The Logic of Ecstasy

The Logic of Ecstasy
Author: Ann Davis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1992
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780802059161

None of these painters was motivated solely by mystical concerns; each of them also painted works which were of a secular or non-spiritual nature. None the less, they were all deeply interested in and concerned about matters mystical. Through a careful examination of the primary documentation Ann Davis looks at the sources of their beliefs in Christianity, transcendentalism, and theosophy and theories of the fourth dimension, and attempts to put some of their major works into new contexts so that familiar paintings can be seen in a new and revealing mystical way.

The Logic of Ecstasy

The Logic of Ecstasy
Author: Ann Davis
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1992-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780802068613

None of these painters was motivated solely by mystical concerns; each of them also painted works which were of a secular or non-spiritual nature. None the less, they were all deeply interested in and concerned about matters mystical. Through a careful examination of the primary documentation Ann Davis looks at the sources of their beliefs in Christianity, transcendentalism, and theosophy and theories of the fourth dimension, and attempts to put some of their major works into new contexts so that familiar paintings can be seen in a new and revealing mystical way.

Between Ecstasy and Truth

Between Ecstasy and Truth
Author: Stephen Halliwell
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199570566

As well as producing one of the finest of all poetic traditions, ancient Greek culture produced a major tradition of poetic theory and criticism. Halliwell's volume offers a series of detailed and challenging interpretations of some of the defining authors and texts in the history of ancient Greek poetics: the Homeric epics, Aristophanes' Frogs, Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Poetics, Gorgias's Helen, Isocrates' treatises, Philodemus' On Poems, and Longinus On the Sublime. The volume's fundamental concern is with how the Greeks conceptualized the experience of poetry and debated the values of that experience. The book's organizing theme is a recurrent Greek dialectic between ideas of poetry as, on the one hand, a powerfully enthralling experience in its own right (a kind of 'ecstasy') and, on the other, a medium for the expression of truths which can exercise lasting influence on its audiences' views of the world. Citing a wide range of modern scholarship, and making frequent connections with later periods of literary theory and aesthetics, Halliwell questions many orthodoxies and received opinions about the texts analysed. The resulting perspective casts new light on ways in which the Greeks attempted to make sense of the psychology of poetic experience - including the roles of emotion, ethics, imagination, and knowledge - in the life of their culture.

Unreal Country

Unreal Country
Author: Glenn Willmott
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2002-08-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0773570349

Modernism is one of the great manifold movements in literature and the arts. Responding with magnificent independence to inherited values and tastes, and with radical novelty to the future, varieties of modernism anxiously express both the ends of the Enlightenment and the beginnings of Postmodernism, and thus the feeling of a crisis that continues to haunt contemporary life. Modernity in Canada, stretching from the turn of the century to the 1950s, is a period marked by unprecedented urban and industrial growth, by urban and rural immigration from around the world, and by unique changes in power between regions, classes, races, and sexes. At the same time it is a period profoundly aware of the colonial past and its persistence, for good or ill, in the fragile economy and volatile culture of a new nation.

The Black Body in Ecstasy

The Black Body in Ecstasy
Author: Jennifer C. Nash
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2014-03-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822377039

In The Black Body in Ecstasy, Jennifer C. Nash rewrites black feminism's theory of representation. Her analysis moves beyond black feminism's preoccupation with injury and recovery to consider how racial fictions can create a space of agency and even pleasure for black female subjects. Nash's innovative readings of hardcore pornographic films from the 1970s and 1980s develop a new method of analyzing racialized pornography that focuses on black women's pleasures in blackness: delights in toying with and subverting blackness, moments of racialized excitement, deliberate enactments of hyperbolic blackness, and humorous performances of blackness that poke fun at the fantastical project of race. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, and media studies, Nash creates a new black feminist interpretative practice, one attentive to the messy contradictions—between delight and discomfort, between desire and degradation—at the heart of black pleasures.

The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas

The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas
Author: Peter Kwasniewski
Publisher: Emmaus Academic
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2021-05-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1645851060

Those interested in the concept of ecstasy would be forgiven for assuming that a sober scholastic like St. Thomas Aquinas had little place for the idea. Yet in this groundbreaking study, sure to refine our understanding of the Angelic Doctor, Peter Kwasniewski shows that St. Thomas contemplates the nature of ecstasy at key stages in the development of his thought and that it plays a crucial role in his doctrine of love. After a stimulating study of treatments of ecstasy in ancient philosophy, Sacred Scripture, and the medieval tradition prior to Aquinas, Kwasniewski finds that he can be seen as breathing new life into the concept. While his contemporary, St. Bonaventure, for example, tended to restrict ecstasy to the soul’s union with God, St. Thomas admitted the place of ecstasy in a variety of human activities. Furthermore, St. Thomas recognized that all love involves ecstatic transcendence, whether it be the creature’s self-oblation to the Creator, the reverence of an inferior for a superior, a superior’s generosity toward an inferior, or the mutual affection and help of equals joined in friendship. Love of persons for their own sake generates an ecstatic love in which the self is borne as a gift to another subject by sharing a common life aspiring to common goods. Kwasniewski also examines Aquinas on the question of whether or not God experiences ecstasy, and if so, in what ways. The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the doctrine of love and to the interpretation of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is more than an analysis of key texts; it is an illuminating guide to the grammar of ecstasy.

The Perfect Matrimony

The Perfect Matrimony
Author: Samael Aun Weor
Publisher: Glorian Publishing
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2012-05
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1934206687

"Love is the highest religion...” - Samael Aun Weor If you only want one book about real spiritual practice, The Perfect Matrimony has everything you need. Prepare yourself for a spiritual revolution. In fact, this book is so powerful that because of it, in 1950 the Catholic Church had Samael Aun Weor jailed. They accused him of “offending the public and healing the ill.” The Perfect Matrimony is a complete introduction to the profound and beautiful mystical knowledge from which all the world’s great religions have blossomed. There is a sacred teaching, the source of the secret teachings of Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Alchemy, Tantra, Kabbalah, and the mysteries of the Mayans, Aztecs, Egyptians, Tibetans, Eleusinians, Essenes, and hundreds more. All of them have a sexual secret. All of them came from the same root knowledge. The Perfect Matrimony explains how to solve the problem that originated with Adam and Eve: an event clearly rooted in sex. Jesus also taught how to solve this problem (his first miracle was at a wedding, after all), but the church edited his teachings. When Samael Aun Weor publicly revealed the true teachings, the outraged church had him imprisoned in an effort to repress what he revealed. Everything that lives was created through sex. Just the same, the soul is created through sex, but not the sex of the common person. To create divinity, one must understand divine sexuality. Such knowledge has always been preserved in secret, held safely for those who demonstrated their ability to use it properly. Now, for the first time in history, that knowledge has been revealed openly: this book, originally published in 1950, marked its first public appearance. "Love is the highest religion...” - Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony (1950) With the explanations in this book, you will understand not only many seemingly vague and incomprehensible scriptures, but also how all genuine spiritual practices work. After reading this book, religion and sex make sense. Moreover, you will see that religion is not found in organizations, buildings, or books, it is found in the heart that is enflamed with divine love.

Ecstasy

Ecstasy
Author: Eisner
Publisher: Ronin Publishing
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2013-01-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1579511457

The history of ecstasy, its discovery and use and social implications.

Contesting Spirit

Contesting Spirit
Author: Tyler T. Roberts
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 1998-10-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1400822610

Challenging the dominant scholarly consensus that Nietzsche is simply an enemy of religion, Tyler Roberts examines the place of religion in Nietzsche's thought and Nietzsche's thought as a site of religion. Roberts argues that Nietzsche's conceptualization and cultivation of an affirmative self require that we interrogate the ambiguities that mark his criticisms of asceticism and mysticism. What emerges is a vision of Nietzsche's philosophy as the enactment of a spiritual quest informed by transfigured versions of religious tropes and practices. Nietzsche criticizes the ascetic hatred of the body and this-worldly life, yet engages in rigorous practices of self-denial--he sees philosophy as such a practice--and affirms the need of imposing suffering on oneself in order to enhance the spirit. He dismisses the "intoxication" of mysticism, yet links mysticism, power, and creativity, and describes his own self-transcending experiences. The tensions in his relation to religion are closely related to that between negation and affirmation in his thinking in general. In Roberts's view, Nietzsche's transfigurations of religion offer resources for a postmodern religious imagination. Though as a "master of suspicion," Nietzsche, with Freud and Marx, is an integral part of modern antireligion, he has the power to take us beyond the flat, modern distinction between the secular and the religious--a distinction that, at the end of modernity, begs to be reexamined.

Franz Kafka (1883-1983)

Franz Kafka (1883-1983)
Author: Charles Bernheimer
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 1986-07-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0889201870

The eight papers in this volume were originally presented at the centennial conference on Franz Kafka held at the University of Calgary in October 1983. As diverse in approach and methodology as these papers are "the general drift of the volume is away from Germanistik towards 'state-of-the-art' methods." The opening articles by Charles Bernheimer and James Rolleston both deal with the similarities and contrasts between Kafka and Flaubert, with Bernheimer focusing on the "I" and the dilemma of narration in Kafka's early story, "Wedding Preparation in the Country," and Rolleston on the time-dimensions in the Kafka's work that link him to the Romantics. Other articles in the volume deal with the complex interrelationships between author and narrator, and implied author and implied reader; with Kafka's place in the European fable tradition and in classic and Romantic religious traditions; with Kafka's diaries; and with his female protagonists.