Dante's Gluttons

Dante’s Gluttons: Food and Society from the Convivio to the Comedy explores how in his work medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) uses food to articulate, reinforce, criticize, and correct the social, political, and cultural values of his time. Combining medieval history, food studies, and literary criticism, Dante’s Gluttons historicizes food and eating in Dante, beginning in his earliest collected poetry and arriving at the end of his major work. For Dante, the consumption of food is not a frivolity, but a crux of life in the most profound sense of the term, and gluttony is the abdication of civic and spiritual responsibility and a danger to the individual body and soul as well as to the collective. This book establishes how one of the world’s preeminent authors uses the intimacy and universality of food as a touchstone, communicating through a gastronomic language rooted in the deeply human relationship with material sustenance.

Revealing The Religiosity in Sedulur Sikep Macapat Songs

Sikep society is known as one of Javanese cultural heritage keepers. Moreover, the society has unique religiosity attitudes that are somehow it misunderstood as disobedience. This research tries to dig the religiosity attitudes reflected on Sikep society’s Macapat songs, especially their focuses and objects. The analysis used appraisal language theory as the approach. The data of the research are words, phrases, or metaphors that reflect attitude in the texts of Sikep society’s macapat songs. The result of the study showed that thereare only two dimensions of religiosity attitudes found in Sikep society’s Macapat song, those are beliefs and values. The value of religiosity reflected on appreciation and judgment; the belief of religiosity consisted of appreciation, judgment, and affect. The objects of religiosity attitudes in the Sikep society’s macapat songs include people (Sikep society, Ki Surantika, man, the children of Sikep society, government, and the ancestors), and something that is humanized (intention, body and soul). The focus of positive moral attitude involves all words, phrases, and metaphor that reflected the principles, prohibitions, ideals; the focuses of negative moral attitude expressed the negative attitudes and behaviors that they proposed to be avoided. Here, the dominant positive attitudes showed their social life. Then, the only two dimensions of religiosity indicate the lack of restricted rules and ritual applied in their religious life.

“But Such a Mind, Mak’st God Thy Guest”

Ben Jonson’s Eupheme poems and Anthony van Dyck’s portrait of Venetia Digby as Prudence have often been seen as art works fiercely at odds, and that particularly Jonson’s overall brash dismissal of the visual arts is epitomized in his poems in praise of Venetia’s life. Yet ample evidence within Eupheme supports the idea that not only are Jonson’s poems in peculiar ekphrastic conversations with Van Dyck’s painting but that Jonson conceives of the ekphrasis as a device for guiding viewers and readers into rare contemplative poetic spaces. The nature of the interplay between Van Dyck’s painting and Jonson’s poems shares similarities to how Jonson conceived of the courtly masque as a cooperative, unitive experience of visual and verbal elements. In addition, the influence of emblems of Alciato on Jonson’s poetry is instructive in this regard, as these emblems exhibit a cooperative interplay between discrete visual and verbal (body and soul) elements. Issues arising from the artistic cooperative interplay between the body and the soul are linked to the Catholic theology of prudence through the subject of both Jonson and Van Dyck’s works. Specific Catholic contexts hitherto not considered are suggested for both the painting and poems, and especially Jonson’s poem “To My Muse” (the last poem in Eupheme), but these theological contexts are also established in relation to the two titles of Jonson’s poems, which take for their subject Venetia’s body and mind. Furthermore, various loose ends such as the dating of Van Dyck’s painting and the idea that Sir Kenlem had commissioned it to reconstruct Venetia Digby’s reputation are brought up and considered throughout the essay with an eye to these contexts.

The paradoxical self: duality and ambiguity in the works and lives of Oscar Wilde and Morrissey

Oscar Wilde’s and Morrissey’s lives seem to be full of contradictions. Their art constitutes a reaction against materialism, traditional lifestyle and social standards, as well as defence of individualism and freedom of thought. So far, their works have been analysed only from a very limited perspective of the tension between aesthetics and ethics. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that what prevails in their art is the state of ambivalence and ambiguity in relation to the issues connected with religion and morality, innocence and experience, life and death. This article aims at demonstrating multiplicity of personalities of the artists mentioned and ethical ambivalences of their works. Taken together, Wilde and Morrissey’s creative outputs present a clash between different spheres of life, the divided consciousness and the split between body and soul. Thus, the oscillation between opposite standpoints and values excluding each other is not only the result of the artists’ personal experience but it may symbolise the paradox and absurdity of the human existence as well.

THE CONCEPT OF THE SOUL IN PLATO AND IN PATRISTIC THOUGHT

This article is focuses on Plato's conception of the soul, through which man as a psycho-physical being, lives with the perspective of immortality. The pre-existence and immortality of the soul is in fact the basis of Platonic philosophy. Plato presents the existence of the soul in the Phaidon Dialogue starting from the hypothesis that something called the soul has existence in the form of pre-existence and post-existence and has an intelligible nature, similar to the structure of Eidos (Ideas). The second part of the research considers the transition from ontology to metaphysics, focused on a different perspective given the patristic thinking in which man is created in his divine image, as a personal being composed of body and soul, a synthesis of the intelligible world with the material.

A study of the role of Islamic spirituality in happiness of Muslim citizens

Recreation and joy are considered as the basic needs of humans. When the human body and soul get tired, they yearn refreshment through various means. Since the primary goal of Islam is true perfection of humans and achieving higher meaning and purpose in life, the happiness emphasised in this school of thought must be such that it does not conflict with the goal of creation and the ultimate perfection of humans. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the role of Islamic spirituality in the happiness of 5000 citizens of Volga Federal District in Russia. The statistical population of the study was selected by simple random sampling method and the collected data was analysed by Structural Equation Modelling method in the LISREL software. The results indicated the positive role of Islamic spirituality in determining the happiness among citizens (Path Coefficient: 0.821; T value: 24.83). Hence, human beings should look for happiness in life through circumstances that can control the critical factors and create the ground for happiness and self-esteem, which is nothing but religion, religious actions and behaviours, and spirituality. Therefore, in order to experience greater happiness and to be immune to anxiety and depression, one should follow the religion and Islamic spirituality, and achieve a greater sense of happiness by remembering God and performing religious actions and behaviours.Contribution: This article contributes to the relationship between happiness, human body and religious beliefs.

The Roots of Occasionalism? Causation, Metaphysical Dependence, and Soul-Body Relations in Augustine

It has long been thought that Augustine holds that corporeal objects cannot act upon incorporeal souls. However, precisely how and why Augustine imposes limitations upon the causal powers of corporeal objects remains obscure. In this paper, the author clarifies Augustine’s views about the causal and dependence relations between body and soul. He argues that, contrary to what is often thought, Augustine allows that corporeal objects do act upon souls and merely rules out that corporeal objects exercise a particular kind of causal power (that of efficient or sustaining causes). He clarifies how Augustine conceives of the kind of causal influence exercised by souls and bodies.

Bath and the Body, Bamboo and the Soul

<p>Bathing at a fundamental level is desired for two attributes cleansing the body, and cleansing the soul. Historically the act of bathing has been a combination of hot and cold water bathing; this act cleanses both the body and soul, and is seen as an enjoyable pastime for both eastern and western cultures. The priority then is to architecturally express the 'body and soul' through a careful material selection. The choice of materials reflects this, concrete and bamboo, expressing the solid (body) and the light (soul). Design precedents, material comparison, eastern and western beliefs are used to establish a rationale between the material contrast of body and soul. The location for the design reflects the natural connection between 'body and soul' in a location that references the land and water, geothermal and steam, lake and landscape. The final project includes detailing of non-penetrating fixings for the use in bamboo construction, including natural and industrial products into a public bath that compliments the body and the soul.</p>

Bath and the Body, Bamboo and the Soul

<p>Bathing at a fundamental level is desired for two attributes cleansing the body, and cleansing the soul. Historically the act of bathing has been a combination of hot and cold water bathing; this act cleanses both the body and soul, and is seen as an enjoyable pastime for both eastern and western cultures. The priority then is to architecturally express the 'body and soul' through a careful material selection. The choice of materials reflects this, concrete and bamboo, expressing the solid (body) and the light (soul). Design precedents, material comparison, eastern and western beliefs are used to establish a rationale between the material contrast of body and soul. The location for the design reflects the natural connection between 'body and soul' in a location that references the land and water, geothermal and steam, lake and landscape. The final project includes detailing of non-penetrating fixings for the use in bamboo construction, including natural and industrial products into a public bath that compliments the body and the soul.</p>