Lucian’s Laughing Gods
Author: Inger NI Kuin
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2023-04-10
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 0472133349
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe first English-language monograph about religion and Lucian of Samosata
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Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins
Author: Ingvild Saelid Gilhus
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-01-11
Total Pages: 199
ISBN-13: 1134717679
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLaughing Gods, Weeping Virgins analyses how laughter has been used as a symbol in myths, rituals and festivals of Western religions, and has thus been inscribed in religious discourse. The Mesopotamian Anu, the Israelite Jahweh, the Greek Dionysos, the Gnostic Christ and the late modern Jesus were all laughing gods. Through their laughter, gods prove both their superiority and their proximity to humans. In this comprehensive study, Professor Gilhus examines the relationship between corporeal human laughter and spiritual divine laughter from c`ussical antiquity, to the Christian West and the modern era. She combines the study of the history of religion with social-scientific approaches, to provide an original and pertinent exploration of a universal human phenomenon, and its significance for the development of religions.
Laughter At The Foot Of The Cross
Author: M.a. Screech
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-04-09
Total Pages: 259
ISBN-13: 0429721579
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Christian laughter is a maze: you could easily get snarled up within it." So says Michael A. Screech in his note to readers preceding this collection of fifty-three elegant and pithy essays. As Screech reveals, the question of whether laughter is acceptable to the god of the Old and New Testaments is a dangerous one. But we are fortunate in our gu
Lucian’s Laughing Gods
Author: Inger NI Kuin
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2023-04-10
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 0472220977
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNo comic author from the ancient world features the gods as often as Lucian of Samosata, yet the meaning of his works remain contested. He is either seen as undermining the gods and criticizing religion through his humor, or as not engaging with religion at all, featuring the gods as literary characters. His humor was traditionally viewed as a symptom of decreased religiosity, but that model of religious decline in the second century CE has been invalidated by ancient historians. Understanding these works now requires understanding what it means to imagine as laughing and laughable gods who are worshipped in everyday cult. In Lucian's Laughing Gods, author Inger N. I. Kuin argues that in ancient Greek thought, comedic depictions of divinities were not necessarily desacralizing. In religion, laughter was accommodated to such an extent as to actually be constituent of some ritual practices, and the gods were imagined either to reciprocate or push back against human laughter—they were never deflated by it. Lucian uses the gods as comic characters, but in doing so, he does not automatically negate their power. Instead, with his depiction of the gods and of how they relate to humans—frivolous, insecure, callous—Lucian challenges the dominant theologies of his day as he refuses to interpret the gods as ethical models. This book contextualizes Lucian’s comedic performances in the intellectual life of the second century CE Roman East broadly, including philosophy, early Christian thought, and popular culture (dance, fables, standard jokes, etc.). His texts are analyzed as providing a window onto non-elite attitudes and experiences, and methodologies from religious studies and the sociology of religion are used to conceptualize Lucian’s engagement with the religiosity of his contemporaries.
The Reception of the Homeric Hymns
Author: Andrew Faulkner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2016-11-17
Total Pages: 424
ISBN-13: 0191044504
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Reception of the Homeric Hymns is a collection of original essays exploring the reception of the Homeric Hymns and other early hexameter poems in the literature and scholarship of the first century BC and beyond. Although much work has been done on the Hymns over the past few decades, and despite their importance within the Western literary tradition, their influence on authors after the fourth century BC has so far received relatively little attention and there remains much to explore, particularly in the area of their reception in later Greco-Roman literature and art. This volume aims to address this gap in scholarship by discussing a variety of Latin and Greek texts and authors across the late Hellenistic, Imperial, and Late Antique periods, including studies of major Latin authors, such as Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and Byzantine authors writing in classicizing verse. While much of the book deals with classical reception of the Hymns, including looking beyond the textual realm to their influence on art, the editors and contributors have extended its scope to include discussion of Italian literature of the fifteenth century, German scholarship of the nineteenth century, and the English Romantic poets, demonstrating the enduring legacy of the Homeric Hymns in the literary world.
Greek Laughter and Tears
Author: Margaret Alexiou
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 2017-06-05
Total Pages: 504
ISBN-13: 1474403808
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExplores the range and complexity of human emotions and their transmission across cultural traditionsWhat makes us laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time? How do these two primal, seemingly discrete and non-verbal modes of expression intersect in everyday life and ritual, and what range of emotions do they evoke? How may they be voiced, shaped and coloured in literature and liturgy, art and music?Bringing together scholars from diverse periods and disciplines of Hellenic and Byzantine studies, this volume explores the shifting shapes and functions of laughter and tears. With a focus on the tragic, the comic and the tragicomic dimensions of laughter and tears in art, literature and performance, as well as on their emotional, socio-cultural and religious significance, it breaks new ground in the study of ancient and Byzantine affectivity.Key featuresIncludes an international cast of 25 distinguished contributors Prominence is given to performative arts and to interactions with other cultures Transitions from Late Antiquity to Byzantium, and from Byzantium to the Renaissance, form focal points from which contributors look backwards, forwards and sidewaysHighlights the variety, audacity and quality of the finest Byzantine works and the extent to which they anticipated the renaissance
Lucian's Dialogues, Namely the Dialogues of the Gods, of the Sea-Gods, and of the Dead, Etc
Author: Williams
Publisher:
Published: 1888
Total Pages: 354
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLucian
Author: Lucian (of Samosata.)
Publisher:
Published: 1915
Total Pages: 542
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLucian
Author: Lucian (of Samosata.)
Publisher:
Published: 1968
Total Pages: 548
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLucian: Prefatory note The downward journey or the tyrant Zeus catechized Zeus rants The dream or the cock Prometheus Icaromenippus or the sky man Timon or the misanthrope Charon or the inspectors Philosophies for sale Index
Author: Lucian (of Samosata.)
Publisher:
Published: 1919
Total Pages: 536
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLUCIAN (c. 120-190 A.D.) the satirist from Samosata on the Euphrates, started as an apprentice sculptor, turned to rhetoric and visited Italy and Gaul as a successful travelling lecturer, before settling in Athens and developing his original brand of satire. Late in life he fell on hard times and accepted an official post in Egypt. Although notable for the Attic purity and elegance of his Greek and his literary versatility, Lucian is chiefly famed for the dialogues in which he satirises human folly, superstition and hypocrisy. His aim was to amuse rather than to instruct. Among his best works are A True Story (the tallest of tall stories about a voyage to the moon), Dialogues of the Gods (a 'reductio ad absurdum' of traditional mythology), Dialogues of the Dead (on the vanity of human wishes), Philosophies for Sale (great philosophers of the past are auctioned off as slaves), The Fisherman (the degeneracy of modern philosophers), The Carousal (philosophers misbehave at a party), Timon (the problems of being rich), Twice accused (Lucian's defence of his literary career) and (if by Lucian) The ass (the amusing adventures of a man who turned into an ass).
