The Avatar Faculty creatively examines the parallels between spiritual and digital activities to explore the roles that symbolic second selves—avatars—can play in our lives. The use of avatars can allow for what anthropologists call ecstasy, from the Greek ekstasis, meaning "standing outside oneself." The archaic techniques of promoting spiritual ecstasy, which remain central to religious healing traditions around the world, now also have contemporary analogues in virtual worlds found on the internet. In this innovative book, Jeffrey G. Snodgrass argues that avatars allow for the ecstatic projection of consciousness into alternate realities, potentially providing both the spiritually possessed and gamers access to superior secondary identities with elevated social standing. Even if only temporary, self-transformations of these kinds can help reduce psychosocial stress and positively improve health and well-being.
Originally planned as a brief final volume in the Collected Works, The Symbolic Life has become the most ample volume in the edition, and one of unusual interest. It contains some 160 items spanning sixty years; they include forewords, replies to questionnaires, encyclopedia articles, occasional addresses, and letters on technical subjects. Collection of this material relied on three chief circumstances. After Jung returned from active medical practice, he gave more of his time to writing, and some sixty papers as well as books were written after 1950. Second, recent research has brought to light a number of reviews, reports and articles from the early years of Jung's career. Finally, Jung's files yielded several finished or virtually finished papers that survived in manuscript. Volume 18 includes three longer works: 'The Tavistock Lectures' (1936); 'Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams' (1961); and 'The Symbolic Life', the transcript of a seminar given in London in 1939.
"David Castillo takes us on a tour of some horrific materials that have rarely been considered together. He sheds a fantastical new light on the baroque." ---Anthony J. Cascardi, University of California Berkeley "Baroque Horrors is a textual archeologist's dream, scavenged from obscure chronicles, manuals, minor histories, and lesser-known works of major artists. Castillo finds tales of mutilation, mutation, monstrosity, murder, and mayhem, and delivers them to us with an inimitable flair for the sensational that nonetheless rejects sensationalism because it remains so grounded in historical fact." ---William Egginton, Johns Hopkins University "Baroque Horrors is a major contribution to baroque ideology, as well as an exploration of the grotesque, the horrible, the fantastic. Castillo organizes his monograph around the motif of curiosity, refuting the belief that Spain is a country incapable of organized scientific inquiry." ---David Foster, Arizona State University Baroque Horrors turns the current cultural and political conversation from the familiar narrative patterns and self-justifying allegories of abjection to a dialogue on the history of our modern fears and their monstrous offspring. When life and death are severed from nature and history, "reality" and "authenticity" may be experienced as spectator sports and staged attractions, as in the "real lives" captured by reality TV and the "authentic cadavers" displayed around the world in the Body Worlds exhibitions. Rather than thinking of virtual reality and staged authenticity as recent developments of the postmodern age, Castillo looks back to the Spanish baroque period in search for the roots of the commodification of nature and the horror vacui that accompanies it. Aimed at specialists, students, and readers of early modern literature and culture in the Spanish and Anglophone traditions as well as anyone interested in horror fantasy, Baroque Horrors offers new ways to rethink broad questions of intellectual and political history and relate them to the modern age. David Castillo is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Jacket art: Frederick Ruysch's anatomical diorama. Engraving reproduction "drawn from life" by Cornelius Huyberts. Image from the Zymoglyphic Museum.
Studying the nature of symbol in Coleridge's work, Father Barth shows that it is central to Coleridge's intellectual endeavor in poetry and criticism as well as in philosophy and theology. He finds symbol to be an essentially religious reality for Coleridge, one that partakes of the nature of a sacrament, especially sacrament as an encounter between material and spiritual reality. Father Barth notes that eighteenth-century poetry was by and large a poetry of metaphor rather than of symbol, a poetry of reference rather than of encounter. In close readings of the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, he shows how they practiced and developed the poetry of symbol. Finally, analyzing the symbolic imagination, the author concludes that it is a phenomenon profoundly linked with the experience of Romanticism itself and with a fundamental change in religious sensibility. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Studies the symbolism of Dante's Divine Comedy with emphasis on the "Three Blessed Ladies" and Ariadne's Crown. Published to mark the 600th anniversary of Dante's death.
Contents: Mandalas.I. A Study in the Process of Individuation.II. Concerning Mandala SymbolismIndex Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This is the extraordinary account of Donner-Grau's experiences with doña Mercedes, an aged healer in a remote Venezuelan town known for its spiritualists, sorcerers, and mediums.
This collection spans a vast chronology and territory, ranging from Old Kingdom Egypt to modern-day Slovenia and moving geographically from the centres to the peripheries of the Mediterranean and back again, including Antinoë, Calabria, Belgrade, and Paris. While this volume can be situated well within the context of Mediterranean studies, each essay serves as a micro-study that demonstrates one of the many ways in which Mediterranean communities have co-opted, appropriated, and adapted symbols from one another. As a result, this interdisciplinary volume adds something unique to each discipline represented within it (including history, anthropology, art history, literature, and philosophy, among others) while contributing to the greater discourse of Mediterranean studies. Furthermore, the essays collectively illustrate how symbols were distributed widely among Mediterranean communities and, consequently, further a dialogue about what “Mediterranean” might mean. Overall, the original content and its accessibility make the volume valuable to academics, graduate and undergraduate students, and general audiences alike.
