Books on the topic 'Brodsky, Joseph, Time in literature'

This chapter explores a central tension in Jewish writings of the era broadly defined as Second Sophistic. Many Jewish authors were deeply immersed in and regularly employed the genres, forms, and themes that long had characterized Greek literature and thrived once more (or still) in the age of the Roman Empire. At the same time, however, the homage paid to Jewish traditions and the sense of distinctiveness, even exceptionalism, retained a strong hold. The chapter discusses four very different authors or texts, Philo, 4 Maccabees, Pseudo-Phocylides, and Joseph and Aseneth, illustrating philosophy, history, gnomic poetry, and the novel. In each case, the author utilizes the Hellenic genres that were an ingrained part of his cultural makeup while conveying the sense of his people’s own distinctive character and contribution. And in each case the blend, smooth on the surface, betrays the signs of strain beneath it.

This book is the first detailed study of the final Stuart succession crisis. It demonstrates for the first time the centrality of debates about royal succession to the literature and political culture of the early eighteenth century. Using previously neglected, misunderstood, and newly discovered material, it shows that arguments about Anne’s right to the throne were crucial to the construction of nascent party political identities. Literary texts were the principal vehicle through which contemporaries debated the new queen’s legitimacy. This book sheds fresh light on canonical authors such as Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, and Joseph Addison by setting their writing alongside the work of lesser known but nonetheless important figures such as John Tutchin, William Pittis, Nahum Tate, John Dennis, Henry Sacheverell, Charles Leslie, and other anonymous and pseudonymous authors. Through close historical readings, it shows how this new generation of poets, preachers, and pamphleteers transformed older models of succession writing by Milton, Dryden, and others, and imbued conventional genres such as panegyric and satire with their own distinctive poetics. By immersing the major authors in their milieu, and reconstructing the political and material contexts in which those authors wrote, this book demonstrates the vitality of debates about royal succession in early eighteenth-century culture.

In this book Samuel Lebens takes the three principles of Jewish faith, as they were proposed in the fifteenth century by Rabbi Joseph Albo, and seeks to scrutinize and refine them with the toolkit of contemporary analytic philosophy. What could it mean for a perfect being to create a world out of nothing? Could such a world be anything more than a figment of God’s imagination? What is the Torah, and what must a person believe before it would make sense to treat it as Orthodox Judaism does? What does Judaism expect from a Messiah, and what would it mean for a world to be redeemed? These questions are explored in conversation with a wide array of Jewish sources—the Bible, Philo, the rabbis of the Mishna and Talmud, the medieval rationalists and mystics, the Hassidim, and more, with an eye towards diverse fields of contemporary research, such as cosmology, logic, the ontology of literature, and the metaphysics of time. This book is an attempt to articulate the most fundamental axioms of Orthodox Judaism in the vernacular of contemporary philosophy.

Richard Baxter, one of the most famous Puritans of the seventeenth century, is generally known as a writer of practical and devotional literature. But he also excelled in knowledge of medieval and early modern scholastic theology, and was conversant with a wide variety of seventeenth-century philosophies. Baxter was among the early English polemicists to write against the mechanical philosophy of René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi in the years immediately following the establishment of the Royal Society. At the same time, he was friends with Robert Boyle and Matthew Hale, corresponded with Joseph Glanvill, and engaged in philosophical controversy with Henry More. This book is a chronological and thematic account of Baxter’s relation to the people and concepts involved in the rise of mechanical philosophy in late seventeenth-century England. Drawing on largely unexamined works, including Baxter’s Methodus theologiae christianae (1681) and manuscript treatises and correspondence, this book discusses Baxter’s response to mechanical philosophers on the nature of substance, laws of motion, the soul, and ethics. Analysis of these topics is framed by a consideration of the growth of Christian Epicureanism in England, Baxter’s overall approach to reason and philosophy, and his attempt to understand creation as an analogical reflection of God’s power, wisdom, and goodness, understood as vestigia Trinitatis. Baxter’s views on reason, analogical knowledge of God, and vestigia Trinitatis draw on medieval precedents and directly inform a largely hostile, though partially accommodating, response to mechanical philosophy.

Hasidism has been a seminal force and source of controversy in the Jewish world since its inception in the second half of the eighteenth century. Indeed, almost every ideological trend that has made itself felt among Jews since that time has claimed to have derived some inspiration from this vibrant movement. While this is sure testimony to its vitality and originality, it has also given rise to many misconceptions as to what hasidism is about. This book offers a wide-ranging treatment of the subject in all its aspects. The book encompasses a complete field of modern scholarship in a discipline that is central to the understanding of modern Jewish history and the contemporary Jewish world. The book is dedicated to the memory of Joseph Weiss, and its opening section assesses his contribution to the study of hasidism in the context of his relationship with Gershom Scholem and Scholem's long-standing influence on the field. The remaining chapters are arranged thematically under seven headings: the social history of hasidism; the social functions of mystical ideals in the hasidic movement; distinctive outlooks and schools of thought within hasidism; the hasidic tale; the history of hasidic historiography; contemporary hasidism; and the present state of research on hasidism. The book also incorporates an extensive introduction that places the various articles in their intellectual context, as well as a bibliography of hasidic sources and contemporary scholarly literature. It shows an intellectual world at an important juncture in its development and points to the direction in which scholarly study of hasidism is likely to develop in the years to come.

The term functional has almost replaced psychogenic in the neuromuscular literature for two reasons. It implies a disturbance of function, not structural damage; therefore, it defies laboratory testing such as MRIS, electromyography (EMG), and nerve conduction study (NCS). It is convenient to draw a parallel to the patients between migraine and brain tumors, as both cause headache, but brain MRI is negative in the former without minimizing the suffering of the patient. It is a “software” and not a “hardware” problem. It avoids irritating the patient by misunderstanding the word psychogenic which to many means “madness.”The cause of this functional impairment may fall into one of the following categories:• Conversion reaction: conversion of psychological stress to physical symptoms. This may include paralysis, hemisensory or distal sensory loss, or conversion spasms. It affects younger age groups.• Somatization: chronic multiple physical and cognitive symptoms due to chronic stress. It affects older age groups.• Factions disorder: induced real physical symptoms due to the need to be cared for, such as injecting oneself with insulin to produce hypoglycemia.• Hypochondriasis: overconcern about body functions such as suspicion of ALS due to the presence of rare fasciclutations that are normal during stress and after ingestion of a large amount of coffee. Medical students in particular are targets for this disorder.The following points are to be made on this topic. FNMD should be diagnosed by neuromuscular specialists who are trained to recognize actual syndrome whether typical or atypical. Presentations that fall out of the recognition pattern of a neuromuscular specialist, after the investigations are negative, they should be considered as FNMDs. Sometimes serial examinations are useful to confirm this suspicion. Psychatrists or psychologists are to be consulted to formulate a plan to discover the underlying stress and to treat any associated psychiatric disorder or psychological aberration. Most patients think that they are stressed due to the illness and they fail to connect the neuromuscular manifestations and the underlying stress. They offer shop around due to lack of satisfaction, especially those with somatization disorders. Some patients learn how to imitate certain conditions well, and they can deceive health care professionals. EMG and NCS are invaluable in revealing FNMD. A normal needle EMG of a weak muscles mostly indicates a central etiology (organic or functional). Normal sensory responses of a severely numb limb mean that a lesion is preganglionic (like roots avulsion, CISP, etc.) or the cause is central (a doral column lesion or functional). Management of FNMD is difficult, and many patients end up being chronic cases that wander into clinics and hospitals seeking solutions and exhausting the health care system with unnecessary expenses.It is time for these disorders to be studied in detail and be classified and have criteria set for their diagnosis so that they will not remain diagnosed only by exclusion. This chapter will describe some examples of these disorders. A video clip can tell the story better than many pages of writing. Improvement of digital cameras and electronic media has improved the diagnosis of these conditions, and it is advisable that patients record some of their symptoms when they happen. It is not uncommon for some Neuromuscular disorders (NMDs), such as myasthenia gravis (MG), small fiber neuropathy, and CISP, to be diagnosed as functional due to the lack of solid physical findings during the time of the examination. Therefore, a neuromuscular evaluation is important before these disorders are labeled as such. Some patients have genuine NMDs, but the majority of their symptoms are related to what Joseph Marsden called “sickness behavior.” A patient with carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) may unconsciously develop numbness of the entire side of the body because he thinks that he may have a stroke.