Life as we know if is over. The day of reckoning has arrived. In the heart of historic Bucks County the fate of the world rests in the hands of a shy, teenage boy. In the quaint borough of Newtown the dead have been whispering. Sixteen year old Kadin Godwin hears their voices and bears a terrible secret. Kadin knows of the dark places where the walls between our world and the world of nightmares are narrow. And now the narrows are growing thinner. Imagine a world where every fiction or nightmare was real Kadin has lived his entire life as an outcast, knowing and training for the terrifying future raging towards us when the gates to the other world are opened and our worst nightmares are unleashed. Signs are appearing. A dark alchemy has been released. Modern weapons are useless and transportation has been crippled. A defenseless world watches and waits. Creatures of myth and legend are being sighted. Murder rates and disappearances are soaring and the once peaceful Bucks County is paralyzed with fear. The day has arrived.
Today, popular imagination peoples the Middle Ages with damsels in distress and knights riding to their rescue. Of such knights, King Arthur and his companions are the most celebrated. It is certainly true that this is the time when the Arthurian story took shape and Arthurian literature flourished, and that most medieval historians included him in their histories of Britain, though some did so with a considerable degree of scepticism. But how widely was this literature known in its own day? How much credence did people generally place in this king who supposedly once ruled England? To answer these questions, Christopher Dean looks at medieval and Renaissance Arthurian literature in detail, and also examines contemporary chronicles and histories, chivalric theory and practice, popular myths and legends, folk-lore and place-names. The result is to show dramatically that Arthur was not at all as well known as popular belief today fancies. As a historical figure he was early discredited; had it not been for his artificial revival by the Tudor monarchy and the furor caused by the attack upon him by the 'foreigner' Polydore Vergil, which incensed many patriotic Englishmen, his credibility might have disappeared much sooner than it did. Except for Malory's work, medieval Arthurian literature, which often exists in no more than single manuscripts, did not have large audiences. And after 1500, only Edmund Spenser and Thomas Hughes attempted to write seriously on Arthurian themes. Among the ordinary citizens of England, Arthur was hardly known at all, any popular knowledge of him being almost entirely restricted to Wales, Devon, and Cornwall. Elsewhere in Britain the much more familiar figure was Robin Hood. For all the strength of the Arthurian legend as the ultimate medieval knight, he is essentially a modern hero.
In this widely anticipated book, two leading contemporary art historians present a stunning reconsideration of the problem of time in the Renaissance. With intellectual brilliance, Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood reexamine the meanings, uses, and effects of chronologies, models of temporality, and notions of originality and repetition in Renaissance images and artifacts. Anachronic Renaissance reveals a web of paths traveled by works and artists, a landscape obscured by art history’s disciplinary compulsion to anchor its data securely in time. The buildings, paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and medals addressed in this book were shaped by concerns about authenticity, about reference to prestigious origins and precedents, and about the implications of transposition from one medium to another. Byzantine icons taken to be early Christian antiquities, the acheiropoeton or image made without hands, the activities of spoliation and citation, differing approaches to art restoration, legends about movable buildings, and forgeries and pastiches: all of these emerge as basic conceptual structures of Renaissance art. The authors show how the complex and layered temporalities of images offered a counterpoint to the linear chronologies that increasingly structured commerce, politics, travel, and everyday life in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. While a work of art does bear witness to the moment of its fabrication, Nagel and Wood argue that it is equally important to understand its temporal instability: how it points away from that moment, backward to a remote ancestral origin, to a prior artifact or image, even to an origin outside of time, in divinity. The authors conclude with an analysis of Roman episodes and projects of the decades around 1500, culminating in Raphael’s Stanza della Segnatura. This book is not the story about the Renaissance, nor is it just a story. It imagines the infrastructure of many possible stories. Clearly, Anachronic Renaissance will be essential reading for historians of Western art and all those concerned with the historiography of material culture.
Playing the Martyr is a book about the interplay between theater and religion in early modern France. Challenging the standard narrative of modernity as a process of increased secularization Christopher Semk demonstrates the centrality of religious thought and practices to the development of neoclassical poetics. Engaging with a broad corpus of religious plays, poetic treatises, devotional literature, and contemporary theory, Semk shows that religion was a vital interlocutor in early modern discussions concerning the definition of verisimilitude, the nature and purpose of spectacle, the mechanics of acting, and the position of the spectator. Well researched and persuasively argued, Playing the Martyr makes the case for a more complicated approach to the relationship between religion and literature, namely, one that does not treat religion as a theme deployed within literary works, but as an active player in literary invention. Indeed, it makes the case for a serious reconsideration of the role that religion plays in the development of modern, secular literary forms.
Since his existence the human being has explored various ways in his quest for God. Part of this search is related to humanity's yearning for true harmony and joy in the world. Christian spirituality, as a unique spirituality one encounters today, imparts various ways one can respond to this longing. One of these ways is through allegorical narratives. Specifically, this study analyzes the spirituality of Hannah Hurnard (1905-1990) by intertextually perusing her most famous allegorical narrative "Hinds' Feet on High Places." A Journey to the High Places is divided into four chapters. In chapter 1 the allegorical narrative is subjectively considered in all its aspects and the central themes are expressed without any reference to other secondary connections. Chapter 2 analyzes the allegorical narrative by relating this narrative with other material that Hannah Hurnard published. These other narratives provide the tools which Hannah employed in the composition of this allegorical narrative. Thus, chapter 2 presents an intertexual analysis between her other publications and "Hinds' Feet on High Places." Likewise, chapter 3 presents another intertextual analysis between the many biblical abstracts and their relation to the narrative, in the hope of showing her biblical interpretations. Several spiritual themes that emerged from the preceding chapters are discussed in chapter 4, presenting a consistent spirituality. In presenting the themes one notes that the strong points and weaknesses of Hannah's spirituality are related to other Christian spiritual traditions. In order to conduct a comprehensive study the introductory section of this study deals with the significance of allegory and spirituality.
Integrating historical, biological, archaeological, and applied approaches with ethnographic data from around the world, Anthropology: A Global Perspective is founded on four essential themes: the diversity of human societies; the similarities that tie all humans together; the interconnections between the sciences and humanities; and a new theme addressing psychological essentialism.
Lord Acton (1834–1902) is often called a historian of liberty. A great historian and political thinker, he had a rare talent to reach beneath the surface and reveal the hidden springs that move the world. While endeavoring to understand the components of a truly free society, Acton attempted to see how the principles of self-determination and freedom worked in practice, from antiquity to his own time. But though he penned hundreds of papers, essays, reviews, letters and ephemera, the ultimate book of his findings and views on the history of liberty remained unwritten. Reading a book a day for years he still could not keep pace with the output of his time, and finally, dejected, he gave up. Today, Acton is mainly known for a single maxim, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In Power Tends to Corrupt, Christopher Lazarski presents the first in-depth consideration of Acton's thought in more than fifty years. Lazarski brings Acton's work to light in accessible language, with a focus on his understanding of liberty and its development in Western history. A work akin to Acton's overall account of the history of liberty, with a secondary look at his political theory, this book is an outstanding exegesis of the theories and findings of one of the nineteenth century's keenest minds.
In 1966, a project to create a national honour for Canadians was begun. The first recipients of the Order of Canada were announced a year later, and in the nearly forty years since, the Order has become a symbol familiar to, and respected by, people from across the country. The spirit that motivates the Order of Canada – celebration, inclusion, and democracy – was born of the memories of Canada's earlier experience with honours. From initial distrust and misunderstanding to the awakening of a national identity, the development of the Order reflects the relationship Canadians have with their country, their government, their culture, and their heroes. The Order itself is a product of national identity, politics, and history, reflected by the significance of its recipients' accomplishments. Indeed, the Order's history is as fascinating as the more than 4000 Canadians who have received it. This first book-length history of the Order of Canada – and first major work on Canadian honours – by Christopher McCreery is a celebration of the Order and a close examination of its unique design and various early incarnations. McCreery provides both a history of the Order's beginnings and a more general overview of trends in Canadian honours. Extensively illustrated with never-before-published photographs, The Order of Canada: Its Origins, History, and Developments pays tribute to the individuals who felt the need for a system of recognition for Canadians. Electronic Format Disclaimer: Images removed at the request of the rights holder.
The rise of black radicalism in the 1960s was a result of both the successes and the failures of the civil rights movement. The movement's victories were inspirational, but its failures to bring about structural political and economic change pushed many to look elsewhere for new strategies. During this era of intellectual ferment, the writers, editors, and activists behind the monthly magazine Liberator (1960–71) were essential contributors to the debate. In the first full-length history of the organization that produced the magazine, Christopher M. Tinson locates the Liberator as a touchstone of U.S.-based black radical thought and organizing in the 1960s. Combining radical journalism with on-the-ground activism, the magazine was dedicated to the dissemination of a range of cultural criticism aimed at spurring political activism, and became the publishing home to many notable radical intellectual-activists of the period, such as Larry Neal, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Harold Cruse, and Askia Toure. By mapping the history and intellectual trajectory of the Liberator and its thinkers, Tinson traces black intellectual history beyond black power and black nationalism into an internationalism that would shape radical thought for decades to come.
This text outlines Christopher Peterson's biopsychosocial approach to psychology, giving full coverage of evolutionary psychology. The emphasis of the book is on human diversity and applications of psychology. Features of this edition include Doing Research sections; chapter opening vignettes; stop and think questions; and a special chapter on industrial/organizational and applied psychology.
Isherwood’s lectures on writing and writers, now all available for the first time In the 1960s, Christopher Isherwood gave an unprecedented series of lectures at California universities about his life and work. During this time Isherwood, who would liberate the memoir and become the founding father of modern gay writing, spoke openly for the first time about his craft—on writing for film, theater, and novels—and spirituality. Isherwood on Writing brings these free-flowing, wide-ranging public addresses together to reveal a distinctly American Isherwood at the top of his form. This updated edition contains the long-lost conclusion to the second lecture, published here for the first time, including its discussion of A Single Man, his greatest novel, and A Meeting by the River, his final novel.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.