Download or read book Phallos Dionysus written by Frank Palescandolo and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2000-09-19 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel about the reappearance of the Greek god Dionysus in the modern world in the aspect and form of Priapus. Imagine the combined Wellesley and Smith College Field Hockey teams as his Baccantes. The novel, in sequences, is indebted to the play, The Baccae, by Euripides. Laetitia Lowell, a philologist at Wellesley College, on a solo field trip to the ruins of Pompei and Herculaneum, on the slopes of Vesuvius, lost, she falls in with a procession of dreamy-eyed women dancing to the music of tambourines, flutes, drums and cithars, in barbaric dress of blue chitons, bare legged, bare breasted, and holding what appears to be a thyrsus. Bacchantes! After two thousand years! She follows what she believes to be masquerades, hoping to find her way back to Pompeii. Suddenly, she is hemmed in by the hennaed and kohl eyed women, to witness what appeared to be a rite. When the troop stops before a grotto, a venerable man who appeared to be a high priest, summons a young man from the grotto who is attired in a golden robe. His hair is Doric blonde. A magnificent Greek kouros. The young man sits on a plinth at the entrance of the grotto. The women chant choral dithyrambs out of the Bacchae of Euripides. He opens his robe to disclose a huge flaccid male member that gradually becomes erect with the intensity of the dancing and singing -- then with a moan he ejaculates, spurting semen in a fountain spray in which the women dip kerchiefs and phallic ornaments to empower the objects as symbols of fertility. The young man is imprisoned in the grotto. Later, she escapes with the young man, Demetrius Angeli, who is worshipped by this recondite and remote sect in time, as Dionysus in the aspect of Priapus. For his sanity and safety, she brings him to the USA. He and his Wellesley and Smith College new world bacchantes (field hockey players) are then persecuted as a dangerous cult by a lady Attorney General. What ensues is the eternal confrontation and dynamism of Dionysan and Appollonian opposites. * * * Myths have no life of themselves. They wait for us to give them body. Let but one person in the world respond to their call, they offer us their vitality unimpaired. From Albert Camus, 1946.
Download or read book Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres written by Emmanuela Bakola and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent scholarship has acknowledged that the intertextual discourse of ancient comedy with previous and contemporary literary traditions is not limited to tragedy. This book is a timely response to the more sophisticated and theory-grounded way of viewing comedy's interactions with its cultural and intellectual context. It shows that in the process of its self-definition, comedy emerges as voracious and multifarious with a wide spectrum of literary, sub-literary and paraliterary traditions, the engagement with which emerges as central to its projected literary identity and, subsequently, to the reception of the genre itself. Comedy's self-definition through generic discourse far transcends the (narrowly conceived) 'high-low' division of genres. This book explores ancient comedy's interactions with Homeric and Hesiodic epic, iambos, lyric, tragedy, the fable tradition, the ritual performances of the Greek polis, and its reception in Platonic writings and Alexandrian scholarship, within a unified interpretative framework.
Download or read book Seers Shrines and Sirens written by John Pollard and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-28 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seers, Shrines and Sirens (1965) surveys the history of Greek religion during the great formative and revolutionary era of the sixth century BC. It treats, among other subjects, the rise to prominence of the Delphic oracle, the growth of religious festivals and mysteries, the worship of Dionysus, including the development of the drama and appearance of the Orphic and Pythagorean sects. The sixth century was above all a time when prophets, supermen and sibyls flourished and their impact is discussed in detail.
Download or read book No Laughing Matter written by and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Laughing Matter is a wide-ranging collection of new studies of the comic theatre of Athens, from its origins until the 340s BCE. Fifteen international scholars employ an array of approaches and methodologies that will appeal to Classics and Theatre scholars while still remaining accessible to students. By including discussions of fragmentary authors alongside Aristophanes, the collection provides a broad understanding of the richness of Athenian comedy. The collection showcases the best of the new scholarship on Old and Middle Comedy, using the most up-to-date texts and tools. No Laughing Matter has been prepared in tribute to Professor Ian Storey of Trent University (Peterborough, Ontario), whose work on Athenian comedy will continue to shape scholarship for many years to come.
Download or read book The Narrative Self in Early Christianity written by Janet E. Spittler and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2019-10-04 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays that explore early Christian texts and the broader world in which they were written This volume of twelve essays celebrates the contributions of classicist Judith Perkins to the study of early Christianity. Drawing on Perkins's insights related to apocryphal texts, representations of pain and suffering, and the creation of meaning, contributors explore the function of Christian narratives that depict pain and suffering, the motivations of the early Christians who composed these stories, and their continuing value to contemporary people. Contributors also examine how narratives work to create meaning in a religious context. These contributions address these issues from a variety of angles through a wide range of texts. Features: Introductions to and treatments of several largely unknown early Christian texts Essays by ten women and two men influenced or mentored by Judith Perkins Essays on the Deuterocanon, the New Testament, and early Christian relics
Download or read book A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC written by Eric Csapo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-16 with total page 961 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second volume of A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC and focuses exclusively on theatre culture in Attica (Rural Dionysia) and the rest of the Greek world. It presents and discusses in detail all the documentary and material evidence for theatre culture and dramatic production from the first two centuries of theatre history, namely the period c.500 to c.300 BC. The traditional assumption is laid to rest that theatre was an exclusively or primarily Athenian institution, with the inclusion of all sources of information for theatrical performances in twenty-two deme sites and over one hundred and twenty independent Greek (and some non-Greek) cities. All texts are translated and made accessible to non-specialists and specialists alike. The volume will be a fundamental work of reference for all classicists and theatre historians interested in ancient theatre and its wider historical contexts.
Download or read book Acting Like Men written by Karen Bassi and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the concept of gender in relation to Greek drama
Download or read book The Road to Eleusis written by R. Gordon Wasson and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2023-06-27 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "...one of the two best kept secrets in history, and this book is the most successful attempt I know to unlock it. ... [A] historical tour de force." --Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions The secretive Mysteries conducted at Eleusis in Greece for nearly two millennia have long puzzled scholars with strange accounts of initiates experiencing otherworldly journeys. In this groundbreaking work, three experts—a mycologist, a chemist, and a historian—argue persuasively that the sacred potion given to participants in the course of the ritual contained a psychoactive entheogen. The authors then expand the discussion to show that natural psychedelic agents have been used in spiritual rituals across history and cultures. Although controversial when first published in 1978, the book’s hypothesis has become more widely accepted in recent years, as knowledge of ethnobotany has deepened. The authors have played critical roles in the modern rediscovery of entheogens, and The Road to Eleusis presents an authoritative exposition of their views. The book’s themes of the universality of experiential religion, the suppression of that knowledge by exploitative forces, and the use of psychedelics to reconcile the human and natural worlds make it a fascinating and timely read. This 30th anniversary edition includes an appreciative preface by religious scholar Huston Smith and an updated exploration of the chemical evidence by Peter Webster.
Download or read book A Mind of Its Own written by David M. Friedman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether enemy or ally, demon or god, the source of satisfaction or the root of all earthly troubles, the penis has forced humanity to wrestle with its enduring mysteries. Here, in an enlightening and entertaining cultural study, is a book that gives context to the central role of the penis in Western civilization. A man can hold his manhood in his hand, but who is really gripping whom? Is the penis the best in man -- or the beast? How is man supposed to use it? And when does that use become abuse? Of all the bodily organs, only the penis forces man to confront such contradictions: something insistent yet reluctant, a tool that creates but also destroys, a part of the body that often seems apart from the body. This is the conundrum that makes the penis both hero and villain in a drama that shapes every man -- and mankind along with it. In A Mind of Its Own, David M. Friedman shows that the penis is more than a body part. It is an idea, a conceptual but flesh-and-blood measuring stick of man's place in the world. That men have a penis is a scientific fact; how they think about it, feel about it, and use it is not. It is possible to identify the key moments in Western history when a new idea of the penis addressed the larger mystery of man's relationship with it and changed forever the way that organ was conceived of and put to use. A Mind of Its Own brilliantly distills this complex and largely unexamined story. Deified by the pagan cultures of the ancient world and demonized by the early Roman church, the organ was later secularized by pioneering anatomists such as Leonardo da Vinci. After being measured "scientifically" in an effort to subjugate some races while elevating others, the organ was psychoanalyzed by Sigmund Freud. As a result, the penis assumed a paradigmatic role in psychology -- whether the patient was equipped with the organ or envied those who were. Now, after being politicized by feminism and exploited in countless ways by pop culture, the penis has been medicalized. As no one has before him, Friedman shows how the arrival of erection industry products such as Viagra is more than a health or business story. It is the latest -- and perhaps final -- chapter in one of the longest sagas in human history: the story of man's relationship with his penis. A Mind of Its Own charts the vicissitudes of that relationship through its often amusing, occasionally alarming, and never boring course. With intellectual rigor and a healthy dose of wry humor, David M. Friedman serves up one of the most thought-provoking, significant, and readable cultural works in years.
Download or read book Persephone s Quest written by Robert Gordon Wasson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1986-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating book discusses the role played by psychoactive mushrooms in the religious rituals of ancient Greece, Eurasia, and Mesoamerica. R. Gordon Wasson, an internationally known ethnomycologist who was one of the first to investigate how these mushrooms were venerated and employed by different native peoples, here joins with three other scholars to discuss the evidence for his discoveries about these fungi, which he has called entheogens, or "god generated within."
Download or read book Dionysos written by Karl Kerényi and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1996-10-06 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No other god of the Greeks is as widely present in the monuments and nature of Greece and Italy, in the sensuous tradition of antiquity, as Dionysos. In myth and image, in visionary experience and ritual representation, the Greeks possessed a complete expression of indestructible life, the essence of Dionysos. In this work, the noted mythologist and historian of religion Carl Kerényi presents a historical account of the religion of Dionysos from its beginnings in the Minoan culture down to its transition to a cosmic and cosmopolitan religion of late antiquity under the Roman Empire. From the wealth of Greek literary, epigraphic, and monumental traditions, Kerényi constructs a picture of Dionysian worship, always underlining the constitutive element of myth. Included in this study are the secret cult scenes of the women's mysteries both within and beyond Attica, the mystic sacrificial rite at Delphi, and the great public Dionysian festivals at Athens. The way in which the Athenian people received and assimilated tragedy in its immanent connection with Dionysos is seen as the greatest miracle in all cultural history. Tragedy and New Comedy are seen as high spiritual forms of the Dionysian religion, and the Dionysian element itself is seen as a chapter in the religious history of Europe.
Download or read book Histories written by Herodotus and published by Standard Ebooks. This book was released on 2024-07-06T01:45:21Z with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in the fifth century BC, the Histories is considered to be the founding work of history in the Western canon, and one of the foundational works of Western literature in general. The narrative centers on the wars between the Greeks and the Persians, and is an important source of information about the peoples, locations, and events of the ancient Greek world and the Persian empire. This work is an early source on the lives of significant historical figures and events, such as the defeat of the kingdom of Lydia, the foundation of the first Persian empire, Cyrus the Great’s ill-fated invasion of Scythia, and Leonidas’ defense, and ultimate demise, alongside his 300 warriors at the Battle of Thermopylae. Herodotus wrote his history in order to preserve the knowledge of the actions of Greeks and “barbarians.” He is the first (and sometimes only) source for many of the names of locations and people featured in the book. Before the Histories, the transmission of history existed primarily via oral storytelling and the occasional written chronicle; Herodotus can therefore be credited as the first person to treat the past in a more objective and scholarly manner, even if the Histories cannot be considered an unbiased or primary source by modern standards. Although it contains some inaccurate—and sometimes even absurd—claims, it remains an important work both as a historical source and as classic literature. The Histories was widely read in the ancient world, and its popularity led to Herodotus being called both “The Father of History” by Cicero and “The Father of Lies” by Plutarch. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
Download or read book Images in Mind written by Deborah Tarn Steiner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In archaic and classical Greece, statues played a constant role in people's religious, political, economic, aesthetic, and mental lives. Evidence of many kinds demonstrates that ancient Greeks thought about--and interacted with--statues in ways very different from our own. This book recovers ancient thinking about statues by approaching them through contemporary literary sources. It not only shows that ancient viewers conceived of images as more operative than aesthetic, but additionally reveals how poets and philosophers found in sculpture a practice ''good to think with.'' Deborah Tarn Steiner considers how Greek authors used images to ponder the relation of a copy to an original and of external appearance to inner reality. For these writers, a sculpture could straddle life and death, encode desire, or occasion reflection on their own act of producing a text. Many of the same sources also reveal how thinking about statues was reflected in the objects' everyday treatment. Viewing representations of gods and heroes as vessels hosting a living force, worshippers ritually washed, clothed, and fed them in order to elicit the numinous presence within. By reading the plastic and verbal sources together, this book offers new insights into classical texts while illuminating the practices surrounding the design, manufacture, and deployment of ancient images. Its argument that images are properly objects of cultural and social--rather than purely aesthetic--study will attract art historians, cultural historians, and anthropologists, as well as classicists.
Download or read book Son of Murder Inc written by Frank Palescandolo and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2001-06-21 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Matthew, the orphaned son of a Murder, Inc. killer is a loose cannon in a notorious neighborhood. As an infant, he was entrusted by his father to the then prison chaplain, Francis Campion, who is now the rector of the Lake Shore Seminary, who was sworn not to reveal the identity of the father to his son, which he has honored. Matthew, at nineteen, is left a small inheritance by an unknown donor. Determined to learn his true identity, he bolts the seminary in a quest to discover the facts of his birth. The young seminarian discovers his father was executed as a gang member of the syndicate Murder, Inc. Was his father framed? Must he seek vindication or revenge? All is tested when Matthew is tried for the murder of Detective James Tierney, who testified against Matthew’s father as a wheelman for the mob. In his last confession, Matthew’s father said he was innocent and that his attorney was co-opted to convict him. Campion fears that the same might happen to Matthew. He decides to defend him. He is a lawyer in canon law. The court and the press are dismayed—did this hayseed priest imagine the practice of criminal law was a religious exercise?
Download or read book The Nose of San Januarius written by Frank Palescandolo and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2001-07-29 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Missing! A grave international crisis! The newly appointed ambassador to Italy, the Italian American Giuseppe DeSantis never debarked from the ocean liner at Naples. Helicopters from the Mediterranean fleet are searching adjacent waters. American intelligence is alerted, the CIA in full force in Italy, the bay of Naples is being dragged for a body that may have staggered overboard. Theories abound in the I1 Mattino: he is a captive of the Cammora, the Red Brigade is holding him for political ransom, he is a pawn between the two rival parties in Italy, etc. A special mass is being said by the Archbishop of Naples for the safety of the Ambassador and comfort of his family, now gathered in Naples. THE NOSE OF SAN JANUARIUS tells the story of an Italian immigrant who makes it big in America. He is a prominent builder (an Iacocca figure); deep in politics and charities, and married to a Wasp woman who bore him three children. During a crisis in his life, when he is an alcoholic and suicidal, he is offered the Ambassadorship to Italy, his homeland, that expelled an orphaned eight-year-old to labor for his bread in a friendless country. The once ragged eight year old immigrant from Southern Italy, millionaire road builder, would save Venice and its moldering Carrara only if allowed to sink Naples forever, that dark dispatcher of dreams. Confidentially, he is an alcoholic and suicidal unconsciously bowing to an urge to seek a healing of his split psyche in a motherland which divided him, or better to be found dead on his mother’s unmarked grave of red poppies. What follows in confessional and revelatory episodes induced by a Magus, monk Abbot Batorian to save his own soul, leads instead to a healing and gaining of insight for the Amassador Giuseppe DeSantis, that takes place in and about a monastery, and reconciliation with his wife and children—and himself. A wholeness of his psyche.
Download or read book Crossing into Manhood A Men s Studies Curriculum written by and published by Cambria Press. This book was released on with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe written by Patricia Simons and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-13 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A richly textured cultural history that investigates the characterization of the sex of adult male bodies before the Enlightenment.
