Professor E H Gombrich's Books

Behind the Picture

Art and Evidence in the Italian Renaissance

By: British Academy Wolfson Research Professor Department of the History of Art Martin Kemp,Martin Kemp,Emeritus Professor of the History of Art Martin Kemp

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Behind the Picture

Art and Evidence in the Italian Renaissance

By: British Academy Wolfson Research Professor Department of the History of Art Martin Kemp,Martin Kemp,Emeritus Professor of the History of Art Martin Kemp

Considers the business of picture-making in the Renaissance. In particular, the text discusses the role of the artist and the functions of works of art in relation to their various kinds of audience.

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336

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300071957

ISBN 13

9780300071955

Reflections on Aesthetic Judgment and other Essays

By: Professor Benjamin Tilghman

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Reflections on Aesthetic Judgment and other Essays

By: Professor Benjamin Tilghman

Benjamin Tilghman has been a leading commentator on analytic philosophy for many years. This book brings together his most significant and influential work on aesthetics. Spanning a period of thirty years and covering topics in aesthetics from literature to painting, the collection traces the development of Tilghman's two principal themes; a rejection of philosophical theory as a way of resolving problems about our understanding and appreciation of art and the importance of the representation and presentation of the human and human concerns in art. Tilghman is profoundly influenced by the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and his work is informed throughout by his conception and practice of philosophy. Written with exceptional clarity and with many references to original work in both painting and literature, this collection will be an invaluable resource not only for professional philosophers but for those working in the arts generally, art historians, critics and literary theorists.

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Page Count

196

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409485110

ISBN 13

9781409485117

The Architect : Chapters in the History of the Profession

Chapters in the History of the Profession

By: Berkeley Spiro Kostof Professor of Architectural History University of California

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The Architect : Chapters in the History of the Profession

Chapters in the History of the Profession

By: Berkeley Spiro Kostof Professor of Architectural History University of California

How did architects get to be architects in any given period in history? How were they trained? How did they find their clients and communicate with them? What did society think of them?. Spiro Kostof's The Architect, a collection of essays by historians and architects, explores these and other intriguing questions about the profession of architecture. The first book in more than fifty years to survey the profession from its beginnings in ancient Egypt to the modern day, it is the most complete synthesis to date of our knowledge of how the architect's profession developed. Included are a major study of the Beaux-Arts, a vivid memoir by the distinguished architect Josephy Esherick, and an excellent chapter on women which demostrates how the ethic of professionalism has contributed to the exploitation of women in this as in many other professions. The Architect places the current dilemma about the architect's role in society in historical perspective and offers a good overview of the development of one of the world's oldest professions.

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386

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0198020198

ISBN 13

9780198020196

The Study

The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries

By: Andrew Hui,Associate Professor of Humanities (Literature) Andrew Hui

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The Study

The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries

By: Andrew Hui,Associate Professor of Humanities (Literature) Andrew Hui

With the advent of the printing press in Europe, the possibility of assembling a personal library became more and more attainable for the cultural elite. In this book, Andrew Hui traces the historical development of the Renaissance studiolo, a personal study and library, from Petrarch to Montaigne, considering literary representations of the studiolo in Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Marlowe as well as its presence in the visual arts. He explores the ways in which Renaissance writers and scholars engaged with these personal libraries, both real and imaginary, as places for research and refuge, and the impact of their legacy on writers of our own age, such as Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. Hui is interested in how these workspaces shaped the interior lives of their occupants, and how the bookish sanctuary they offered was cast as both a remedy and a poison for the soul. Painters of the period, for example, depicted such Biblical figures as the Virgin Mary and St. Jerome in studies surrounded by books, and some writers extolled the studiolo as a space for salutary self-reflection. But other writers suggested that too much time spent reading and amassing books could lead to bibliomania: it drove Don Quixote to madness, Faustus to perdition, Prospero to exile. Individual chapters focus on the invention of the studiolo as seen through Federico da Montefeltro's Gubbio Studiolo and Raphael's School of Athens; Rabelais's parodies of erudition and classification; the transformation of private study into self-conscious spectacle in The Tempest; and more. While primarily drawing on works from Renaissance Europe, the chapters range across time and geography, incorporating a more global and comparative approach by drawing on texts from the classical tradition of China. Throughout the book, Hui weaves in accounts of his own life with books and libraries, arguing that to study the history of reading, scholars must also become aware of their own history of readings"--

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Page Count

320

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691243328

ISBN 13

9780691243320

Chasing Reality

Strife Over Realism

By: Mario Bunge,Professor Mario Bunge

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Chasing Reality

Strife Over Realism

By: Mario Bunge,Professor Mario Bunge

Dealing with the controversies over the reality of the external world, this work offers a defense of realism, a critique of various forms of contemporary anti-realism, and a sketch of the author's version of realism, namely hylorealism. It examines the main varieties of antirealism and argues that all of these in fact hinder scientific research.

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361

Publisher

University of Toronto Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802090753

ISBN 13

9780802090751

The Nature of Fiction

By: Gregory Currie

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The Nature of Fiction

By: Gregory Currie

This important book provides a theory about the nature of fiction, and about the relation between the author, the reader and the fictional text. The approach is philosophical: that is to say, the author offers an account of key concepts such as fictional truth, fictional characters, and fiction itself. The book argues that the concept of fiction can be explained partly in terms of communicative intentions, partly in terms of a condition which excludes relations of counterfactual dependence between the world and the text. This communicative model is then applied to the following problems: how can something be 'true in the story' without being explicitly stated in the text? In what ways does interpreting a fictional story depend upon grasping its author's intentions? Is there always a unique best interpretation of a fictional text? What is the correct semantics for fictional names? What is the nature of our emotional response to a fictional work? In answering these questions the author explores the complex interaction between author, reader, and text. This interaction requires the reader to construct a 'fictional author' - a character in the story whose personality, beliefs and emotional states must be interpreted if the reader is to grasp the meaning of the work.

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Page Count

252

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0521381274

ISBN 13

9780521381277

Risk and Blame

Essays in Cultural Theory

By: Professor Mary Douglas

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Risk and Blame

Essays in Cultural Theory

By: Professor Mary Douglas

The idea of risk has recently risen to prominence in political debate and in matters of public policy. Cognitive psychology treats decision-making as a private personal act. But in real life dangers are presented in standardized forms which pre-code the individual's choices. This collection follows on from the programme for studying risk and blame that was implied in Purity and Danger and has been developed in subsequent publications. Its first six essays argue that any analysis of risk perception that ignores cultural and political bias is worthless. For the sake of a mistaken idea of objectivity, research on risk perception tries to avoid politics, but the idea of nature is inherently politicized. The study of risk needs a systematic framework of political and cultural comparison. The next five essays range over questions in cultural theory. A culture is viewed as a way of life which standardizes concepts and values. It is held steady by the institutions in which it is articulated. Questions of autonomy, credibility and gullibility, the social origins of wants, and the recognition of distinctive thought styles are at present only beginning to be treated systematically in a framework of cultural analysis. Now that risk is moving centre-stage as the dominant idiom of policy analysis, many other key topics, such as the notion of the self, will need to be radically revised. In Risk and Blame, Mary Douglas argues that the prominence of risk discourse will force upon the social sciences a programme of rethinking and consolidation which will include the anthropological approaches studied in these pages.

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336

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1134811209

ISBN 13

9781134811205

The Imperfect City: On Architectural Judgment

By: Professor Samir Younés

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The Imperfect City: On Architectural Judgment

By: Professor Samir Younés

If architectural judgment were a city, a city of ideas and forms, then it is a very imperfect city. When architects judge the success or failure of a building, the range of ways and criteria which can be used for this evaluation causes many contentious and discordant arguments. Proposing that the increase in number and intensity of such arguments threatens to destabilize the very grounds upon which judgment is supposed to rest, this book examines architectural judgment in its historical, cultural, political, and psychological dimensions and their convergence on that most expressive part of architecture, namely: architectural character. It stresses the value of reasoned judgment in justifying architectural form -a judgment based on three sets of criteria: those criteria that are external to architecture, those that are internal to architecture, and those that pertain to the psychology of the architect as image-maker. External criteria include, philosophies of history or theories of modernity; internal criteria include architectural character and architectural composition; while the psychological criteria pertain to 'mimetic rivalry', or rivaling desires for the same architectural forms. Yet, although architectural conflicts can adversely influence judgment, they can at the same time, contribute to the advancement of architectural culture.

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Page Count

477

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409461734

ISBN 13

9781409461739

Max Beerbohm

A Kind of a Life

By: N. John Hall,Distinguished Professor of English Bronx Community College and the Graduate School N John Hall

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Max Beerbohm

A Kind of a Life

By: N. John Hall,Distinguished Professor of English Bronx Community College and the Graduate School N John Hall

Om den engelske forfatter og tegner Max Beerbohm (1872-1956)

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332

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300097050

ISBN 13

9780300097054

The Flux of History and the Flux of Science

By: Joseph Margolis,Professor Joseph Margolis

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The Flux of History and the Flux of Science

By: Joseph Margolis,Professor Joseph Margolis

Does thinking have a history? If there are no necessarily changeless structures to be found in things and in our inquiry into them, then what knowledge of the world and ourselves is possible? In this boldly original and elegantly written study, Joseph Margolis argues for a radically historicized view of history that treats it as both a real process and a narrative account, each a product of continual change. Developing his argument through discussions of such influential philosophers of history and the natural sciences as Vico, Danto, Collingwood, Habermas, Hempel, Popper, Putnam, and Gadamer, he provides a coherent theory of flux and invariance that resolves several deep puzzles regarding human nature and understanding. While maintaining a thorough command of Anglo-American philosophy, Margolis challenges many of its most cherished assumptions and demonstrates the sense in which history and interpretation are one and the same. Exploring one of the master themes of this century, his book offers a novel theory of the human condition whose conclusions and concerns seem certain to inform philosophy in the next century as well. Does thinking have a history? If there are no necessarily changeless structures to be found in things and in our inquiry into them, then what knowledge of the world and ourselves is possible? In this boldly original and elegantly written study, Joseph Margolis argues for a radically historicized view of history that treats it as both a real process and a narrative account, each a product of continual change. Developing his argument through discussions of such influential philosophers of history and the natural sciences as Vico, Danto, Collingwood, Habermas, Hempel, Popper, Putnam, and Gadamer, he provides a coherent theory of flux and invariance that resolves several deep puzzles regarding human nature and understanding. While maintaining a thorough command of Anglo-American philosophy, Margolis challenges many of its most cherished assumptions and demonstrates the sense in which history and interpretation are one and the same. Exploring one of the master themes of this century, his book offers a novel theory of the human condition whose conclusions and concerns seem certain to inform philosophy in the next century as well.

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256

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520083199

ISBN 13

9780520083196

Grounding Security

Family, Insurance and the State

By: Professor Carol Weisbrod

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Grounding Security

Family, Insurance and the State

By: Professor Carol Weisbrod

This book examines some of the mechanisms which are currently conceived as affording individual security. The idea of security includes emotional and financial components. These interconnect so that such common concepts as 'trust' in someone and 'care taking' include both ideas of emotional and financial support. State policies on security rest on perceptions of two other institutions, the family and insurance, both of which are subject to change. At one time the extended family was seen as a major security-providing institution, but the contemporary nuclear family is more fragile. The concept of insurance originally entailed ideas of community and mutual aid; however, the institution has developed, in its modern private form, as a profit-driven entity. This book addresses various uses of state power in providing security for individuals, and outlines different ways in which this can be done.

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172

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409493237

ISBN 13

9781409493235

Classical Art and the Cultures of Greece and Rome

By: John Onians,Professor of Visual Arts School of World Art Studies and Museology John Onians

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Classical Art and the Cultures of Greece and Rome

By: John Onians,Professor of Visual Arts School of World Art Studies and Museology John Onians

An inquiry into the foundations of European culture. The account ranges from the Greek Dark Ages to the Christianisation of Rome, revealing how the experience of a constantly changing physical environment influenced the inhabitants of Ancient Greece and Rome.

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Page Count

328

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300075332

ISBN 13

9780300075335

Paradoxy of Modernism

By: Robert Scholes,Research Professor of Modern Culture and Media Professor Emeritus of English Comparative Literature and Modern Culture and Media and Andrew W Mellon Professor of Humanities Emeritus Robert Scholes

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Paradoxy of Modernism

Robert Scholes intervenes in ongoing discussions about modernism in the arts during the crucial half-century from 1895 to 1945 he contends that the binary oppositions which defined modernism are misleading. He argues that such oppositions are instances of 'paradoxy', an apparent clarity that covers real confusion.

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332

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Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300108206

ISBN 13

9780300108200

Shakespeare's Marlowe

The Influence of Christopher Marlowe on Shakespeare's Artistry

By: Professor Robert A Logan

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Shakespeare's Marlowe

The Influence of Christopher Marlowe on Shakespeare's Artistry

By: Professor Robert A Logan

Moving beyond traditional studies of sources and influence, Shakespeare's Marlowe analyzes the uncommonly powerful aesthetic bond between Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Not only does this study take into account recent ideas about intertextuality, but it also shows how the process of tracking Marlowe's influence itself prompts questions and reflections that illuminate the dramatists' connections. Further, after questioning the commonly held view of Marlowe and Shakespeare as rivals, the individual chapters suggest new possible interrelationships in the formation of Shakespeare's works. Such examination of Shakespeare's Marlovian inheritance enhances our understanding of the dramaturgical strategies of each writer and illuminates the importance of such strategies as shaping forces on their works. Robert Logan here makes plain how Shakespeare incorporated into his own work the dramaturgical and literary devices that resulted in Marlowe's artistic and commercial success. Logan shows how Shakespeare's examination of the mechanics of his fellow dramatist's artistry led him to absorb and develop three especially powerful influences: Marlowe's remarkable verbal dexterity, his imaginative flexibility in reconfiguring standard notions of dramatic genres, and his astute use of ambivalence and ambiguity. This study therefore argues that Marlowe and Shakespeare regarded one another not chiefly as writers with great themes, but as practicing dramatists and poets-which is where, Logan contends, the influence begins and ends.

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276

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Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409489744

ISBN 13

9781409489740

Precious Nonsense

The Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson's Epitaphs on His Children, and Twelfth Night

By: Stephen Booth,Professor Stephen Booth

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Precious Nonsense

The Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson's Epitaphs on His Children, and Twelfth Night

By: Stephen Booth,Professor Stephen Booth

Why do we value literature so? Many would say for the experience it brings us. But what is it about that experience that makes us treasure certain writings above others? Stephen Booth suggests that the greatest appeal of our most valued works may be that they are, in one way or another, nonsensical. He uses three disparate texts--the Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson's epitaphs on his children, and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night--to demonstrate how poetics triumphs over logic in the invigorating mental activity that enriches our experience of reading. Booth presents his case in a book that is crisply playful while at the same time thoroughly analytical. He demonstrates the lapses in logic and the irrational connections in examples of very different types of literature, showing how they come close to incoherence yet maintain for the reader a reliable order and purpose. Ultimately, Booth argues, literature gives us the capacity to cope effortlessly with, and even to transcend, the complicated and demanding mental experiences it generates for us. This book is in part a witty critique of the trends--old and new--of literary criticism, written by an accomplished and gifted scholar. But it is also a testimony to the power of the process of reading itself. Precious Nonsense is certain to bring pleasure to anyone interested in language and its beguiling possibilities. Why do we value literature so? Many would say for the experience it brings us. But what is it about that experience that makes us treasure certain writings above others? Stephen Booth suggests that the greatest appeal of our most valued works may be that they are, in one way or another, nonsensical. He uses three disparate texts--the Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson's epitaphs on his children, and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night--to demonstrate how poetics triumphs over logic in the invigorating mental activity that enriches our experience of reading. Booth presents his case in a book that is crisply playful while at the same time thoroughly analytical. He demonstrates the lapses in logic and the irrational connections in examples of very different types of literature, showing how they come close to incoherence yet maintain for the reader a reliable order and purpose. Ultimately, Booth argues, literature gives us the capacity to cope effortlessly with, and even to transcend, the complicated and demanding mental experiences it generates for us. This book is in part a witty critique of the trends--old and new--of literary criticism, written by an accomplished and gifted scholar. But it is also a testimony to the power of the process of reading itself. Precious Nonsense is certain to bring pleasure to anyone interested in language and its beguiling possibilities.

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248

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520212886

ISBN 13

9780520212886

Selected Studies in Romantic and American Literature, History, and Culture

Inventions and Interventions

By: Professor Charles J Rzepka

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Selected Studies in Romantic and American Literature, History, and Culture

Inventions and Interventions

By: Professor Charles J Rzepka

Gathered together for the first time, the essays in this volume were selected to give scholars ready access to important late-twentieth and early twenty-first-century contributions to scholarship on the Romantic period and twentieth-century literature and culture. Included are Charles J. Rzepka's award-winning essays on Keats's 'Chapman's Homer' sonnet and Wordsworth's 'Michael' and his critical intervention into anachronistic new historicist readings of the circumstances surrounding the composition of "Tintern Abbey." Other Romantic period essays provide innovative interpretations of De Quincey's relation to theatre and the anti-slavery movement. Genre is highlighted in Rzepka's exploration of race and region in Charlie Chan, while his interdisciplinary essay on The Wizard of Oz and the New Woman takes the reader on a journey that encompasses the Oz of L. Frank Baum and Victor Fleming as well as the professional lives of Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli. Taken together, the essays provide not only a career retrospective of an influential scholar and teacher but also a map of the innovations and controversies that have influenced literary studies from the early 1980s to the present. As Peter Manning observes in his foreword, "this collection shows that even in diverse essays the force of a curious and disciplined mind makes itself felt.

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Page Count

308

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

140947609X

ISBN 13

9781409476092

Reading American Art

By: Professor and Department Head of Art & Art History Elizabeth Milroy

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Reading American Art

By: Professor and Department Head of Art & Art History Elizabeth Milroy

This anthology brings together twenty outstanding works of recent scholarship on the history of the visual arts in the United States from the colonial period to 1945. The selected essays--all written within the past two decades--reflect the interdisciplinary character of current art historiography in America and the variety of approaches that contribute to the dynamism in the field. The authors take up diverse subjects--from colonial portraits to nineteenth-century sculptures of women to photographic images of New York--and invite those with a general knowledge of the history of American art to think more deeply about art and culture. Employing many interpretive methodologies, including iconology, social history, structuralism, psychobiography, and feminist theory, the contributors to this volume combine close analysis of specific art objects or groups of objects with discussion of how these works of art operated within their cultural contexts. The authors consider the works of such artists as John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock as they assess how paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, and photographs have carried meaning within American society. And they investigate how the conceptualization, production, and presentation of works of art both inform and are informed by prevailing attitudes toward the role of the arts and the artist in American culture.

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Page Count

492

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300069987

ISBN 13

9780300069983

Leadership for a New World

A Selection of Thoughts for Perplexed Leaders

By: Professor Pierre Casse

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Leadership for a New World

A Selection of Thoughts for Perplexed Leaders

By: Professor Pierre Casse

Leadership for a New World, compiled by Professor Pierre Casse is a compendium of different perspectives by a group of nine renowned thought leaders. The aim of the book is to provide readers with the opportunity to reflect on the current evolution of leadership as we rise to meet the challenges, we face in our world today. The world in which we find ourselves in the second decade of the new millennium appears beset by a widening range of intractable challenges which the authors explore, drawing on their research and first-hand experiences of leadership-in-action in an extraordinarily complex world. The intention is to encourage readers to reflect on what leadership is becoming as we continue to face such enormous existential challenges which, by their very nature, necessitate a continual questioning of established assumptions and understanding of what leadership is in an ever-changing global environment. Through a series of thought-provoking chapters and related self-assessment exercises, the reader is encouraged to challenge their own experiences and frames of reference and in so doing, clarify the kind of leadership that is essential for our continued survival for a new world in the making.

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Page Count

216

Publisher

Xlibris Corporation

Published Date

ISBN 10

1664117245

ISBN 13

9781664117242

Papal Patronage and the Music of St. Peter's, 1380-1513

By: Christopher A. Reynolds,Professor of Music Christopher Alan Reynolds

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Papal Patronage and the Music of St. Peter's, 1380-1513

By: Christopher A. Reynolds,Professor of Music Christopher Alan Reynolds

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470

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520082125

ISBN 13

9780520082120

Talk Is Cheap : Sarcasm, Alienation, and the Evolution of Language

Sarcasm, Alienation, and the Evolution of Language

By: Minnesota John Haiman Professor of Linguistics Macalester College

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Talk Is Cheap : Sarcasm, Alienation, and the Evolution of Language

Sarcasm, Alienation, and the Evolution of Language

By: Minnesota John Haiman Professor of Linguistics Macalester College

Putting aside questions of truth and falsehood, the old "talk is cheap" maxim carries as much weight as ever. Indeed, perhaps more. For one need not be an expert in irony or sarcasm to realize that people don't necessarily mean what they say. Phrases such as "Yeah, right" and "I couldn't care less" are so much a part of the way we speak--and the way we live--that we are more likely to notice when they are absent (for example, Forrest Gump). From our everyday dialogues and conversations ("Thanks a lot!") to the screenplays of our popular films (Pulp Fiction and Fargo), what is said is frequently very different from what is meant. Talk is Cheap begins with this telling observation and proceeds to argue that such "unplain speaking" is fundamentally embedded in the way we now talk. Author John Haiman traces this sea-change in our use of language to the emergence of a postmodern "divided self" who is hyper-conscious that what he or she is saying has been said before; "cheap talk" thus allows us to distance ourselves from a social role with which we are uncomfortable. Haiman goes on to examine the full range of these pervasive distancing mechanisms, from cliches and quotation marks to camp and parody. Also, and importantly, this text highlights several new ways in which the English language is evolving (and has evolved) in response to our postmodern world view. In other words, this study shows us how what we are saying is gradually separating itself from how we say it. As provocative as it is timely, the book will be fascinating reading for students of linguistics, literature, communication, anthropology, philosophy, and popular culture.

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234

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0195354060

ISBN 13

9780195354065

1910

The Emancipation of Dissonance

By: Thomas Harrison,Professor of Ancient History Thomas Harrison

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1910

The Emancipation of Dissonance

By: Thomas Harrison,Professor of Ancient History Thomas Harrison

1910 stands out as a model of interdisciplinary and comparative study. . . . It brilliantly illustrates the complexity of a crucial period in European culture . . . focusing in particular on the intellectual intricacies of Mitteleuropa on the eve of World War I and of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire."—Lucia Re "Compellingly original. . . . In Harrison's work, Michelstaedter and his confreres (Campana, Slataper, Kokoschke, Rilke, Kandinsky, Lukàcs, Trakl, et al.) turn out to be considerably more fascinating and more emblematic of their time than anyone has been able to perceive before."—Gregory Lucente, University of Michigan

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280

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520200438

ISBN 13

9780520200432

Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy

From Sprezzatura to Satire

By: Professor Eugenia Paulicelli

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Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy

From Sprezzatura to Satire

By: Professor Eugenia Paulicelli

The first comprehensive study on the role of Italian fashion and Italian literature, this book analyzes clothing and fashion as described and represented in literary texts and costume books in the Italy of the 16th and 17th centuries. Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy emphasizes the centrality of Italian literature and culture for understanding modern theories of fashion and gauging its impact in the shaping of codes of civility and taste in Europe and the West. Using literature to uncover what has been called the ‘animatedness of clothing,’ author Eugenia Paulicelli explores the political meanings that clothing produces in public space. At the core of the book is the idea that the texts examined here act as maps that, first, pinpoint the establishment of fashion as a social institution of modernity; and, second, gauge the meaning of clothing at a personal and a political level. As well as Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier and Cesare Vecellio’s The Clothing of the Renaissance World, the author looks at works by Italian writers whose books are not yet available in English translation, such as those by Giacomo Franco, Arcangela Tarabotti, and Agostino Lampugnani. Paying particular attention to literature and the relevance of clothing in the shaping of codes of civility and style, this volume complements the existing and important works on Italian fashion and material culture in the Renaissance. It makes the case for the centrality of Italian literature and the interconnectedness of texts from a variety of genres for an understanding of the history of Italian style, and serves to contextualize the debate on dress in other European literatures.

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Page Count

281

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1472436040

ISBN 13

9781472436047

Writing about the World

By: Emeritus Professor McLeod

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Writing about the World

By: Emeritus Professor McLeod

With its focus on the social sciences, sciences, and the humanities, this thematically-arranged reader is suitable for any writing-across-the-curriculum approach to freshman composition, interdisciplinary core course, or freshman seminar.

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Page Count

148

Publisher

Harcourt Brace College Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

0155977555

ISBN 13

9780155977556

Max Beerbohm Caricatures

By: N. John Hall,Distinguished Professor of English Bronx Community College and the Graduate School N John Hall,Max Beerbohm

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Max Beerbohm Caricatures

By: N. John Hall,Distinguished Professor of English Bronx Community College and the Graduate School N John Hall,Max Beerbohm

Max Beerbohm, the foremost caricaturist of his day, was hailed by The Times in 1913 as the greatest of English comic artists, by Bernard Berenson as the English Goya, and by Edmund Wilson as the greatest...portrayer of personalities - in the history of art.

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256

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300072171

ISBN 13

9780300072174

Re-Forming the Body

Religion, Community and Modernity

By: MR Philip A Mellor,Philip A. Mellor Chris Shilling,Professor Chris Shilling

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Re-Forming the Body

Religion, Community and Modernity

By: MR Philip A Mellor,Philip A. Mellor Chris Shilling,Professor Chris Shilling

Enriches the concpetual arsenal for interdisciplinary analysis of political, social and cultural change... stimulates more nuanced thinking about the cultural and political legacy of the Reformation era... manages both to clarify tensions surrounding cultural and social integration in the late 20th century while underscoring the real historical complexity of modern bodies' - "American Journal of Sociology " Through an analysis of successive re-formations of the body, this innovative and penetrating book constructs a fascinating and wide-ranging account of how the creation and evolution of different patterns of human community are intimately related to the somatic experience of the sacred. The book places the relationship between the embodiment and the sacred at the crux of social theory, and casts a fresh light on the emergence and transformation of modernity. It critically examines the thesis that the rational projects of modern embodiment have 'died and gone to cyberspace', and suggests that we are witnessing the rise of a virulent, effervescent form of the sacred which is changing how people 'see' and 'keep in touch' with the world around them.

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250

Publisher

SAGE

Published Date

ISBN 10

1446235297

ISBN 13

9781446235294

Henry James, Impressionism, and the Public

By: Professor Daniel Hannah

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Henry James, Impressionism, and the Public

By: Professor Daniel Hannah

Proposing a new approach to Jamesian aesthetics, Daniel Hannah examines the complicated relationship between Henry James's impressionism and his handling of 'the public.' Hannah challenges solely phenomenological or pictorial accounts of literary impressionism, instead foregrounding James's treatment of the word 'impression' as a mediatory unit that both resists and accommodates invasive publicity. Thus even as he envisages a breakdown between public and private at the end of the nineteenth century, James registers that breakdown not only as a threat but also as an opportunity for aesthetic gain. Beginning with a reading of 'The Art of Fiction' as both a public-forming essay and an aesthetic manifesto, Hannah's study examines James's responses to painterly impressionism and to aestheticism, and offers original readings of What Maisie Knew, The Wings of the Dove, and The American Scene that treat James's articulation of impressionism in relation to the child, the future of the novel, and shifts in the American national imaginary. Hannah's study persuasively argues that throughout his career James returns to impressionability not only as a site of immense vulnerability in an age of rapid change but also as a crucible for reshaping, challenging, and adapting to the public sphere’s shifting forms.

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398

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Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1472401336

ISBN 13

9781472401335

Nature and Culture : American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875, With a New Preface

American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875, With a New Preface

By: Barbara Novak Altschul Professor of Art History Barnard College and Columbia University (Emerita)

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Nature and Culture : American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875, With a New Preface

American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875, With a New Preface

By: Barbara Novak Altschul Professor of Art History Barnard College and Columbia University (Emerita)

In this richly illustrated volume, featuring more than fifty black-and-white illustrations and a beautiful eight-page color insert, Barbara Novak describes how for fifty extraordinary years, American society drew from the idea of Nature its most cherished ideals. Between 1825 and 1875, all kinds of Americans--artists, writers, scientists, as well as everyday citizens--believed that God in Nature could resolve human contradictions, and that nature itself confirmed the American destiny. Using diaries and letters of the artists as well as quotes from literary texts, journals, and periodicals, Novak illuminates the range of ideas projected onto the American landscape by painters such as Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Asher B. Durand, Fitz H. Lane, and Martin J. Heade, and writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Frederich Wilhelm von Schelling. Now with a new preface, this spectacular volume captures a vast cultural panorama. It beautifully demonstrates how the idea of nature served, not only as a vehicle for artistic creation, but as its ideal form. "An impressive achievement." --Barbara Rose, The New York Times Book Review "An admirable blend of ambition, elan, and hard research. Not just an art book, it bears on some of the deepest fantasies of American culture as a whole." --Robert Hughes, Time Magazine

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328

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0195345665

ISBN 13

9780195345667

Architecture and the Historical Imagination

Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, 1814–1879

By: Professor Martin Bressani

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Architecture and the Historical Imagination

Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, 1814–1879

By: Professor Martin Bressani

Hailed as one of the key theoreticians of modernism, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc was also the most renowned restoration architect of his age, a celebrated medieval archaeologist and a fervent champion of Gothic revivalism. He published some of the most influential texts in the history of modern architecture such as the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle and Entretiens sur l’architecture, but also studies on warfare, geology and racial history. Martin Bressani expertly traces Viollet-le-Duc’s complex intellectual development, mapping the attitudes he adopted toward the past, showing how restoration, in all its layered meaning, shaped his outlook. Through his life journey, we follow the route by which the technological subject was born out of nineteenth-century historicism.

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625

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1472440897

ISBN 13

9781472440891

The Machiavellian Cosmos

By: Anthony Parel,Emeritus Professor of Political Science Anthony J Parel

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The Machiavellian Cosmos

By: Anthony Parel,Emeritus Professor of Political Science Anthony J Parel

In this highly original interpretation of Machiavelli's thought, Anthony J. Parel identifies a theme generally neglected in the scholarship of this sixteenth-century political thinker: Machiavelli's belief in the occult forces of heaven and humors. Challenging the current tendency to view Machiavelli as a pioneer of modern political science, Parel argues instead that a premodern cosmology and anthropology underlie Machiavelli's political works. Parel shows that Machiavelli's world picture owes more to the astrological cosmology prevalent in the Renaissance than to the Aristotelian or Platonic or Christian world picture. This astrological determination significantly affects Machiavelli's conceptions of history, politics, and religion and shapes his notions of virtu and fortuna. It also has considerable impact on his ethical ideas: the Machiavellian cosmos has no room for a Ruling Mind or for the Sovereignty of the Good, and humans are left to pursue their appetites for riches and glory as best they can. In a similar fashion, says Parel Machiavelli's political anthropology is influenced by the ancient idea that body humors determine a person's temperament and behavior, for he believes that humors compromise human autonomy and rationality. According to Parel, the theory of humors also affects Machiavelli's view of the body politic and his characterization of republics, princedoms, and licenzia, and Parel explicates this in new readings of The Prince, the Discourses, and the Florentine Histories.

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228

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300051697

ISBN 13

9780300051698

Art & Accounting

By: Basil S. Yamey,Professor Basil Yamey

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Art & Accounting

By: Basil S. Yamey,Professor Basil Yamey

This unusual and abundantly illustrated book discusses a wide collection of paintings and other arts, from 1400 to 1900, that include the image of an account book. Throughout, and particularly in the concluding chapter, the author considers other connections between accounting, art, and history: the

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184

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300042272

ISBN 13

9780300042276

Staging Spectatorship in the Plays of Philip Massinger

By: Professor Joanne Rochester

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Staging Spectatorship in the Plays of Philip Massinger

By: Professor Joanne Rochester

The playwrights composing for the London stage between 1580 and 1642 repeatedly staged plays-within and other metatheatrical inserts. Such works present fictionalized spectators as well as performers, providing images of the audience-stage interaction within the theatre. They are as much enactments of the interpretive work of a spectator as of acting, and as such they are a potential source of information about early modern conceptions of audiences, spectatorship and perception. This study examines on-stage spectatorship in three plays by Philip Massinger, head playwright for the King's Men from 1625 to 1640. Each play presents a different form of metatheatrical inset, from the plays-within of The Roman Actor (1626), to the masques-within of The City Madam (1632) to the titular miniature portrait of The Picture (1629), moving thematically from spectator interpretations of dramatic performance, the visual spectacle of the masque to staged 'readings' of static visual art. All three forms present a dramatization of the process of examination, and allow an analysis of Massinger's assumptions about interpretation, perception and spectator response.

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186

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409475824

ISBN 13

9781409475828

Atmospheres: Aesthetics of Emotional Spaces

By: Professor Tonino Griffero

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Atmospheres: Aesthetics of Emotional Spaces

By: Professor Tonino Griffero

Originally published in Italian in 2010, this book is the first to address the theory of atmospheres in a thorough and systematic way. It examines the role of atmospheres in daily life, and defines their main characteristics. Outlining the typical phenomenological situations in which we experience atmospheres, it assesses their impact on contemporary aesthetics. It puts forward a philosophical approach which systematises a constellation of affects and climates, finds patterns in the emotional tones of different spaces (affordances) and assesses their impact on the felt body. It also critically discusses the spatial turn invoked by several of the social sciences, and argues that there is a need for a non-psychologistic rethinking of the philosophy of emotions. It provides a history of the term 'atmosphere' and of the concepts anticipating its meaning (genius loci, aura, Stimmung, numinous, emotional design and ambiance), and examines the main ontological characteristics of atmospheres and their principal phenomenological characteristics. It concludes by showing how atmospheres affect our emotions, our bodies' reactions, our state of mind and, as a result, our behaviour and judgments. Griffero assesses how atmospheres are more effective than we have been rationally willing to admit, and to what extent traditional aesthetics, unilaterally oriented towards art, has underestimated this truth.

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181

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1472421744

ISBN 13

9781472421746

Absorption and Theatricality

Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot

By: Michael Fried,Professor Michael Fried

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Absorption and Theatricality

Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot

By: Michael Fried,Professor Michael Fried

With this widely acclaimed work, Fried revised the way in which eighteenth-century French painting and criticism were viewed and understood. "A reinterpretation supported by immense learning and by a series of brilliantly perceptive readings of paintings and criticism alike. . . . An exhilarating book." John Barrell, "London Review of Books

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276

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520037588

ISBN 13

9780520037588

Of Ancestors and Ghosts

How Preta Narratives Constructed Buddhist Cosmology and Shaped Buddhist Ethics

By: Adeana McNicholl,Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Adeana McNicholl

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Of Ancestors and Ghosts

How Preta Narratives Constructed Buddhist Cosmology and Shaped Buddhist Ethics

By: Adeana McNicholl,Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Adeana McNicholl

In Part I of this book, I argued that preta narratives participated in a larger world-building process that negotiated the contours of the Buddhist cosmos and, with it, the place of the departed. Through stories about encounters between humans and pretas, Buddhist authors explored the place of the departed in a karmic cosmological system, worked out how to best assist them, and advocated for the importance of the sangha in facilitating these offerings. These tales do not merely reflect the process through which the preta as a specific entity and rebirth category became distinguished from the ancestral departed, but also participated in this process. This illustrates the importance of viewing narratives, in Rob Campany's terms, as argumentative. Stories are not merely the distillation of more abstract doctrine but are sites for the construction of religious worldviews. This illustrates that religious cosmologies are not laid down fully formed in doctrinal treatises. They are cumulatively built over time, and "popular culture" can do important work in the aggregative construction of cosmologies"--

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Page Count

297

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0197748902

ISBN 13

9780197748909

Book's by Professor E H Gombrich

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