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An icon (from the Greek word "eikon," "image") is a wooden panel painting of a holy person or scene from Orthodox Christianity, the religion of the Byzantine Empire that is practiced today mainly in Greece and Russia. It was believed that these works acted as intermediaries between worshipers and the holy personages they depicted. Their pictorial language is stylized and primarily symbolic, rather than literal and narrative. Indeed, every attitude, pose, and color depicted in an icon has a precise meaning, and their painters--usually monks--followed prescribed models from iconographic manuals. The goal of this book is to catalogue the vast heritage of images according to iconographic type and subject, from the most ancient at the Monastery of Saint Catherine in the Sinai to those from Greece, Constantinople, and Russia. Chapters focus on the role of icons in the Orthodox liturgy and on common iconic subjects, including the fathers and saints of the Eastern Church and the life of Jesus and his followers. As with other volumes in the Guide to Imagery series, this book includes a wealth of color illustrations in which details are called out for discussion.
A legendary work of religious scholarship and art history--now available in its first English translation. This volume introduces American readers to a compendium of animal symbolism that ranks with the greatest of the classical and medieval bestiaries. 400 woodcuts.
Shelley said, in his Defence of Poetry, that poetry should be both centre and circumference of knowledge. In his new book, Spender takes Shelley's claim and relates it to modern literature. He points out that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, writers have been conscious of there being a problem of creating literature in the industrial era. All the discussions of tradition, symbolism, myth and the rest are part of a conscious strategy of writers to come to terms with a modern world which they feel presents quite special problems for them. Spender shows how Matthew Arnold's idea that criticism might be more important than poetry in our time, was taken over by poets who wrote criticism, an...
Covering nearly 4,000 years, this fascinating, copiously illustrated book traces the history of Jewish art from its origins -- the Temple in Jerusalem, c. 2000 B.C. -- up through the work of 20th-century artist Marc Chagall. The first truly comprehensive treatment of the subject, Jewish Art surveys the art produced within and inspired by, Jewish civilization on five continents.The monumental volume covers not only religious painting, sculpture, and architecture but also mosaics, frescoes illuminated manuscripts, silver, textiles, and other decorative objects. It also reports on recent archaeological discoveries on the site of the Jerusalem temple, in Galilee, and in Dora Europos, the synagogue on the banks of the Euphrates the contains the first known Biblical images.Many of the works featured here are published for the first time; among them are synagogues in eastern and central Europe that were preserved in the former Soviet bloc.
Johannine Christology provides a snapshot of the foremost investigations of this important topic by a selection of scholars representing a range of expertise in this field. The volume is organized into four major parts, which are concerned with the formation of Johannine Christology, Johannine Christology in Hellenistic and Jewish contexts, Christology and the literary character of the Johannine writings, and the application of Christology for the Johannine audience and beyond. The fifteen contributors to this volume comprise an international set of Johannine scholars who explore various ways of both describing and then pursuing the implications of Johannine Christology. Their contributions focus primarily upon the Gospel, but involve other key texts as well.
'Cartarescu is one of the great literary voices of Central Europe' Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Prize winner and author of Flights 'A Danubian Narnia. . . his writing delivers a rainbow-hued riot of fantasy, imagination and invention' Boyd Tonkin, Spectator A dreamlike novel of memory and magic, Nostalgia turns the dark world of Communist Bucharest into a place of strange enchantments. Here a man plays increasingly death-defying games of Russian Roulette, a child messiah works his magic in the tenements, a young man explores gender boundaries, a woman relives her youth and an architect becomes obsessed with the sound of his new car horn - with unexpected consequences. Blending reality and symbolism, time and myth, this is a cult masterwork from Romania's most celebrated writer.
Unwinds the intricacies of covenant theology, making the complex surprisingly simple and accessible to every reader.
This book of essays is concerned with aspects of religion, magic, and witchcraft in medieval and early-modern Europe, with particular reference to Central Europe. Drawing on a range of theoretical and methodological work including that of Elias, Geertz, Bakhtin, and Turner, the author gives special attention to the history of the body and of gesture, of symbolism and representation, and shows how these dimensions can be related to religious and mystical beliefs and practices. Among the topics discussed are conflicts in twelfth-century Christianity and the tensions between popular religion and learned urban Christianity; heretical and nonconformist behavior in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the celestial courts of holy princesses in thirteenth-century Central Europe; shamanistic elements in Central European witchcraft; witch-beliefs and witch- hunting in Hungary in the early-modern period; and the decline of beliefs in witches and the rise of beliefs about vampires in the eighteenth-century Habsburg monarchy.
Detta är, som alltid hos Cartarescu, en roman om Bukarest, en både drömd och verklig stad. Runt omkring i staden ligger jättelika underjordiska solenoider, magnetiska spolar som får hus, människor och föremål att levitera. Parallellt med berättelsen om staden möter vi en enkel landsbygdslärare, författarens alter ego, som rör sig i en drömlik, surrealistisk och hypnotisk verklighet.