Byron and Romantic Concepts of Inspiration

Romanticism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-189
Author(s):  
Rolf Lessenich
Keyword(s):  
Romantic Period ◽  
Romantic Irony ◽  
Social Distinction ◽  
Ideal World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Ideal

Though treated marginally in histories of philosophy and criticism, Byron was deeply involved in Romantic-Period controversies. In that post-Enlightenment, science-orientated age, the Platonic-Romantic concept of inspiration as divine afflatus linking the prophet-priest-poet with the ideal world beyond was no longer tenable without an admixture of doubt that turned religion into myth. As a seriously-minded Romantic sceptic in the Pyrrhonian tradition and commuter between the genres of sensibility and satire, Byron often refers to the prophet-poet concept, acting it out in pre-Decadent poses of inspiration, yet undercutting it with his typical Romantic Irony. In contrast to Goethe, who insisted on an inspired poet's sanity, he saw inspiration both as a social distinction and as a pathological norm deviation. The more imaginative and poetical the creation, the more insane is the poet's mind; the more realistic and prosaic, the more compos it is, though an active poet is never quite sane in the sense of Coleridge's ‘depression’, meaning his non-visitation by his ‘shaping spirit of imagination’.

They think they find themselves: radical violence and narcissistic-identity suffering

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Brunet
Keyword(s):  
Lone Wolf ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Ideal Ego ◽  
Group Regression ◽  
The Ideal

This article proposes a model of individual violent radicalisation leading to acts of terrorism. After reviewing the role of group regression and the creation of group psychic apparatus, the article will examine how violent radicalisation, by the reversal of the importance of the superego and the ideal ego, serves to compensate the narcissistic identity suffering by “lone wolf” terrorists.

scholarly journals The Reality of Moral Imperatives in Liberal Religion

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-335
Author(s):  
Howard Lesnick
Keyword(s):  
Ideal World ◽  
Liberal Religion ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Universe ◽  
Child Subject ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Ideal

God has made man with the instinctive love of justice in him,which gradually gets developed in the world …. I do not pretendto understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eyereaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and completethe figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience.And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.Theodore Parker (1853)A strange mystery it is that Nature, omnipotent but blind, in therevolutions of her … hurryings through the abysses of space, hasbrought forth at last a child, subject still to her power, but giftedwith sight, with knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity ofjudging all the works of his unthinking mother. [Gradually, asmorality grows bolder, the claim of the ideal world begins to befelt, [giving rise to the claim] that, in some hidden manner, theworld of fact is really harmonious with the world of ideals. Thusman creates God, all-powerful and all-good, the mystic unity ofwhat is and what should be.

scholarly journals Reconstructing Realism in Post-Postmodern Narrative: Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 115-126
Author(s):  
Jesús Bolaño Quintero
Keyword(s):  
David Foster Wallace ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Romantic Irony ◽  
Linguistic Relativism ◽  
The Creation

By analysing Dave Eggers’s autofictional work A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, this article attempts to reveal the role of this author in the post-postmodern narrative of the turn of the millennium. Following in the wake of David Foster Wallace, Eggers’s solution to overcome the problems created by postmodernism is a kind of writing based on honesty. Through a rebirth of the author, the objective of Eggers’s New Sincerity is the democratization of narrative in order to create a sensibility network aimed at ending the solipsism brought about by postmodern linguistic relativism. However, this new sensibility is reminiscent of pre-postmodern fundamentalism. The use of meta-metafiction based on the use of neo-Romantic irony enables Eggers to create an escape valve that allows for the creation of a metamodern oscillation—as described by Tim Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker.

scholarly journals Biblical Inspirations in Nikifor’s Paintings

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-46
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Wałczyk
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
The Real ◽  
Ideal World ◽  
The World ◽  
Biblical Anthropology ◽  
Divine Order ◽  
The Ideal

Nikifor Krynicki (Epifaniusz Drowniak, 1895-1968) was one of the most popular non-academic Polish painters worldwide. To show the biblical inspiration in his creative output I chose two categories from various thematic aspects: self-portraits and landscapes with a church. There are plenty of Nikifor’s paintings showing him as a teacher, as a celebrating priest, as a bishop, or even as Christ. A pop­ular way to explain this idea of self-portraits is a psychological one: as a form of auto-therapy. This analysis is aims to show a deeper expla­nation for the biblical anthropology. Nikifor’s self-portraits as a priest celebrating the liturgy are a symbol of creative activity understood as a divine re-creation of the world. Such activity needs divine inspira­tion. Here are two paintings to recall: Potrójny autoportret (The triple self-portrait) and Autoportret w trzech postaciach (Self-portrait in three persons). The proper way to understand the self-identification with Christ needs a reference to biblical anthropology. To achieve our re­al-self we need to identify with Christ, whose death and resurrection bring about our whole humanity. The key impression we may have by showing Nikifor’s landscapes with a church is harmony. The painter used plenty of warm colors. Many of the critics are of the opinion that Nikifor created an imaginary, ideal world in his landscapes, the world he wanted to be there and not the real world. The thesis of this article is that Nikifor created not only the ideal world, but he also showed the source of the harmony – the divine order.

The Gray World of Practical Data Analysis: An Introduction to Part 2

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gidon Eshel
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Linear System ◽  
Linear Algebra ◽  
Actual Data ◽  
Distinguishing Characteristic ◽  
Real Numbers ◽  
Ideal World ◽  
Main Distinguishing Characteristic ◽  
Realistic Data ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter provides an overview of the second part of the book. This part is the crux of the matter: how to analyze actual data. While this part builds on Part 1, especially on linear algebra fundamentals covered in Part 1, the two are not redundant. The main distinguishing characteristic of Part 2 is its nuanced grayness. In the ideal world of algebra (and thus in most of part 1), things are black or white: two vectors are either mutually orthogonal or not, real numbers are either zero or not, a vector either solves a linear system or does not. By contrast, realistic data analysis, the province of Part 2, is always gray, always involves subjective decisions.

Civic Patron as Ideal Citizen

The Lay Saint ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 83-125
Author(s):  
Mary Harvey Doyno
Keyword(s):  
Men And Women ◽  
Internal Focus ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Civic Community ◽  
New Equation ◽  
And Control ◽  
Contemplative Life ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter discusses the cult of Pier “Pettinaio” or Pier “the comb-maker” of Siena. Pier lived in Siena until his death in 1289, earning first a pious, and then a saintly reputation for his efforts to follow a rigorous schedule of prayer, to deliver charity to his fellow city-dwellers, and finally to resist the more aggressive commercial practices espoused by other urban artisans and merchants. One sees in Pier's vita how the celebration of a contemporary lay patron became an opportunity to think about the role everyday men and women played in the creation of an ideal civic community. As the vita repeatedly argues, Pier's extraordinary spiritual rigor produced the model of good communal citizenship. But one also sees in this vita an expanded understanding of the content and role of lay charisma. At the same time that the vita celebrates Pier's external actions, it also celebrates his internal focus: his embrace of the contemplative life, his prophetic powers, and his ecstatic states. Thus, in the years immediately before the mendicants took over guardianship and control of the lay penitential life, the cult of a pious Sienese comb-maker demonstrates not only a new equation between the ideal lay Christian and the ideal lay citizen but also an expanded notion of the content and power of lay spirituality.

The Two Worlds of Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying-shih Yü
Keyword(s):  
Literary Study ◽  
Imaginary World ◽  
Ideal World ◽  
Modern Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
Honglou Meng ◽  
The Ideal

This is a thematic literary study of the “Utopian world” and the “world of reality” in China's greatest pre-modern novel. It shows how an ideal imaginary world where youth, beauty and love are kept safe is closely connected with the harsh, ugly and lustful world of reality. Thus, the collapse of the ideal world is seen as inevitable because it can never resist the erosion and invasion of the world of reality.

Jurisdictional Formalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 138-174
Author(s):  
Jennifer Jahner
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Pastoral Theology ◽  
Property Law ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Estate Management ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Christian History

This chapter explores post-Lateran IV ecclesiastical reformism, focusing on the ecclesiology and pastoral theology of Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln. Grosseteste understood pastoral care not only as the clergy’s most vital responsibility to the laity but also as a form of participation in the divinely ordered natural universe. His pastoral and estate management writings to women accordingly reveal the degree to which this ecclesiology finds inspiration in the ideal of the justly governed estate. This chapter reads Grosseteste’s Anglo-French soteriological allegory, the Château d’Amour, alongside his writings to and for women, showing how the logic of secular property law becomes a means of narrating Christian time from the Creation through the Redemption to the Final Judgment. Grosseteste’s larger corpus, however, also reveals the extent to which his vision of Christian history is premised on Jewish exclusion, not only in theological but legal and practical terms.

Ashraf ʿAli Thanavi

2019 ◽  
pp. 146-170
Author(s):  
Margrit Pernau
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Apparent Contradiction ◽  
Strong Feeling ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Advice Book

Chapter 7 looks at the sermons of Ashraf ‘Ali Thanavi, known for the Bihishti Zewar, his best-selling advice book for female readers. At first sight, Thanavi fitted perfectly into the pattern of reading reformist Islam as a contributing force both to modernity and to the disciplining project. The ideal and the practices he encouraged seemed to aim at a constant vigilance over the movements of the soul and at a control of emotional outbursts. However, in apparent contradiction, the anecdotes surrounding Thanavi’s life point to a valuation of religious passions. His sermons very often overwhelmed his audience, leaving them shaking and crying or bringing about spiritual ecstasy— features which added to his reputation as a preacher and which he did not want to censor or prevent, though like the other reformers, he was much more comfortable with men giving in to strong feeling than with emotional women. Righteous emotions and righteous behavior, for him, were intertwined with the creation of the righteous polity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document