Download or read book Why We Play written by Roberte Hamayon and published by Hau. This book was released on 2016 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Play is one of humanity's straightforward yet deceitful ideas: though the notion is unanimously agreed upon to be universal, used for man and animal alike, nothing defines what all its manifestations share, from childish playtime to on stage drama, from sporting events to market speculation. Within the author's anthropological field of work (Mongolia and Siberia), playing holds a core position: national holidays are called "Games," echoing in that way the circus games in Ancient Rome and today's Olympics. These games convey ethical values and local identity. Roberte Hamayon bases her analysis of the playing spectrum on their scrutiny. Starting from fighting and dancing, encompassing learning, interaction, emotion and strategy, this study heads towards luck and belief as well as the ambiguity of the relation to fiction and reality. It closes by indicating two features of play: its margin and its metaphorical structure. Ultimately revealing its consistency and coherence, the author displays play as a modality of action of its own. "Playing is no 'doing' in the ordinary sense" once wrote Johan Huizinga. Isn't playing doing something else, elswhere and otherwise ?

Download or read book Jerusalem and Babylon written by Johannes van Oort and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-11-24 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although many studies have been devoted to Augustine's City of God and its most important theme, viz. the antithesis between the civitas Dei and the terrena civitas,until now no consensus has been reached concerning the sources of this doctrine. Was Augustine decisively influenced by Manichaeism, by (Neo)Platonism, the Stoa or Philo, by the Donatist Tyconius? Or should we look in another direction and refer to preceding Christian, Jewish, and especially to archaic Jewish-Christian traditions? This lucidly written books opens with a survey of the research carried out so far on the aim, structure and central theme of the City of God. Chapter 2 analyzes the essentials of Augustine's life, of his City of God, and of his doctrine of the two cities. Making use of one of the recently discovered letters of Augustine in Chapter 3 the author describes the City of God as an apology and as a catechetical work. Chapter 4 provides an investigation into the possible sources of Augustine's doctrine of the two cities in Manichaeism, in (Neo)Platonism, the Stoa and Philo, and in the works of Tyconius. The idea of two antithetical cities proves to be present most clearly in writings in which, closely related to Jewish thinking, archaic Christian concepts occupy an important place. In a final chapter some pertinent remarks are made on Jewish and Jewish-Christian influences on pre-Augustinian Christianity in Africa.

Download or read book Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages written by Bonnie Effros and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-03-03 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clothing, jewelry, animal remains, ceramics, coins, and weaponry are among the artifacts that have been discovered in graves in Gaul dating from the fifth to eighth century. Those who have unearthed them, from the middle ages to the present, have speculated widely on their meaning. This authoritative book makes a major contribution to the study of death and burial in late antique and early medieval society with its long overdue systematic discussion of this mortuary evidence. Tracing the history of Merovingian archaeology within its cultural and intellectual context for the first time, Effros exposes biases and prejudices that have colored previous interpretations of these burial sites and assesses what contemporary archaeology can tell us about the Frankish kingdoms. Working at the intersection of history and archaeology, and drawing from anthropology and art history, Effros emphasizes in particular the effects of historical events and intellectual movements on French and German antiquarian and archaeological studies of these grave goods. Her discussion traces the evolution of concepts of nationhood, race, and culture and shows how these concepts helped shape an understanding of the past. Effros then turns to contemporary multidisciplinary methodologies and finds that we are still limited by the types of information that can be readily gleaned from physical and written sources of Merovingian graves. For example, since material evidence found in the graves of elite families and particularly elite men is more plentiful and noteworthy, mortuary goods do not speak as directly to the conditions in which women and the poor lived. The clarity and sophistication with which Effros discusses the methods and results of European archaeology is a compelling demonstration of the impact of nationalist ideologies on a single discipline and of the struggle toward the more pluralistic vision that has developed in the post-war years.

Download or read book The Aesthetic Life of Cyril Scott written by Sarah Collins and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book An Event Perhaps written by Peter Salmon and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosopher, film star, father of “post truth”—the real story of Jacques Derrida Who is Jacques Derrida? For some, he is the originator of a relativist philosophy responsible for the contemporary crisis of truth. For the far right, he is one of the architects of Cultural Marxism. To his academic critics, he reduced French philosophy to “little more than an object of ridicule.” For his fans, he is an intellectual rock star who ranged across literature, politics, and linguistics. In An Event, Perhaps, Peter Salmon presents this misunderstood and misappropriated figure as a deeply humane and urgent thinker for our times. Born in Algiers, the young Jackie was always an outsider. Despite his best efforts, he found it difficult to establish himself among the Paris intellectual milieu of the 1960s. However, in 1967, he changed the whole course of philosophy: outlining the central concepts of deconstruction. Immediately, his reputation as a complex and confounding thinker was established. Feted by some, abhorred by others, Derrida had an exhaustive breadth of interests but, as Salmon shows, was moved by a profound desire to understand how we engage with each other. It is a theme explored through Derrida’s intimate relationships with writers such as Althusser, Genet, Lacan, Foucault, Cixous, and Kristeva. Accessible, provocative and beautifully written, An Event, Perhaps will introduce a new readership to the life and work of a philosopher whose influence over the way we think will continue long into the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Broken Tablets written by Sarah Hammerschlag and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over a span of thirty years, twentieth-century French philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida held a conversation across texts. Sharing a Jewish heritage and a background in phenomenology, both came to situate their work at the margins of philosophy, articulating this placement through religion and literature. Chronicling the interactions between these thinkers, Sarah Hammerschlag argues that the stakes in their respective positions were more than philosophical. They were also political. Levinas's investments were born out in his writings on Judaism and ultimately in an evolving conviction that the young state of Israel held the best possibility for achieving such an ideal. For Derrida, the Jewish question was literary. The stakes of Jewish survival could only be approached through reflections on modern literature's religious legacy, a line of thinking that provided him the means to reconceive democracy. Hammerschlag's reexamination of Derrida and Levinas's textual exchange not only produces a new account of this friendship but also has significant ramifications for debates within Continental philosophy, the study of religion, and political theology.

Download or read book The Young Derrida and French Philosophy 1945 1968 written by Edward Baring and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-13 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this powerful study Edward Baring sheds fresh light on Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential yet controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century. Reading Derrida from a historical perspective and drawing on new archival sources, The Young Derrida and French Philosophy shows how Derrida's thought arose in the closely contested space of post-war French intellectual life, developing in response to Sartrian existentialism, religious philosophy and the structuralism that found its base at the École Normale Supérieure. In a history of the philosophical movements and academic institutions of post-war France, Baring paints a portrait of a community caught between humanism and anti-humanism, providing a radically new interpretation of the genesis of deconstruction and of one of the most vibrant intellectual moments of modern times.

Download or read book Heidegger in France written by Dominique Janicaud and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-19 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dominique Janicaud claimed that every French intellectual movement—from existentialism to psychoanalysis—was influenced by Martin Heidegger. This translation of Janicaud's landmark work, Heidegger en France, details Heidegger's reception in philosophy and other humanistic and social science disciplines. Interviews with key French thinkers such as Françoise Dastur, Jacques Derrida, Éliane Escoubas, Jean Greisch, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jean-Luc Nancy are included and provide further reflection on Heidegger's relationship to French philosophy. An intellectual undertaking of authoritative scope, this work furnishes a thorough history of the French reception of Heidegger's thought.

Download or read book Pompeii written by Paul Zanker and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-15 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pompeii's tragedy is our windfall: an ancient city fully preserved, its urban design and domestic styles speaking across the ages. This richly illustrated book conducts us through the captured wonders of Pompeii, evoking at every turn the life of the city as it was 2,000 years ago. When Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. its lava preserved not only the Pompeii of that time but a palimpsest of the city's history, visible traces of the different societies of Pompeii's past. Paul Zanker, a noted authority on Roman art and architecture, disentangles these tantalizing traces to show us the urban images that marked Pompeii's development from country town to Roman imperial city. Exploring Pompeii's public buildings, its streets and gathering places, we witness the impact of religious changes, the renovation of theaters and expansion of athletic facilities, and the influence of elite families on the city's appearance. Through these stages, Zanker adeptly conjures a sense of the political and social meanings in urban planning and public architecture. The private houses of Pompeii prove equally eloquent, their layout, decor, and architectural detail speaking volumes about the life, taste, and desires of their owners. At home or in public, at work or at ease, these Pompeians and their world come alive in Zanker's masterly rendering. A provocative and original reading of material culture, his work is an incomparable introduction to urban life in antiquity.

Download or read book The Cloisters written by Elizabeth C. Parker and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art New York. This book was released on 2012-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1988, The Cloisters celebrated its fiftieth anniversary as a branch museum of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Devoted to the art of medieval Europe, The Cloisters is a twentieth century museum designed in a style evocative of medieval architecture. Its combination of medieval and modern architectural elements, organized around arcades of five medieval cloisters, creates a unique and sympathetic context for the exhibition of sculpture, metalwork, textiles, and painting. This contextual approach has been enormously influential in introducing medieval art to the American public. The opportunity for both visitor and scholar to examine works of art in evocative settings has informed and inspired viewers since the Museum's opening in 1938. The collection continues to grow in a wide-ranging fashion, as exemplified by the recently acquired Langobardic reliefs and fourteenth-century stained glass from the Austrian castle chapel at Ebreichsdorf, which are examined here. A two-day scholarly symposium marked the fiftieth anniversary of The Cloisters, bringing together fifteen distinguished scholars from Europe and North America. Jointly sponsored by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the International Center of Medieval Art, the symposium offered discussions of The Cloisters' history as well as concise papers emphasizing new research on specific works of art in the collection. Keynote papers by Ilene H. Forsyth and Willibald Sauerlander presented provocative critical reviews of the present state of research on Romanesque and Gothic art--the predominant strengths of the collection. Their appraisals and proposals for new directions of research confirm the rapidly changing and challenging state of medieval art scholarship. Symposium participants have revised their papers for publication, and contributions by members of the Museum's staff have been added. The twenty-two studies presented in this commemorative volume demonstrate the methodological diversity confronting the field of medieval art history. As a group, they offer an extraordinary tribute to the significance of The Cloisters Collection. (This title was originally published in 1991/92.)

Download or read book Legal Documents in Ancient Societies LDAS written by and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 55,2 presents the contributions of the eighth meeting of the Working Group "Legal Documents in Ancient Societies", which was devoted to the topic "Accounts and Bookkeeping in the Ancient World". The volume is dedicated to an early and seemingly ubiquitous type of text, which often followed certain classification criteria and which, for the sake of easier clarity, was gladly subjected to a specially developed layout. In addition to the discussions of individual artefacts or artefact groups as well as literary texts, there are considerations of ancient and modern terminology, the choice of writing media used for this purpose, the bodies entrusted with data collection, the purposes pursued with it, the further processing and archiving of the collected data as well as their organisation at the various levels of administration. The examples from Emar and early Greece again show that a written version was by no means self-evident. The contributions not only draw attention once again to the high level of knowledge that can be gained from such a comparative approach, but also to the great potential of the always underestimated and only seemingly unattractive format of lists and directories. This undoubtedly applies to the entire field of economic administration, but also to questions of military affairs, demography, and sociology, for whose research this serial material is of importance that should not be underestimated.

Download or read book Deir El Bahari in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods written by Adam Łajtar and published by Journal of Juristic Papyr. This book was released on 2006 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari at Luxor is one of the most fascinating architectural monuments of Ancient Egypt. It has been explored and reconstructed by Polish archaeologists for several decades and the present volume is the most recent result of these activities. The author tracks the history of the sanctuary in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods when it housed a lively cult of two Ancient Egyptian `saints', the deified sages Amenhotep son of Hapu and Imhotep. The book contains the complete edition of Greek sources connected to this cult, including 320 inscriptions left by pilgrims on the walls of the temple, as well as several ostraca and votive monuments. On the basis of this material, different aspects of the cult are discussed in a synthetic part of the book. These include: the topography of the cult and its history; gods worshipped in the temple; forms of the cult; the economic side of the cult; the visitors of the temple. The study closes with a chapter devoted to Deir el-Bahari in the Late Antique period when the place was frequented by a pagan corporation of ironworkers from Hermonthis.

Download or read book Curtius Rufus Histories of Alexander the Great Book 10 written by and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-03-12 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a translation, with commentary, of a major Roman source on the end of the reign of Alexander the Great. Book 10 of Curtius' Histories covers the reign of terror and mutiny that followed upon Alexander's return from India; and offers the fullest account of the power struggle that began in Babylon immediately after his death. The Introduction establishes a profile of Curtius Rufus (quite probably a Roman Senator of the first century AD), and his agenda as a historian. John Yardley's translation and the commentary are designed for the reader without Latin. The Commentary provides detailed analysis of the historical events of the crucial period 325-3 BC covered by Curtius, and also tries to get behind the surface level of meaning to show how Curtius intended his history to be a text for his time. Curtius' text is also examined as a literary achievement in its own right.

Download or read book The Medieval Imagination written by Jacques Le Goff and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1992-12-15 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To write this history of the imagination, Le Goff has recreated the mental structures of medieval men and women by analyzing the images of man as microcosm and the Church as mystical body; the symbols of power such as flags and oriflammes; and the contradictory world of dreams, marvels, devils, and wild forests. "Le Goff is one of the most distinguished of the French medieval historians of his generation . . . he has exercised immense influence."—Maurice Keen, New York Review of Books "The whole book turns on a fascinating blend of the brutally materialistic and the generously imaginative."—Tom Shippey, London Review of Books "The richness, imaginativeness and sheer learning of Le Goff's work . . . demand to be experienced."—M. T. Clanchy, Times Literary Supplement

Download or read book The Origins of Latin Christianity written by Jean Daniélou and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Companion to Ancient Egypt 2 Volume Set written by Alan B. Lloyd and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-05-06 with total page 1352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This companion provides the very latest accounts of the major and current aspects of Egyptology by leading scholars. Delivered in a highly readable style and extensively illustrated, it offers unprecedented breadth and depth of coverage, giving full scope to the discussion of this incredible civilization. Provides the very latest and, where relevant, well-illustrated accounts of the major aspects of Egypt?s ancient history and culture Covers a broad scope of topics including physical context, history, economic and social mechanisms, language, literature, and the visual arts Delivered in a highly readable style with students and scholars of both Egyptology and Graeco-Roman studies in mind Provides a chronological table at the start of each volume to help readers orient chapters within the wider historical context

Download or read book Religion and Violence written by Hent de Vries and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2002-01-18 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida's careful posing of such questions and rearticulations pioneers new modalities for systematic engagement with religion and philosophy alike.--Arthur Bradley "Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory"