Passion's Triumph over Reason

Passion's Triumph over Reason PDF Author: Christopher Tilmouth
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191615609
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Passion's Triumph over Reason presents a comprehensive survey of ideas of emotion, appetite, and self-control in English literature and moral thought of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In a narrative which draws on tragedy, epic poetry, and moral philosophy, Christopher Tilmouth explores how Renaissance writers transformed their understanding of the passions, re-evaluating emotion so as to make it an important constituent of ethical life rather than the enemy within which allegory had traditionally cast it as being. This interdisciplinary study departs from current emphases in intellectual history, arguing that literature should be explored alongside the moral rather than political thought of its time. The book also develops a new approach to understanding the relationship between literature and philosophy. Consciously or not, moral thinkers tend to ground their philosophising in certain images of human nature. Their work is premissed on imagined models of the mind and presumed estimates of man's moral potential. In other words, the thinking of philosophical authors (as much as that of literary ones) is shaped by the pre-rational assumptions of the 'moral imagination'. Because that is so, poets and dramatists in their turn, in speaking to this material, typically do more than just versify the abstract ideas of ethics. They reflect, directly and critically, upon those same core assumptions which are integral to the writings of their philosophical counterparts. Authors examined here include Aristotle, Augustine, Hobbes, and an array of lyric poets; but there are new readings, too, of The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost, Hamlet and Julius Caesar, Dryden's 'Lucretius', and Etherege's Man of Mode. Tilmouth's study concludes with a revisionist interpretation of the works of the Earl of Rochester, presenting this libertine poet as a challenging, intellectually serious figure. Written in a lucid, accessible style, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers.

Passion's Triumph over Reason

Passion's Triumph over Reason PDF Author: Christopher Tilmouth
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191615609
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book

Book Description
Passion's Triumph over Reason presents a comprehensive survey of ideas of emotion, appetite, and self-control in English literature and moral thought of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In a narrative which draws on tragedy, epic poetry, and moral philosophy, Christopher Tilmouth explores how Renaissance writers transformed their understanding of the passions, re-evaluating emotion so as to make it an important constituent of ethical life rather than the enemy within which allegory had traditionally cast it as being. This interdisciplinary study departs from current emphases in intellectual history, arguing that literature should be explored alongside the moral rather than political thought of its time. The book also develops a new approach to understanding the relationship between literature and philosophy. Consciously or not, moral thinkers tend to ground their philosophising in certain images of human nature. Their work is premissed on imagined models of the mind and presumed estimates of man's moral potential. In other words, the thinking of philosophical authors (as much as that of literary ones) is shaped by the pre-rational assumptions of the 'moral imagination'. Because that is so, poets and dramatists in their turn, in speaking to this material, typically do more than just versify the abstract ideas of ethics. They reflect, directly and critically, upon those same core assumptions which are integral to the writings of their philosophical counterparts. Authors examined here include Aristotle, Augustine, Hobbes, and an array of lyric poets; but there are new readings, too, of The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost, Hamlet and Julius Caesar, Dryden's 'Lucretius', and Etherege's Man of Mode. Tilmouth's study concludes with a revisionist interpretation of the works of the Earl of Rochester, presenting this libertine poet as a challenging, intellectually serious figure. Written in a lucid, accessible style, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers.

Passion's Triumph Over Reason

Passion's Triumph Over Reason PDF Author: Christopher Tilmouth
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199593043
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Christopher Tilmouth presents an accomplished study of Early Modern ideas of emotion, self-indulgence, and self-control in the literature and moral thought of the late 16th and 17th centuries (1580 to 1680).

Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture

Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture PDF Author: Freya Sierhuis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317083474
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Bringing together scholars from literature and the history of ideas, Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture explores new ways of negotiating the boundaries between cognitive and bodily models of emotion, and between different versions of the will as active or passive. In the process, it juxtaposes the historical formation of such ideas with contemporary philosophical debates. It frames a dialogue between rhetoric and medicine, politics and religion, in order to examine the relationship between mind and body and between experience and the senses. Some chapters discuss literature, in studies of Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton; other essays concentrate on philosophical arguments, both Aristotelian and Galenic models from antiquity, and new mechanistic formations in Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza. A powerful sense of paradox emerges in treatments of the passions in the early modern period, also reflected in new literary and philosophical forms in which inwardness was displayed, analysed and studied”the autobiography, the essay, the soliloquy”genres which rewrite the formation of subjectivity. At the same time, the frame of reference moves outwards, from the world of interior states to encounter the passions on a public stage, thus reconnecting literary study with the history of political thought. In between the abstract theory of political ideas and the inward selves of literary history, lies a field of intersections waiting to be explored. The passions, like human nature itself, are infinitely variable, and provoke both literary experimentation and philosophical imagination. Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture thus makes new connections between embodiment, selfhood and the emotions in order to suggest both new models of the self and new models for interdisciplinary history.

Civil Passions

Civil Passions PDF Author: Sharon R. Krause
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691162247
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
In this book Sharon Krause argues that moral and political deliberation must incorporate passions, even as she insists on the value of impartiality. Her work provides a systematic account of how passions can generate an impartial standpoint that yields binding and compelling conclusions in politics.

Passion, Prudence, and Virtue in Shakespearean Drama

Passion, Prudence, and Virtue in Shakespearean Drama PDF Author: Unhae Park Langis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441120246
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
An analysis of passion, prudence and virtue in Shakespearean drama from the perspective of ethical criticism.

The Fabulous Dark Cloister

The Fabulous Dark Cloister PDF Author: Tiffany J. Werth
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421403013
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Romances were among the most popular books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries among both Protestant and Catholic readers. Modeled after Catholic narratives, particularly the lives of saints, these works emphasized the supernatural and the marvelous, themes commonly associated with Catholicism. In this book, Tiffany Jo Werth investigates how post-Reformation English authors sought to discipline romance, appropriating its popularity while distilling its alleged Catholic taint. Charged with bewitching readers, especially women, into lust and heresy, romances sold briskly even as preachers and educators denounced them as papist. Protestant reformers, as part of their broader indictment of Catholicism, sought to redirect certain elements of the Christian tradition, including this notorious literary genre. Werth argues that through the writing and circulation of romances, Protestants repurposed their supernatural and otherworldly motifs in order to “fashion,” as Edmund Spenser wrote, godly "vertuous" readers. Through careful examinations of the period’s most renowned romances—Sir Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembrokes Arcadia, Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, William Shakespeare’s Pericles, and Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania—Werth illustrates how post-Reformation writers struggled to transform the literary genre. As a result, the romance, long regarded as an archetypal form closely allied with generalized Christian motifs, emerged as a central tenet of the religious controversies that divided Renaissance England.

Milton's Complex Words

Milton's Complex Words PDF Author: Paul Hammond
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198810113
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
Every major poet or philosopher develops their own distinctive semantic field around those terms which matter most to them, or which contribute most profoundly to the imagined world of a particular work. This book explores the specific meanings which Milton develops around key words in Paradise Lost. Some of these are theological or philosophical terms (e.g. 'evil', 'grace', 'reason'); others are words which shape the imagined world of the poem (e.g. 'dark', 'fall', 'within'); yet others are small words or even prefixes which subtly move the argument in new directions (e.g. 'if', 'not', 're-'). Milton seems to expect his readers to be alert to the special semantic field which he creates around such words, often by infusing them with biblical and literary connotations, and activating their etymological roots; alert also to the patterns created by the repetitions of such words, and particularly to their diverse use (and often their blatant misuse) by different characters. To understand the migrations and malleability of key words is part of the education of Milton's reader.

Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: A Lifelong Passion for Baseball

Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: A Lifelong Passion for Baseball PDF Author: Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393340899
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
"Scientific analysis intersects with flat-out fandom. [Gould] could write, he was funny, and he loved, loved baseball."—Booklist Science meets sport in this vibrant collection of baseball essays by the late evolutionary biologist.Among Stephen Jay Gould's many gifts was his ability to write eloquently about baseball, his great passion. Through the years, the renowned paleontologist published numerous essays on the sport; these have now been collected in a volume alive with the candor and insight that characterized all of Gould's writing. Here are his thoughts on the complexities of childhood streetball and the joys of opening day; tributes to Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, and lesser-knowns such as deaf-mute centerfielder "Dummy" Hoy; and a frank admission of the contradictions inherent in being a lifelong Yankees fan with Red Sox season tickets. Gould also deftly applies the tools of evolutionary theory to the demise of the .400 hitter, the Abner Doubleday creation myth, and the improbability of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. This book is a delight, an essential addition to Gould's remarkable legacy, and a fitting tribute to his love for the game.

Eighteenth-century Stoic Poetics

Eighteenth-century Stoic Poetics PDF Author: Alexandra Bacalu
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004517308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
A fresh perspective on the eighteenth-century poetics of Lord Shaftesbury and Mark Akenside, exploring the two authors' debt to Roman Stoic spiritual exercises, early modern conceptions of the care of the self, and ideas of imaginative enthusiasm and its poetic regulation.

Milton, Man and Thinker

Milton, Man and Thinker PDF Author: Denis Saurat
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description