, an embodiment method she developed to help you to awaken into your body's own capacity for healing and deeper connection. Allyn explains how bodyfulness can connect you to four essential and overlooked types of pleasure—sensual, playful, lively, and erotic— which overlap in many ways, and helps you identify what can inspire your own pleasure in each category. Through bodyful activities such as breathing exercises, mindfulness, yoga, auditory release, and dynamic movements, this book helps you reunite with your inherent wisdom and soulful delight.

Michael Faraday's Mental Exercises

Michael Faraday's Mental Exercises
Author: Alice Jenkins
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1846311403

In 1818 Michael Faraday and a handful of other London artisans formed a self-help group with the aim of teaching themselves to write like gentlemen. For a year and a half the essay-circle met regularly to read aloud and criticize one another's writings. The 'Mental Exercises' they produced are a record of the life, literary tastes, and social and political ideas of dissenting artisans in Regency London. This complete corpus of the essay-circle's writings is accompanied by detailed annotations, extracts from key sources, and a full-length introduction explaining the biographical, historical and literary context of the group.

The Small Pleasures Of Life

The Small Pleasures Of Life
Author: Philippe Delerm
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 71
Release: 2018-04-05
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1474609686

An enchanting celebration of life's small pleasures, this little book captures the French imagination and art of living a good life. Each chapter features a small pleasure that is both uniquely Gallic and universal. From the smell of apples maturing in a cellar to the gentle whir of a bicycle dynamo at dusk to turning the pages of a newspaper over breakfast, to the joy of a snowstorm inside a paperweight . . . Recounted with a lively, innocent curiosity about the little things that make life worthwhile, this is an unforgettable, absorbing read to be savoured at length by everyone looking to create more peace and joy in their lives.