Melancholia S Dog

Publisher description

This book explores the intersection between medicine and literature in medieval Iberian literature and culture. Its overarching argument is that thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Iberian authors revalorized the interconnection between the body, the mind, and the soul in light of the evolving epistemology of medicine. Prior to the reintroduction of classical medical treatises through Arab authors into European cultures, mental disorders and bodily diseases were primarily attributed to moral corruption, demonic influence, and superstition. The introduction of novel regimens of health as well as treatises on melancholia into academic institutions and into the cultural landscape provided the tools for newly minted authors to understand that psychosomatic illnesses stemmed from malfunctions of the body's biochemical composition. This book demonstrates that the earliest books written in the Iberian vernaculars contain the seeds that effect the shift from a theocentric worldview to a humanistic one. The volume features close readings of multiple texts, including medical treatises and religious writings, and King Alfonso X's Cantigas de Santa Maria, Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor, and Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor. Even though these texts differ in literary genre, rhetorical strategy, and even purpose, this study argues that they collectively employ humoral pathology and melancholic discourses as a means of underscoring the frailty and transience of human life by showing how somatic conditions sicken the body, mind, and soul unto death.

This book explores the history and continuing relevance of melancholia as an amorphous but richly suggestive theme in literature, music, and visual culture, as well as philosophy and the history of ideas. Inspired by Albrecht Dürer’s engraving Melencolia I (1514)—the first visual representation of artistic melancholy—this volume brings together contributions by scholars from a variety of disciplines. Topics include: Melencolia I and its reception; how melancholia inhabits landscapes, soundscapes, figures and objects; melancholia in medical and psychological contexts; how melancholia both enables and troubles artistic creation; and Sigmund Freud’s essay "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917).

This book provides a highly original approach to the writings of the twentieth-century German philosopher Walter Benjamin by one of his most distinguished readers. It develops the idea of "e;working with"e; Benjamin, seeking both to read his corpus and to put it to work - to show how a reading of Benjamin can open up issues that may not themselves be immediately at stake in his texts. The defining elements in Benjamin's writings that Andrew Benjamin isolates - history, experience, translation, technical reproducibility and politics - are put to work; that is, their utility is established in engaging the works of others. The question is how utility is understood. As Andrew Benjamin argues, utility involves demonstrating the different ways in which Benjamin is a central thinker within the project of understanding the nature of modernity. This is best achieved by noting connections and points of differentiation between his work and the writings of Adorno and Heidegger. However, the more demanding project is that 'working with' Benjamin necessitates deploying the implicit assumptions within his writings as well as demanding of his formulations more than is provided by their initial presentation. What is at stake is not the application of Benjamin's thought. Rather what counts is its use. Working with Benjamin engages with the themes central to Benjamin's work with deftness, daring and critical insight while at the same time situating those themes within current academic and cultural debates.

The first major study of the profound impact of international communist politics and culture on Spanish letters

"This encyclopedia distills an amazing amount of information into a book that is easy to read and navigateÖ.This would serve as a great reference for anyone with an interest in depression." Score: 96, 4 stars --Doody's Depression is the second most disabling disorder in the world. On a daily basis, virtually all mental health professionals confront patients with primary or secondary depression. The wealth of information available globally on depression is enormous, but has not been summarized into a comprehensive encyclopedia-until now. Experts from around the globe have been selected to present interdisciplinary coverage of all the essential issues related to depression, including use of medication, treatment therapies and models, symptoms of Depression, related disorders, and more. Entries are conveniently organized into subcategories in order to provide the most in-depth coverage of each subject. Entries include: Adolescent Depression Behavioral Treatment Cognitive therapy Dopamine Double Depression Heredity Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) Personality Disorders Smoking Suicide Warning Signs In summarizing the vast amount of information on depression, The International Encyclopedia of Depression serves as an authoritative resource for researchers, patients, students, and laypeople.

Rethinking the Baroque explores a tension. In recent years the idea of ?baroque? or ?the baroque? has been seized upon by scholars from a range of disciplines and the term ?baroque? has consequently been much in evidence in writings on contemporary culture, especially architecture and entertainment. Most of the scholars concerned have little knowledge of the art, literature, and history of the period usually associated with the baroque. A gulf has arisen. On the one hand, there are scholars who are deeply immersed in historical period, who shy away from abstraction, and who have remained often oblivious to the convulsions surrounding the term ?baroque?; on the other, there are theorists and scholars of contemporary theory who have largely ignored baroque art and architecture. This book explores what happens when these worlds mesh. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines retrieve the term ?baroque? from the margins of art history where it has been sidelined as ?anachronistic?, to reconsider the usefulness of the term ?baroque?, while avoiding simply rehearsing familiar policing of periodization, stylistic boundaries, categories or essence. ?Baroque? emerges as a vital and productive way to rethink problems in art history, visual culture and architectural theory. Rather than attempting to provide a survey of baroque as a chronological or geographical conception, the essays here attempt critical re-engagement with the term ?baroque? - its promise, its limits, and its overlooked potential - in relation to the visual arts. Thus the book is posited on the idea that tension is not only inevitable, but even desirable, since it not only encapsulates intellectual divergence (which is always as useful as much as it is feared), but helps to push scholars (and therefore readers) outside their usual runnels.

In 2006, about 69 million U.S. households had pets, giving homes to around 73.9 million dogs, 90.5 million cats, and 16.6 million birds, and spending more than 38 billion dollars on companion animals. As never before in history, our pets are truly members of the family. But the notion of “companion species”—knotted from human beings, animals and other organisms, landscapes, and technologies—includes much more than “companion animals.” In When Species Meet, Donna J. Haraway digs into this larger phenomenon to contemplate the interactions of humans with many kinds of critters, especially with those called domestic. At the heart of the book are her experiences in agility training with her dogs Cayenne and Roland, but Haraway’s vision here also encompasses wolves, chickens, cats, baboons, sheep, microorganisms, and whales wearing video cameras. From designer pets to lab animals to trained therapy dogs, she deftly explores philosophical, cultural, and biological aspects of animal–human encounters. In this deeply personal yet intellectually groundbreaking work, Haraway develops the idea of companion species, those who meet and break bread together but not without some indigestion. “A great deal is at stake in such meetings,” she writes, “and outcomes are not guaranteed. There is no assured happy or unhappy ending-socially, ecologically, or scientifically. There is only the chance for getting on together with some grace.” Ultimately, she finds that respect, curiosity, and knowledge spring from animal–human associations and work powerfully against ideas about human exceptionalism.