Networked Nation


Book Description

In Networked Nation: Mapping German Cities in Sebastian Münster’s 'Cosmographia', Jasper van Putten examines the groundbreaking woodcut city views in the German humanist Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia. This description of the world, published in Basel from 1544 to 1628, glorified the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and engendered the city book genre. Van Putten argues that Münster’s network of city view makers and contributors—from German princes and artists to Swiss woodcutters, draftsmen, and printers—expressed their local and national cultural identities in the views. The Cosmographia, and the city books it inspired, offer insights into the development of German and Swiss identity from 1550 to Switzerland’s independence from the empire in 1648.




Painting on Light


Book Description

The names Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein the Younger evoke the dazzling accomplishments of Renaissance panel painting and printmaking, but they may not summon images of stained glass. Nevertheless, Dürer, Holbein, and their southern German and Swiss contemporaries designed some of the most splendid works in the history of the medium. This lavish volume is a comprehensive survey of the contribution to stained glass made by these extraordinarily gifted draftsmen and the equally talented glass painters who rendered their compositions in glass. Included are discussions of both monumental church windows and smaller-scale stained-glass panels made for cloisters, civic buildings, residences, and private chapels. The subjects of these rarely seen drawings and panels range from religious topics to secular themes, including love, planets, hunts, and battles. Focusing on stained glass produced in Germany and Switzerland from about 1495 to 1530, Painting on Light includes drawings by Dürer, Holbein, Albrecht Altdorfer, Hans Baldung Grien, Jörg Breu the Elder, Hans Burgkmair, Urs Graf, Hans von Kulmbach, Hans Leu the Younger, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, Hans Schäufelein, Hans Weiditz, and others. This informative book is published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Getty Museum from July 11 through September 24, 2000, and from November 7, 2000, to January 4, 2001, at the Saint Louis Art Museum.




Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal


Book Description

C. G. Jung had a lifelong interest in the paranormal that culminated in his influential theory of synchronicity. Combining extracts taken from the Collected Works; letters; the autobiographical Memories, Dreams, Reflections; and transcripts of seminars, Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal sets out clearly his seminal contribution to our understanding of this controversial area. In his introduction, Roderick Main discusses Jung's encounters with and observations of the paranormal, the influences that contributed to his theory of synchronicity, and the central ideas of the theory itself. The selections include Jung's writings on mediumistic trance phenomena, spirits and hauntings, anomalous events in the development and practice of analytical psychology, and the divinatory techniques of astrology and the I Ching. The book also features Jung's most lucid account of his theory in the form of his short essay "On Synchronicity," and a number of Jung's less-known writings on parapsychology, his astrological experiment, and the relationship between mind and body. Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal addresses subjects that were fundamental to Jung's personal and professional development. Probing deeply into the theory of synchronicity, Roderick Main clarifies issues that have long been a source of confusion to Jung's readers.




Hafted Weapons in Medieval and Renaissance Europe


Book Description

This archival source document of the Middle Ages and Renaissance describes the development, manufacture and use of European staff weapons and provides new information using existing objects and archival material. Their effect on the modern map of Europe is discussed.




Peasants, Warriors, and Wives


Book Description

In Peasants, Warriors, and Wives, Keith Moxey examines woodcut images from the German Reformation that have often been ignored as a crude and inferior form of artistic production. In this richly illustrated study, Moxey argues that while they may not satisfy received notions of "art," they nevertheless constitute an important dimension of the visual culture of the period. Far from being manifestations of universal public opinion, as a cursory acquaintance with their subject matter might suggest, such prints were the means by which the reformed attitudes of the middle and upper classes were disseminated to a broad popular audience.




The Rich Man and Lazarus on the Reformation Stage


Book Description

"The Rich Man and Lazarus," one of Jesus' best known parables, has been the subject of discussion and interpretation from the Church Fathers to the present day. Ten plays written in German during the sixteenth century dramatize this parable. Despite the fact that the parable and these plays are concerned with wealth and poverty, damnation and salvation - ideas that are at the very center of the social turmoil and theological struggles of the Reformation - the plays are virtually unknown, in part because six of the ten have not been reprinted or edited since they appeared between 1550 and 1579.




Exorcising our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe


Book Description

This collection of sixteen essays deals with the role of magic, religion and witchcraft in European culture, 1450-1650, and the critical role of the visual in that culture. It covers the relationship of humanism and magic; the intersection of religious ritual, orthodoxy and power; the discursive links between the visual language of witchcraft and contemporary anxieties about sexuality and savagery. The introductory chapter urges us to exorcise our tendency to reduce historical experiences of the demonic to forms of unreason created in a distant past. Only then can we understand the role of the demonic in our historical definition of the self and the other. Richly illustrated with 112 images, the book will interest historians and art historians.




Studies in the History of Latin American Economic Thought


Book Description

This is the first study of the development of economic thought in Latin America. It traces the development of economic ideas during five centuries and across the whole continent. It addresses a wide range of approaches to economic issues including: * the scholastic tradition in Latin American economies * the quantity theory of money * cameralism * human captal theory.




Arms and the Imagination


Book Description

From the time of John Milton to that of William Blake, the literature of Britain absorbed the impact of two major military developments. In the early modern era, the military revolution strove to establish permanent armies under state discipline and, in England, the resistance to this development exhibited in the controversy over standing armies. In this penetrating and highly original study, Gordon demonstrates that military debate, encouraged by Britain's semi-secure insular situation, had a remarkable impact on the British imagination and its narratives. Affected were structure and closure; character evaluation; heroic and mock-heroic styles; attitudes toward love and marriage; and the roles of locality and environment in the shaping of the national and personal character. More remarkable still, these effects signaled the emergence of a civilian consciousness that still influences our literary preference and expectations.




The Thief, the Cross, and the Wheel


Book Description

Christ's Crucifixion is one of the most recognized images in Western visual culture, and it has come to stand as a universal symbol of both suffering and salvation. But often overlooked in this symbolic language is the fact that ultimately the Crucifixion is a scene of capital punishment. In The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel, Mitchell Merback reconstructs the religious, legal, and historical context of the Crucifixion and of other images of public torture. The result is an account of a time when criminal justice and religion were entirely interrelated and punishment was a visual spectacle devoured by a popular audience.




Recent Books