Nosso objetivo aqui é o de expor uma tradução do poema Ulysses (1842), de Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892). Uma tradução de Ulysses nos parece importante para termos mais uma fonte para investigar as relações entre estudos de gênero, história das mentalidades e representações literárias 1) na Antiguidade homérica e 2) numa relação dialética entre o tempo no qual o poema se passa e o tempo no qual ele é produzido, a Modernidade oitocentista.

Nel Medioevo tante volte presentato dalla letteratura come un grande romanzo di avventure, un posto decisamente particolare spetta alla vicenda di Tommaso Becket, prima cancelliere di re Enrico II e poi arcivescovo di Canterbury, assassinato nella sua cattedrale nel 1170. Si tratta di una vicenda che presenta i motivi fondamentali di ogni racconto epico e tragico. Ispirandosi a questa convinzione l’articolo ripercorre alcune delle maggiori opere letterarie che hanno raccontato da diversi punti di vista lo scontro tra Becket e il (...) suo re: alcune delle agiografie medievali, Alfred Tennyson, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer nel XIX secolo, e – nel XX – Thomas Stearns Eliot, Christopher Fry e Jean Anouilh. Del _vero_ Tommaso Becket è assai difficile riuscire a farsi un’idea precisa, mentre sembra realizzarsi la grande metafora, proposta da Giovanni di Salisbury, suo stretto collaboratore, della vita e della storia come rappresentazione teatrale in cui hanno importanza decisiva solo i ruoli che gli uomini sono chiamati a interpretare. _In the Middle Ages, so often depicted in literature as a great adventure novel, a very special place belongs to the story of Thomas Becket, firstly chancellor of King Henry II and later Bishop of Canterbury, murdered in his cathedral in 1170. _ _This episode presents the fundamental motifs of every epic and tragic tale. Inspired by this conviction, this article examines some of the most significant literary works that have described the conflict between Becket and his king from different points of view: some of the medieval hagiographies, Alfred Tennyson, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in the 19th century, and – in the 20th – Thomas Stearns Eliot, Christopher Fry and Jean Anouilh._ _It is very difficult to get a precise idea of the _real_ Thomas Becket, while the great metaphor proposed by John of Salisbury, his close collaborator, of life and history as a theatrical representation in which only the roles that men are called to play are of decisive importance, seems to have been realized._. (shrink)

The Darwinian Revolution--the change in thinking sparked by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which argued that all organisms including humans are the end product of a long, slow, natural process of evolution rather than the miraculous creation of an all-powerful God--is one of the truly momentous cultural events in Western Civilization. Darwinism as Religion is an innovative and exciting approach to this revolution through creative writing, showing how the theory of evolution as expressed by Darwin has, from the (...) first, functioned as a secular religion. Drawing on a deep understanding of both the science and the history, Michael Ruse surveys the naturalistic thinking about the origins of organisms, including the origins of humankind, as portrayed in novels and in poetry, taking the story from its beginnings in the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century right up to the present. He shows that, contrary to the opinion of many historians of the era, there was indeed a revolution in thought and that the English naturalist Charles Darwin was at the heart of it. However, contrary also to what many think, this revolution was not primarily scientific as such, but more religious or metaphysical, as people were taken from the secure world of the Christian faith into a darker, more hostile world of evolutionism. In a fashion unusual for the history of ideas, Ruse turns to the novelists and poets of the period for inspiration and information. His book covers a wide range of creative writers - from novelists like Voltaire and poets like Erasmus Darwin in the eighteenth century, through the nineteenth century with novelists including Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James and H. G. Wells and poets including Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and on to the twentieth century with novelists including Edith Wharton, D. H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, William Golding, Graham Greene, Ian McEwan and Marilynne Robinson, and poets including Robert Frost, Edna St Vincent Millay and Philip Appleman. Covering such topics as God, origins, humans, race and class, morality, sexuality, and sin and redemption, and written in an engaging manner and spiced with wry humor, Darwinism as Religion gives us an entirely fresh, engaging and provocative view of one of the cultural highpoints of Western thought. (shrink)

In early 1864, disappointed by the response to his previous work, the young Manchester academic W. Stanley Jevons announced that he was undertaking a study of the so-called coal question: ‘A good publication on the subject would draw a good deal of attention … it is necessary for the present at any rate to write on popular subjects’. When Jevons's The Coal Question was published in April 1865, however, it received comparatively little attention and sales were slow. Jevons and his (...) publisher, Alexander Macmillan, then began sending complimentary copies to luminaries such as Sir John Herschel and Alfred Tennyson. In February 1866 the marketing campaign produced its first substantial return. Macmillan had sent CQ to William Gladstone who responded with letters to both Macmillan and Jevons, noting that the book had strengthened his ‘conviction’ on the necessity for reducing the National Debt. In April, John Stuart Mill praised CQ in the House of Commons, calling for action on the Debt and, three weeks later, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gladstone introduced the budget using half his speech to examine the Debt situation and referring to CQ in support for a proposed measure of Debt reduction. With the extensive publicity given to CQ following Mill's speech and the budget, Jevons had achieved his objective in writing the text which went into a second edition in 1866. On the face of it, CQ 's success was due to its effect of introducing a change in budget policy and this is the impression given by some accounts of the episode. (shrink)

Lucretius (c. 99 BCE-c. 55 BCE) is the author of De Rerum Natura, a work which tries to explain and expound the doctrines of the earlier Greek philosopher Epicurus. The Epicurean view of the world is that it is composed entirely of atoms moving about in infinite space. The implications of this view are profound: the proper study of the world is the province of natural philosophy (science); there are no supernatural gods who created the world or who direct its (...) course or who can reward or punish us; death is simply annihilation, and so there is no next life and no torment in an underworld. Epicurus, and then his disciple Lucretius, advocated a simple life, free from mental turmoil and anguish. The essays in this collection deal with Lucretius's critique of religion, his critique of traditional attitudes about death, and his influences on later thinkers such as Isaac Newton and Alfred Tennyson. We see that Lucretius's philosophy is connected to contemporary philosophy such as existentialism and that aspects of his thought work against trying to separate the sciences and the humanities. Lucretius: His Continuing Influence and Contemporary Relevance is the title of a 2009 conference on Lucretius held at St. John Fisher College, when many of the ideas in these essays were first presented.--Publisher description. (shrink)

Lucretius (c. 99 BCE-c. 55 BCE) is the author of De Rerum Natura, a work which tries to explain and expound the doctrines of the earlier Greek philosopher Epicurus. The Epicurean view of the world is that it is composed entirely of atoms moving about in infinite space. The implications of this view are profound: the proper study of the world is the province of natural philosophy (science); there are no supernatural gods who created the world or who direct its (...) course or who can reward or punish us; death is simply annihilation, and so there is no next life and no torment in an underworld. Epicurus, and then his disciple Lucretius, advocated a simple life, free from mental turmoil and anguish. The essays in this collection deal with Lucretius's critique of religion, his critique of traditional attitudes about death, and his influences on later thinkers such as Isaac Newton and Alfred Tennyson. We see that Lucretius's philosophy is connected to contemporary philosophy such as existentialism and that aspects of his thought work against trying to separate the sciences and the humanities. Lucretius: His Continuing Influence and Contemporary Relevance is the title of a 2009 conference on Lucretius held at St. John Fisher College, when many of the ideas in these essays were first presented.--Publisher description. (shrink)

The essays in this collection deal with Greek philosopher Lucretius's critique of religion, his critique of traditional attitudes about death, and his influences on later thinkers such as Isaac Newton and Alfred Tennyson. 144 pp.

The entwining of the craft worker’s body both with the materials of her artistic process and with the craft object itself is central to an understanding of craft aesthetics. This paper addresses embodied craft in Lia Cook’s weavings, which foreground the artist’s body and the embodying dynamics of woven art. Cook’s work is read in relation to the Lady of Shalott, a fictional textile artist portrayed in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem by that name, and the painted versions of (...) it by William Holman Hunt and other Pre-Raphaelite artists. Cook’s work emerges as an elaboration upon Pre-Raphaelite ideas for the digital age, and a useful model for understanding the embodied dynamics of craft aesthetics. (shrink)

Romantic sensibility and political necessity led Humphry Davy, Britain's most prominent scientist in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, to pantheism: nature worship, involving for him a fervent belief in the immortality of the soul. Rapt with a vision of sublimity, from mountain tops or balloons, men of science in succeeding generations also found in pantheism a reason for their vocation and a way of making sense of their world. It should be seen as an alternative both to active (...) participation in church life (like Faraday's) and to a gritty agnosticism (like Huxley's), indicating again how subtle and complex relationships were between science and religion in the nineteenth century. (shrink)

The contents of this book were originally delivered at Trinity College in the autumn of 1919 as the inaugural course of Tarner lectures.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.2 (2004) 120-124 [Access article in PDF] Pictures & Tears. a History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings, by James Elkins. London: Routledge, 2001, xiii + 272pp., $26. In "Tears, Idle Tears" from The Princess, Alfred, Lord Tennyson wonders at the tears forming in his eyes as he gazes out across the fields one fall day. The idyllic countryside, (...) far from providing solace, triggers within him a debilitating sadness, an all-encompassing melancholia, manifested by the tears originating from a deep despair; the autumn fields remind Tennyson's narrative persona of all the days that have passed by him.If Tennyson's eyes had fallen not on autumn fields but on a painting of them then the opening lines to "Tears, Idle Tears" might have served as the perfect epigraphic frame to James Elkins's important study of the tears we do and do not shed when looking at art.One of several recent books by the increasingly influential professor at Chicago's School of the Art Institute, Pictures & Tears probes that aspect of our consciousness that has the capacity [End Page 120] to move us to tears when looking at paintings.Shedding tears in front of paintings? Within contemporary culture it seems rather unlikely for someone to respond to a painting by fighting off, or giving in, to tears. Reactions to paintings in previous periods and societies were wholly different from ours, Elkins argues. Paintings not only incited the passions but were blamed for the onset of numerous, serious medical conditions. Though rare today, cases continue to be reported. The Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini even coined a term for it in 1989, "Stendhal syndrome," referring to the novelist whose viewing of art in Florence was accompanied by the onset of a form of nervous exhaustion.While the subtitle of Elkins's book suggests a history of crying in front of pictures, leading us to the nearly tearless present, and thus, presumably, to answers about why we no longer cry in front of paintings, A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings is somewhat misleading. In the truest sense Pictures & Tears is neither a history of crying in front of pictures nor individual histories of those who have. The book does not follow a linear historical narrative of the tears that pictures have evoked over the centuries. Rather, Elkins's chapters constitute a tableau, the accumulation of fragments, with alternating chapters exploring, first, a particular work of art and the tears it has evoked and, second, ruminations on why that might be the case.At the heart of Elkins's argument is a concern over why we no longer seem willing, or indeed able, to have emotional responses to paintings. Besides the occasional grand response to works of art, particularly those vested withsignificant religious meaning, few admit to intimate connections with paintings. Elkins wants to know why.To answer these questions, Elkins turned to colleagues as well as to people he had never met. His research for the book included letters to fellow scholars and peers, and open calls in newspapers and journals, requesting stories from anyone moved to tears on encountering a painting. He received more than four hundred responses, many of which are included in a substantial appendix. The responses themselves make for an intriguing read and from them Elkins builds a two-pronged argument: we now live in an age that is marked by "stoic intellectualism" (p. 163), yet we still have the capacity to feel an intimate connection to paintings. Art in recent years has demanded greater intellectual engagement, lessintimate involvement. There may be exhibitions that fuel fear, distrust, anger, or rage but these are alienating to the works themselves, although these feelings can certainly be as intense as the more intimate connection that Elkins equates with falling in love.What is it about viewing paintings, as opposed to film or theater, he asks, which prevents full emotional expression? Is it the accoutrements used to view gallery paintings — the exhibition catalogs... (shrink)

W. K. Clifford was a noted mathematician and popularizer of science in the Victorian era. Although he made major contributions in the field of geometry, he is perhaps best known for a short essay he wrote in 1876, entitled The Ethics of Belief, in which he argued that It is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. Delivered initially as an address to the august Metaphysical Society (whose members included such luminaries as Alfred (...) Lord Tennyson, William Gladstone, T. H. Huxley, and assorted scientists, clerics and philosophers of differing metaphysical views, The Ethics of Belief became a rallying cry for freethinkers and a bone of contention for religious apologists. It continues to be discussed today as an exemplar of what is called 'evidentialism', a key point in current philosophy of religion debates over justification of knowledge claims. In this book, Timothy J. Madigan examines the continuing relevance of The Ethics of Belief to epistemological and ethical concerns. He places the essay within the historical context, especially the so-called 'Victorian Crisis of Faith' of which Clifford was a key player. Clifford's own life and interests are dealt with as well, along with the responses to his essay by his contemporaries, the most famous of which was William James's The Will to Believe. Madigan provides an overview of modern-day critics of Cliffordian evidentialism, as well as examining thinkers who were positively influenced by him, including Bertrand Russell, who was perhaps Clifford's most influential successor as an advocate of intellectual honesty. The book ends with a defense of The Ethics of Belief from a virtue-theory approach, and argues that Clifford utilizes an as-if methodology to encourage intellectual inquiry and communal truth-seeking.' The Ethics of Belief' continues to provoke and stimulate controversy, which was perhaps Clifford's own fondest hope, although he had no right to believe it would do so. (shrink)

Like all people, atheists contemplate issues of love, death, and morality, and in times of stress we long for solace and inspiration. A collection of uplifting quotations from some of mankind’s most important philosophers, scientists, writers, and even comedians, THE INSPIRATIONAL ATHEIST will be a treasured daily companion for the growing demographic of humanists who believe that life has meaning when we live it meaningfully, independent of the existence of a higher power. With words from Carl Sagan, D. H. Lawrence, (...) Julia Child, Douglas Adams, Charlotte Bronte, Bertrand Russell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Carlin, Joan Didion, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thomas Jefferson and dozens of others on topics ranging from Love and Nature to Wisdom and Beauty, this book is a celebration of the sublime without the divine. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In ‘Hoi Rheontes’ (‘The Flowing Ones’), Alfred Lord Tennyson adopted the Heraclitean simile of the flowing river in support of philosophical relativism: (1) all things are changing all the time; therefore (2) nothing is, but is only in the process of appearing to be in some way; therefore (3) all beliefs are true. But the relativist doctrine refutes itself: it can only be true relatively to those who assert it. In his ‘In May’ the American poet Michael Collier (...) rejected what he regarded as Tennyson’s endorsement of skepticism concerning the senses. According to Collier, Heraclitus sought to show how there is pleasure to be found in sense experience. In his ‘Gift of Heraclitus’ the prize-winning Mexican poet José Emilio Pacheco drew on a dozen or so Heraclitean ideas to fashion an existential reflection on the human condition. Unlike natural substances, human reality is characterized by reflection, change, and unfulfilled desire. (shrink)

The Metaphysical Society was founded in 1869 at the instigation of James Knowles (editor of the Contemporary Review and then of the Nineteenth Century) with a view to "collect, arrange, and diffuse Knowledge (whether objective or subjective) of mental and moral phenomena" (first resolution of the Society in April 1869). The Society was a private club which gathered together a latter-day clerisy. Building on the tradition of the Cambridge Apostles, they elected talented members from across the Victorian intellectual spectrum: Bishops, (...) one Cardinal, philosophers, men of science, literary figures, and politicians. The Society included in its 62 members prominent figures such as T. H. Huxley, William Gladstone, Walter Bagehot, Henry Edward Manning, John Ruskin and Alfred Lord Tennyson. The papers they produced are key primary sources which shed new light on the ideas of their authors on the burning subjects of the day, ranging from the existence and personality of God to the nature of conscience or the existence of the soul. They are a legacy of a period when intellectuals were wondering how, and what, to believe in a time of social change, spiritual crisis, and scientific progress. The dissolution of the Society in 1880 did not diminish the value of the papers: they illustrate a tradition of private, open discussion among famous men of the most widely varying views; they offer detailed insight into the evolution of the relationships between different schools of Victorian scientific and religious thought; and they bring to light heretofore under-represented points of conflict and harmony. All 95 papers are included, accompanied by introductions and scholarly notes that set each paper into their proper context. (shrink)

Is it permissible to be a fan of an artist or a sports team that has behaved immorally? While this issue has recently been the subject of widespread public debate, it has received little attention in the philosophical literature. This paper will investigate this issue by examining the nature and ethics of fandom. I will argue that the crimes and misdemeanors of the object of fandom provide three kinds of moral reasons for fans to abandon their fandom. First, being a (...) fan of the immoral may provide support for their immoral behavior. Second, fandom alters our perception in ways that will often lead us to be fail to perceive our idol’s faults and even to adopting immoral points of view in order to be able to maintain the positive view we have of them. Third, fandom, like friendship, may lead us to engage in acts of loyalty to protect the interests of our idols. This gives fans of the immoral good reason to abandon their fandom. However, these reasons will not always be conclusive and, in some cases, it may be possible to instead adopt a critical form of fandom. (shrink)

The interactions between literature and science and between literature and psychoanalysis have been among the most thriving areas for interdisciplinary study in recent years. Work in these 'open fields' has taught us to recognize the interdependence of different cultures of knowledge and experience, revealing the multiple ways in which science, literature, and psychoanalysis have been mutually enabling and defining, as well as corrective and contestatory of each other. Inspired by Gillian Beer's path-breaking work on literature and science, this volume presents (...) fourteen new essays by leading American and British writers. They focus on the evolutionary sciences in the nineteeth-century; the early years of psychoanalysis, from Freud to Ella Freeman Sharpe; and the modern development of the physical sciences. Drawing on recent debates within the history of science, psychoanalytic literary criticism, intellectual history, and gender studies, the volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the formation of knowledge. Among its recurrent themes are: curiosity and epistemology; 'growth', 'maturity', and 'coming of age' as structuring metaphors ; taxonomy; sleep and dreaming and elusive knowledge; the physiology of truth; and the gender politics of scientific theory and practice. The essays also reflect Beer's extensive influence as a literary critic, with close readings of works by Charlotte Brontë, Alfred Lord Tennyson, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, Edith Ayrton Zangwill, Charlotte Haldane, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and Karin Boye. (shrink)

Almost thirty years ago, in an attempt to undermine what he termed “the principle of alternate possibilities”.

This paper defends two claims. First, we will argue for the existence of aesthetic demands in the realm of everyday aesthetics, and that these demands are not reducible to moral demands. Second, we will argue that we must recognise the limits of these demands in order to combat a widespread form of gendered oppression. The concept of aesthetic supererogation offers a new structural framework to understand both the pernicious nature of this oppression and what may be done to mitigate it.

According to a traditional view of self-deception, the phenomenon is an intrapersonal analogue of stereotypical interpersonal deception. In the latter case, deceiversintentionallydeceive others into believing something,p, and there is a time at which the deceivers believe thatpis false while their victims falsely believe thatpis true. If self-deception is properly understood on this model, self-deceivers intentionally deceive themselves into believing something,p, and there is a time at which they believe thatpis false while also believing thatpis true.

The Metaphysical Society was founded in 1869 at the instigation of James Knowles (editor of the Contemporary Review and then of the Nineteenth Century) with a view to 'collect, arrange, and diffuse Knowledge (whether objective or subjective) of mental and moral phenomena' (first resolution of the society in April 1869). The Society was a private dining and debate club that gathered together a latter-day clerisy. Building on the tradition of the Cambridge Apostles, they elected talented members from across the Victorian (...) intellectual spectrum: Bishops, one Cardinal, philosophers, men of science, literary figures, and politicians. The Society included in its 62 members prominent figures such as T. H. Huxley, William Gladstone, Walter Bagehot, Henry Edward Manning, John Ruskin, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. (shrink)

This paper examines four retellings of the Arthurian legend of Guinevere and Lancelot from a bio-evolutionary perspective. The historical and social conditions which provide contexts for the retellings are described, and those conditions are related to underlying male and female reproductive strategies. Since the authors of the selected texts, Chrétien de Troyes, Thomas Malory, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and William Morris, are all male, the assumption is made that these versions of the legend reflect male reproductive preoccupations and encode (...) male attitudes toward femaleness in general and toward female adultery in particular. (shrink)

The most distinctive and highly valued poems of the modern era offer an image of a dramatized "I" acting in a concrete setting. The variety and importance of the poems which fall under this description are suggested simply by the mention of such names as "Elegy Written in a Country Courtyard," "Tintern Abbey," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ulysses," "My Last Duchess," "Dover Beach," "The Windhover," "The Darkling Thrush," "Sailing to Byzantium," "Leda and the Swan," "The Love Song of J. (...) class='Hi'>Alfred Prufrock," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." The power and beauty of such poems seems intimately connected with the fact of their dramatic integrity and autonomy, and we have all been taught, in analyzing them, to refer to a "speaker" existing independent of the poet and to avoid the "intentional" and "biographical" fallacies which spuriously link the poem to the poet and the world outside the poem. Such an approach tends to undercut any notion that a poem has a single definite meaning, the meaning the poet gave it, and to support the idea that the meaning of a poem is indeterminate and/or multiple. All this is quite in accord with the orthodox critical doctrine that poetic language is differentiated from scientific language and preserved from competition with it by the fact that it is nonreferential, making no claim upon the real world; and complex, indefinite, and alogical, where scientific language is simple, definite, and logical. Ralph W. Rader is chairman of the department of English at the University of California at Berkeley. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are "Fact, Theory, and Literary Explanation" , "Explaining Our Literary Understanding: A Response to Jay Schleusener and Stanley Fish" , and "The Literary Theoretical Contribution of Sheldon Sacks" . Professor Rader's influential studies include Tennyson's "Maud": The Biography Genesis, "Literary Form in Factual Narrative: The Example of Boswell's Johnson," and "The Concept of Genre and Eighteenth-century Studies.". (shrink)