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The apparent self-sufficiency of joie de vivre means that, despite the widespread use of the phrase since the late nineteenth century, the concept has rarely been explored critically. Joie de vivre does not readily surrender itself to examination, for it is in a sense too busy being what it is. However, as the essays in this collection reveal, joie de vivre can be as complex and variable a state as the more negative emotions or experiences that art and literature habitually evoke. This volume provides an urgently needed study of an intriguing and under-explored area of French literature and culture from the Middle Ages to the contemporary era. While the range and content of contributions emb...
A legal reference on construction law that offers guidance for professionals and addresses the important construction law issues.
In the rush of our modern lives, we often forget that God is present right in the midst of our busy schedules and painful experiences. In Alive and Well, Diane Knight shares her poignant experiences as a teacher, mentor, wife, and mother of a special needs child. When she experienced the loss of her seventeen-year-old son, grieving enabled her to with greater clarity God's presence and His guiding hand upon her life. Diane shares the story of her personal journey and the discovery along the way that God is very much alive and well and yearns for us to understand who He really is! Each chapter explores a different aspect of God's character and will challenge you to live life abundantly, fulfilling His purpose for you. Through Diane's experiences, you will gain a greater appreciation of God's presence and be able to see Him working in your own life story.
A year after the death of James I in 1625, a sensational pamphlet accused the Duke of Buckingham of murdering the king. It was an allegation that would haunt English politics for nearly forty years. In this exhaustively researched new book, two leading scholars of the era, Alastair Bellany and Thomas Cogswell, uncover the untold story of how a secret history of courtly poisoning shaped and reflected the political conflicts that would eventually plunge the British Isles into civil war and revolution. Illuminating many hitherto obscure aspects of early modern political culture, this eagerly anticipated work is both a fascinating story of political intrigue and a major exploration of the forces that destroyed the Stuart monarchy.
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), the great Renaissance skeptic and pioneer of the essay form, is known for his innovative method of philosophical inquiry which mixes the anecdotal and the personal with serious critiques of human knowledge, politics and the law. He is the first European writer to be intensely interested in the representations of his own intimate life, including not just his reflections and emotions but also the state of his body. His rejection of fanaticism and cruelty and his admiration for the civilizations of the New World mark him out as a predecessor of modern notions of tolerance and acceptance of otherness. In this volume an international team of contributors explores the range of his philosophy and also examines the social and intellectual contexts in which his thought was expressed.
This edited volume addresses important aspects of Paracelsian concepts within the context of contemporary science and literature, emphasizing the international dissemination and propagation of Paracelsian ideas during the 16th and 17th centuries. Its contributions analyse different aspects of Paracelsus's work and influence: for instance, his ideas on magic, medicine, and mantic art; his relation to the Jewish tradition, and the controversies caused by Paracelsian authors. Special attention is given to the impact of Paracelsus on the Rosicrucian movement. This volume will be of interst to historians of medicine, literature, and culture in the 16th and 17th centuries. Contributors include: Stephen Bamforth, Udo Benzenhöfer, Lucien Braun, Roland Edighoffer, Frank Hieronymus, Didier Kahn, Joseph Levi, Cunhild Pörksen, Heinz Schott, Joachim Telle, and Ilana Zinguer.
La danse a inspiré la littérature, et la littérature a inspiré la danse. Mais comment fonctionne exactement l’articulation entre les deux, et quelles sont les conséquences de leur réciprocité ? Cet ouvrage analyse ce lien depuis la Renaissance jusqu’à l’époque moderne, de d’Aubigné à Francis Ponge, de la danse macabre à la théorie de Laban. La relation entre danse et littérature est variable : parfois elle se fonde sur un principe esthétique, parfois sur un principe thématique, ou bien sociologique. Quelque soit la nature de ce rapport, ce livre démontre qu’il est durable et riche de sens. Les moyens d’expression de la danse et de la littérature sont radicalement différents, aussi éloignés les uns des autres que l’on puisse imaginer. Entre l’abstraction du langage et la matérialité du corps, le fossé paraît infranchissable. Ceci n’est qu’apparence. Mots et mouvements se complètent, les uns aidant à la compréhension des autres. Ce livre relate le désir à travers les siècles d’explorer cette inspiration mutuelle.
Sleeping rough, having sex in public and insulting the most powerful men in the world earned the ancient Cynic or ‘dog’ philosophers fame and infamy in antiquity and beyond. This book reveals that French Renaissance texts feature a rich and varied set of responses to the Dogs, including especially Diogenes of Sinope (4th century B.C.), whose life was a subversive performance combining wisdom and wisecracks. Cynicism is a special case in the renewal of interest in ancient philosophy at this time, owing to its transmission through jokes and anecdotes. The Cynics’ curious combination of seduction and sedition goes a long way to account for both the excitement and the tension that they gen...
Of the articles in this volume, eight concern a world-famous author (François Rabelais); the others are studies of little-known authors (Cortesi, Corrozet, Mercier) or genres (the joke, the apophthegm). The common theme, in all but one, is humour: how it was defined, and how used, by orators and humanists but also by court jesters, princes, peasants and housewives. Though neglected by historians, this subject was of crucial importance to writers as different as Luther, Erasmus, Thomas More and François Rabelais. The book is divided into four sections. 'Humanist Wit' concerns the large and multi-lingual corpus of Renaissance facetiae. The second and third parts focus on French humanist humour, Rabelais in particular, while the last section is titled '"Serious" Humanists' because humour is by no means absent from it. For the Renaissance, as Erasmus and Rabelais amply demonstrate, and as the 'minor' authors studied here confirm, wit, whether affectionate or bitingly satirical, can coexist with, and indeed be inseparable from, serious purpose. Rabelais, as so often, said it best: 'Rire est le propre de l'homme.'
The sixteenth century in France was marked by religious warfare and shifting political and physical landscapes. Between 1549 and 1584, however, the Pléiade poets, including Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim Du Bellay, Rémy Belleau, and Antoine de Baïf, produced some of the most abiding and irenic depictions of rural French landscapes ever written. In The Poetry of Place, Louisa Mackenzie reveals and analyzes the cultural history of French paysage through her study of lyric poetry and its connections with landscape painting, cartography, and land use history. In the face of destructive environmental change, lyric poets in Renaissance France often wrote about idealized physical spaces, reclaiming the altered landscape to counteract the violence and loss of the period and creating in the process what Mackenzie, following David Harvey, terms 'spaces of hope.' This unique alliance of French Renaissance studies with cultural geography and eco-criticism demonstrates that sixteenth-century poetry created a powerful sense of place which continues to inform national and regional sentiment today.