Download or read book Saint Hysteria written by Cristina Mazzoni and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saint Hysteria examines scientific, literary, and religious texts that share a fascination with the otherness of the female body, whether in ecstatic pleasure or in neurotic pain. Cristina Mazzoni focuses on material from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mainly in Italy and France. Her approach uses the methodologies of cultural studies and feminism but also benefits from the insights of psychoanalytic criticism. She asks how the identification of mysticism with hysteria became prevalent, and explores the continuing dialogue between a historicizing view of hysteria and a view of hysteria as repressed religious mysticism. According to Mazzoni, this dialogue is discernible at various levels and in a variety of discourses. The medical history of hysteria, she maintains, is often linked to the religious history of supernatural phenomena, and the medical discourse of positivism depends on the religious-feminine element that it attempts to repress. Similarly, she finds a continuity between the literature of naturalism and that of decadence in their representations of the interdependence of neurosis and religion. Finally, the religious writings of women mystics and the discourses they inspired reveal an unresolved tension between nature and supernature, body and soul (or psyche) which, Mazzoni suggests, mirrors and complicates the very issues raised by hysterical conversion. Among those whose views she considers are the writers Jules and Edmond de Goncourt, Gabriele d?Annunzio, and Antonio Fogazzaro, as well as Graham Greene and Simone Weil; the mystics Angela of Foligno, Gemma Galgani, and Teresa of Avila; and the theorists Jean-Martin Charcot, Cesare Lombroso, Jacques Lacan, Simone de Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray.
Download or read book Saints of Hysteria written by David Trinidad and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2007-03-06 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collaborative poetry — poems written by one or more people — grew out of word games played by French surrealists in the 1920s. It was taken up a decade later by Japan’s Vou Club and then by Charles Henri Ford, who created the chainpoem, composed by poets who mailed their lines all over the world. After WW II, the Beat writers’ collaborative experiments resulted in the famous Pull My Daisy. The concept was embraced in the 1970s by feminist poets as a way to find a collective female voice. Yet, for all its rich history, virtually no collections of collaborative poetry exist. This exhilarating anthology remedies the omission. Featured are poems by two, four, even as many as 18 people in a dizzying array of forms: villanelles to ghazals, sonnets to somonkas, pantoums to haiku, even quizzes, questionnaires, and other nonliterary forms. Collaborators’ notes accompany many of the poems, giving a fascinating glimpse into the creative process.
Download or read book The Lives of the Saints written by Sabine Baring-Gould and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Psychology of the Saints written by Henri Joly and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sacred Pain written by Ariel Glucklich and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-10-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why would anyone seek out the very experience the rest of us most wish to avoid? Why would religious worshipers flog or crucify themselves, sleep on spikes, hang suspended by their flesh, or walk for miles through scorching deserts with bare and bloodied feet? In this insightful new book, Ariel Glucklich argues that the experience of ritual pain, far from being a form of a madness or superstition, contains a hidden rationality and can bring about a profound transformation of the consciousness and identity of the spiritual seeker. Steering a course between purely cultural and purely biological explanations, Glucklich approaches sacred pain from the perspective of the practitioner to fully examine the psychological and spiritual effects of self-hurting. He discusses the scientific understanding of pain, drawing on research in fields such as neuropsychology and neurology. He also ranges over a broad spectrum of historical and cultural contexts, showing the many ways mystics, saints, pilgrims, mourners, shamans, Taoists, Muslims, Hindus, Native Americans, and indeed members of virtually every religion have used pain to achieve a greater identification with God. He examines how pain has served as a punishment for sin, a cure for disease, a weapon against the body and its desires, or a means by which the ego may be transcended and spiritual sickness healed. "When pain transgresses the limits," the Muslim mystic Mizra Asadullah Ghalib is quoted as saying, "it becomes medicine." Based on extensive research and written with both empathy and critical insight, Sacred Pain explores the uncharted inner terrain of self-hurting and reveals how meaningful suffering has been used to heal the human spirit.
Download or read book Celluloid Saints written by Theresa Sanders and published by Mercer University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The book is written with two goals in mind. The first is to give film viewers some background and context for evaluating what they see on screen, By and large. Hollywood is not conversant with theological issues; occasionally, movies reveal an appalling ignorance about religion. More often, however, the approach movies take is simply flat-footed and unsophisticated. Giving readers the tools they need to interpret and critique cinematic portrayals of sanctity is one goal of this book.".
Download or read book The Medieval Cult of Saint Dominic of Silos written by Anthony Lappin and published by MHRA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucas, the garrulous bishop of Tuy, included the thaumaturgy of Saint Dominic of Silos as one of the glories of Spain in his mid-thirteenth-century account of the Peninsula's history. This study examines the rise to prominence of one of the most important of saints' cults in Medieval Spain and its development throughout the Middle Ages. It interrogates neglected texts such as the late eleventh-century Vita Dominici Exiliensis and the late thirteenth-century Miraculos romancados (as well as artistic representations and works written outside Silos), and places the more widely known Vida de Santo Domingo by Gonzalo de Berceo (c. 1260) in a new light by firmly fixing its presentation of the saint within the development of the cult. Dominic's veneration became centred upon his role in freeing captives, and a study of this phenomenon provides a focus on the frontier and its settlers through their devotion to the saint, as well as illuminating their view of their Muslim adversaries. This is not the only centre of interest in the book, and a variety of approaches are employed to draw as round a picture as possible of the functioning of this saint's cult, from analysis of the manuscript traditions of the various works discussed to a consideration of the anthropology of Silos as a pilgrimage centre. All quotations are given in both Latin or Romance with an English translation.
Download or read book A History of Madness in Sixteenth Century Germany written by H. C. Erik Midelfort and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This magisterial work explores how Renaissance Germans understood and experienced madness. It focuses on the insanity of the world in general but also on specific disorders; examines the thinking on madness of theologians, jurists, and physicians; and analyzes the vernacular ideas that propelled sufferers to seek help in pilgrimage or newly founded hospitals for the helplessly disordered. In the process, the author uses the history of madness as a lens to illuminate the history of the Renaissance, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the history of poverty and social welfare, and the history of princely courts, state building, and the civilizing process. Rather than try to fit historical experience into modern psychiatric categories, this book reconstructs the images and metaphors through which Renaissance Germans themselves understood and experienced mental illness and deviance, ranging from such bizarre conditions as St. Vituss dance and demonic possession to such medical crises as melancholy and mania. By examining the records of shrines and hospitals, where the mad went for relief, we hear the voices of the mad themselves. For many religious Germans, sin was a form of madness and the sinful world was thoroughly insane. This book compares the thought of Martin Luther and the medical-religious reformer Paracelsus, who both believed that madness was a basic category of human experience. For them and others, the sixteenth century was an age of increasing demonic presence; the demon-possessed seemed to be everywhere. For Renaissance physicians, however, the problem was finding the correct ancient Greek concepts to describe mental illness. In medical terms, the late sixteenth century was the age of melancholy. For jurists, the customary insanity defense did not clarify whether melancholy persons were responsible for their actions, and they frequently solicited the advice of physicians. Sixteenth-century Germany was also an age of folly, with fools filling a major role in German art and literature and present at every prince and princelings court. The author analyzes what Renaissance Germans meant by folly and examines the lives and social contexts of several court fools.
Download or read book The Female Offender written by Cesare Lombroso and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends Critical studies written by Friedrich Freiherr von Hügel and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends written by Friedrich Freiherr von Hügel and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Superstitious Mind written by Judith Devlin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1987-01-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This intriguing book examines popular religion, traditional medicine, witchcraft, apparitions, demonology, and magic in nineteenth-century rural France. Devlin demonstrates that many of the impulses and mental processes now considered superstitious constituted a wholly reasonable response to the pressures of a harsh and impoverished life. Far from the product of a primitive mentality, many of these beliefs have survived in modern culture and can even illuminate the nature of modern mass politics.
Download or read book The Haunted Self written by David Lomas and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The question, 'Who am I?' resounded throughout the surrealist movement. The exploration of dreams and the unconscious prompted surrealists to reject the notion of a unified, indivisible self by revealing the subject to be haunted by otherness and instability. In this book David Lomas explores the surrealist concepts of the self and subjectivity from a psychoanalytic viewpoint. Employing a series of case studies devoted to individual artists, Lomas arrives at a radically new account of surrealist art and its cultural and intellectual roots." "Weaving together psychoanalytic and historical material, the author analyses works by Ernst, Dali, Masson, Miro and Picasso with regard to such themes as automatism, hysteria, the uncanny and the abject. Lomas focuses closely on individual artworks, examines the specific circumstances in which they were produced and offers new insights into the artists and their projects as well as the theories of Bataille, Breton and others. Lomas demonstrates the powerful connection between the history of psychoanalysis and the history of surrealism, and along the way shows the unique value of psychoanalytic theory as a tool for the art historian."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Medieval Saints in Late Nineteenth Century French Culture written by Elizabeth Emery and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legends, tales, and mysteries featuring saints captivated the French at the end of the nineteenth century. As Jean Lorrain pointed out in an 1891 article for the popular weekly Le Courrier Francais, the seemingly simple language of the saints' lives, their noble battles between good and evil and the atmosphere of religious mysticism appealed to many, especially those involved in the visual and performing arts. Ironically The Third Republic (1870-1940), a regime that claimed to reinforce and institute the secular ideas of the French Revolution, was witness to this great popular interest in the saints and religious imagery. The eight essays in this work explore the popularity of the saints from the 1850s to the 1920s. The essays evaluate the role they played in literature, art, music, science, history and politics, examine portrayals of the saints' lives in both low and high culture (from children's literature, shadow plays and the popular press to literature, opera and theological studies), and reveal the prevalence of the saints in fin-de-siecle France.
Download or read book The Month written by and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Medical Muses Hysteria in Nineteenth Century Paris written by Asti Hustvedt and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-05-23 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating study of three young female hysterics who shaped our early notions of psychology. Blanche, Augustine, and Genevieve found themselves in the hysteria ward of the Salpetriere Hospital in 1870s Paris, where their care was directed by the prominent neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. They became medical celebrities: every week, eager crowds arrived at the hospital to observe their symptoms; they were photographed, sculpted, painted, and transformed into characters in novels. The remarkable story of their lives as patients in the clinic is a strange amalgam of intimate details and public exposure, science and religion, medicine and the occult, hypnotism, love, and theater. But who were Blanche, Augustine, and Genevieve? What role did they play in their own peculiar form of stardom? And what exactly were they suffering from? Hysteria—with its dramatic seizures, hallucinations, and reenactments of past traumas—may be an illness of the past, but the notions of femininity that lie behind it offer insights into disorders of the present.
Download or read book Wounds of Love written by Frank Graziano and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Peruvian mystic St. Rose of Lima (Isabel Flores y Oliva, 1586-1617) was canonized in 1671 as the first saint of the New World and remains the object of widespread devotion today. In this engrossing new study, Frank Graziano uses the example of St. Rose to explore the meaning of female mysticism and the way in which saints are products of their cultures. Virginity, austerity, eucharistic devotion, incessant mortification, and mystical marriage to Christ characterized the devotional regimen that structured St. Rose's entire life. Many of her mystical practices echo the symptoms of such modern psychological disorders as masochism, depression, hysteria, and anorexia nervosa. Graziano offers a sophisticated argument not only for the origins and meaning of these behaviors in Rose's case, but also for the reason her culture venerated them as signs of sanctity. In the process he explores a wide range of themes, from the idea of suffering as an expression of love to the assimilation of childhood trauma through religious repetition. Graziano also offers a penetrating analysis of the politics of Rose's canonization. He finds that her mystical union with God--bypassing the institutional channels of sacrament and priestly mediation--was inherently subversive to the bureaucratized Church. Canonization was a cooptation by which Rose's competing claim to Christ was integrated into the Catholic canon. The book concludes with a fascinating exploration of mystical eroticism, with its intense experiences of vision and ecstasy. The eroticized suffering of many mystics is shown to be very human in origin: the mystic's wounded love is projected onto a God conceived to accommodate it. Wounds of Love is based on a decade of research in archives, rare books, and an extraordinary range of secondary sources. Introducing an innovative method that integrates history, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, and clinical psychology, this compelling work offers a bold new interpretation of female mysticism.
