Author: Carsten L. Wilke File Type: epub The Song of Songs, a lyric cycle of love scenes without a narrative plot, has often been considered as the Bibles most beautiful and enigmatic book. The present study questions the still dominant exegetical convention that merges all of the Songs voices into the dialogue of a single couple, its composite heroine Shulamit being a projection screen for norms of womanhood. An alternative socio-spatial reading, starting with the Hebrew texts strophic patterns and its references to historical realia, explores the poems artful alternation between courtly, urban, rural, and pastoral scenes with their distinct characters. The literary construction of social difference juxtaposes class-specific patterns of consumption, mobility, emotion, power structures, and gender relations. This new image of the cycle as a detailed poetic frieze of ancient society eventually leads to a precise hypothesis concerning its literary and religious context in the Hellenistic age, as well as its geographical origins in the multiethnic borderland east of the Jordan. In a Jewish echo of anthropological skepticism, the poem emphasizes the plurality and relativity of the human condition while praising the communicative powers of pleasure, fantasy, and multifarious Eros.

Author: Steven Runciman File Type: pdf The constitution of the Byzantine Empire was based on the conviction that it was the earthly copy of the Kingdom of Heaven. Just as God ruled in Heaven, so the Emperor, made in his image, should rule on earth and carry out his commandments. This was the theory, but in practice the state was never free from its Roman past, particularly the Roman law, and its heritage of Greek culture. Sir Steven Runcimans Weil lectures trace the various ways in which the Emperor tried to put the theory into practice - and thus the changing relationship between church and state - from the days of the first Constantine to those of the eleventh. The theocratic constitution remained virtually unchanged during those eleven centuries. No other constitution in the Christian era has endured for so long.

Author: Steven C. Hamel File Type: pdf Semiotics is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, and is usually divided into three branches Semantics, Syntactics, and Pragmatics. Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions. In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics or zoosemiosis. This book discusses the theory and application of semiotics across a broad spectrum and has gathered current research from around the globe.

Author: Tim Rowland File Type: pdf 50 bizarre stories of the Civil War.Strange and Obscure Stories of the Civil War is an entertaining look at the Civil War stories that dont get told, and the misadventures you havent read about in history books. Share in all the humorous and strange events that took place behind the scenes of some of the most famous Civil War moments. Picture a pedestal in a public park with no statue on top Rowlands book explains that when the members of the New York Monument Commission went to hire a sculptor to finish the statue, they were shocked to discover that there was no money left in the agencys accounts to pay for the project. The money for the statue of Dan Sickles had been stolenstolen by former monument committee chairman Dan Sickles!Brig. Gen. Philip Kearny was the son of a New York tycoon who had helped found the New York Stock Exchange, and who groomed his boy to be a force on Wall Street. The younger Kearny decided his call was to be a force on the field of battle, so despite a law degree and an inheritance of better than $1 million, he joined the U.S. Army and studied cavalry tactics in France. His dashing figure in the saddle earned him the name of Kearny the Magnificent, probably because Kearny rode with a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other while holding the horses reins in his teeth. This habit proved useful after he lost his left arm in the Mexican War, because he was able to continue to wave his sword with all the menace to which he was accustomed while still guiding his horse. 20 black-and-white illustrationsAbout the AuthorTim Rowland is a humorist and outdoorsman who has written a memoir and several narrative his-tory books. He is also a regular columnist for several newspapers. He lives in Maryland with his family.J. W. Howard, retired superintendent of the Antietam National Battlefield, was with the National Park Service for 16 years as superintendent of the Antietam facility.