James Robson - Böcker

This magisterial Norton Anthology, edited by world-renowned scholars, offers a portable library of more than 1,000 primary texts from the world’s major religions. To help readers encounter strikingly unfamiliar texts with pleasure; accessible introductions, headnotes, annotations, pronouncing glossaries, maps, illustrations and chronologies are provided. For readers of any religion or none, The Norton Anthology of World Religions opens new worlds that, as Miles writes, invite us "to see others with a measure of openness, empathy, and good will..."Unprecedented in scope and approach, The Norton Anthology of World Religions: Daoism brings together over 150 texts from Daoism’s origins in the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 B.C.E.) to its vital, international present. The volume features Jack Miles’ illuminating General Introduction—“Art, Play, and the Comparative Study of Religion”—as well as James Robson’s “Daoism Lost and Found,” a lively primer on the history and guiding values and practices of Daoism.

Towards the end of the fifth century BC Ctesias of Cnidus wrote his 23 book History of Persia. Ctesias is a remarkable figure: he lived and worked in the Persian court and, as a doctor, tended to the world’s most powerful kings and queens. His position gave him special insight into the workings of Persian court life and access to the gossip and scandal surrounding Persian history and court politics, past and present. His History of Persia was completed at a time when the Greeks were fascinated by Persia and seems very much to cater to contemporary interest in Persian wealth and opulence, powerful Persian women, the institution of the harem, kings and queens, eunuchs and secret plots. Presented here in English translation for the first time with commentaries, Ctesias offers a fascinating insight into Persia in the fifth century BC.

The area of Buddhist monasticism has long attracted the interest of Buddhist studies scholars and historians, but the interpretation of the nature and function of monasteries across diverse cultures and vast historical periods remains a focus for debate. This book provides a multifaceted discussion of religious, social, cultural, artistic, and political functions of Buddhist monasteries in medieval China and Japan. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, this volume explores the multiplicity of the institutions that make up "the Buddhist monastery." Drawing on new research and on previous studies hitherto not widely available in English, the chapters cover key issues such as the relationship between monastics and lay society, the meaning of monastic vows, how specific institutions functioned, and the differences between urban and regional monasteries. Collectively, the book demonstrates that medieval monasteries in East Asia were much more than merely residences for monks who, cut off from the dust and din of society and all its entrapments, collectively pursued an ideal cenobitic lifestyle.Buddhist Monasticism in East Asia is a timely contribution to the ongoing attempts to understand a central facet of Buddhist religious practice, and will be a significant work for academics and students in the fields of Buddhist Studies, Asian Studies, and East Asian Religions.

The area of Buddhist monasticism has long attracted the interest of Buddhist studies scholars and historians, but the interpretation of the nature and function of monasteries across diverse cultures and vast historical periods remains a focus for debate. This book provides a multifaceted discussion of religious, social, cultural, artistic, and political functions of Buddhist monasteries in medieval China and Japan. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, this volume explores the multiplicity of the institutions that make up "the Buddhist monastery." Drawing on new research and on previous studies hitherto not widely available in English, the chapters cover key issues such as the relationship between monastics and lay society, the meaning of monastic vows, how specific institutions functioned, and the differences between urban and regional monasteries. Collectively, the book demonstrates that medieval monasteries in East Asia were much more than merely residences for monks who, cut off from the dust and din of society and all its entrapments, collectively pursued an ideal cenobitic lifestyle.Buddhist Monasticism in East Asia is a timely contribution to the ongoing attempts to understand a central facet of Buddhist religious practice, and will be a significant work for academics and students in the fields of Buddhist Studies, Asian Studies, and East Asian Religions.

Looking at sex and sexuality from a variety of historical, sociological and theoretical perspectives, as represented in a variety of media, Sex in Antiquity represents a vibrant picture of the discipline of ancient gender and sexuality studies, showcasing the work of leading international scholars as well as that of emerging talents and new voices. Sexuality and gender in the ancient world is an area of research that has grown quickly with often sudden shifts in focus and theoretical standpoints. This volume contextualises these shifts while putting in place new ideas and avenues of exploration that further develop this lively field or set of disciplines. This broad study also includes studies of gender and sexuality in the Ancient Near East which not only provide rich consideration of those areas but also provide a comparative perspective not often found in such collections. Sex in Antiquity is a major contribution to the field of ancient gender and sexuality studies.

Towards the end of the fifth century BC Ctesias of Cnidus wrote his 23 book History of Persia. Ctesias is a remarkable figure: he lived and worked in the Persian court and, as a doctor, tended to the world’s most powerful kings and queens. His position gave him special insight into the workings of Persian court life and access to the gossip and scandal surrounding Persian history and court politics, past and present. His History of Persia was completed at a time when the Greeks were fascinated by Persia and seems very much to cater to contemporary interest in Persian wealth and opulence, powerful Persian women, the institution of the harem, kings and queens, eunuchs and secret plots. Presented here in English translation for the first time with commentaries, Ctesias offers a fascinating insight into Persia in the fifth century BC.

Two fundamental experiences of Yahweh in the Old Testament are an encounter with the 'word' of Yahweh and an encounter with the 'spirit' or 'wind' or 'breath' (rva-) of Yahweh. This thesis explores 'word', rva-, and their relationship in the book of Ezekiel. According to the dominant paradigm for explaining the emphasis on rva- and its relation to Yahweh's word within the book of Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel is recovering from the pre-classical prophets, or even pioneering, an emphasis on rva- in prophecy that is conspicuously absent from the classical, writing prophets. This reading interprets the emphasis on rva- in Ezekiel in terms of the self-authentication of the ministry of the prophet. This book examines the relationship between rva- and prophecy in Ezekiel and in the rest of the Old Testament, and shows that the dominant paradigm requires modification. The emphasis on Yahweh's rva- in Ezekiel, even the 'prophetic spirit', is best understood in relation to the book's concern for the transformation of its addressees.The prophet Ezekiel's experience of Yahweh's rva- and his own obedience to Yahweh's call are clearly contrasted with the disobedience of the prophet's addressees in order to present Ezekiel as a model for the addressees of the book. His experience illuminates for them how the dramatic vision of the future can become a reality in their experience. Yahweh's rva- has a fundamental role in the envisaged obedient response to Yahweh's word, both of Ezekiel and of the book's addressees.

This fast-paced, romantic comedy focuses on Giles Short, successful editor at a once-prestigious publishing house - a kind, honourable man. But he is also a kind man with a wife, a mistress, a lunch date, and an undertaking to tell the truth for the next 12 hours.

Martin, a craggy, hard-working Yorkshire landowner and bachelor, lives with his punctilious spinster sister Ivy on the farm they inherited from their parents. Desperate for companionship, Martin pays for a Filipino woman, Maria - whom he has discovered through a video-dating agency - to come and live with them. Maria, shrewd, intelligent and warm-hearted, desperately wants to start a new life with a "respectable English gentleman farmer". But Ivy resents the intrusion, and on the day of Maria and Martin's wedding, she digs up information about Maria's past, with shocking consequences for them all. From the author of "Beulah", Robson has created a play about East and West in which a lonely, unfulfilled man and a resourceful woman come together in an attempt to mend their broken lives.

Norma Green, a 45-year old working-class Mancunian conceals a desperate sense of wasted time beneath her strong-willed but vulnerable exterior. Trying to find her Mr Wonderful through a dating agency, the story unfolds as she meets three men and tries to cope with her bedridden, controlling mother.

Throughout Chinese history mountains have been integral components of the religious landscape. They have been considered divine or numinous sites, the abodes of deities, the preferred locations for temples and monasteries, and destinations for pilgrims. Early in Chinese history a set of five mountains were co-opted into the imperial cult and declared sacred peaks, yue, demarcating and protecting the boundaries of the Chinese imperium.The Southern Sacred Peak, or Nanyue, is of interest to scholars not the least because the title has been awarded to several different mountains over the years. The dynamic nature of Nanyue raises a significant theoretical issue of the mobility of sacred space and the nature of the struggles involved in such moves. Another facet of Nanyue is the multiple meanings assigned to this place: political, religious, and cultural. Of particular interest is the negotiation of this space by Daoists and Buddhists. The history of their interaction leads to questions about the nature of the divisions between these two religious traditions. James Robson’s analysis of these topics demonstrates the value of local studies and the emerging field of Buddho–Daoist studies in research on Chinese religion.

This accessible introduction to the work of one of the world's greatest comic writers tackles key questions posed by Aristophanes' plays, such as staging, humour, songs, obscene language, politics and the modern translation and performance of Aristophanic comedy. The book opens up exciting and contentious areas of Aristophanic scholarship in a way that is engaging and readily comprehensible to a non-specialist audience, never losing sight of the fact that Aristophanes' plays are vibrant literary texts, designed primarily to appeal to a classical Athenian audience as pieces of living drama. Key to the book's appeal is that James Robson conceives of the plays as dynamic texts, containing a treasure trove of information not only about how they might have been performed and received in classical Athens, but also how they might be read and understood today. Most importantly, readers are given the tools and information to make their own minds up about the debates that still rage about Aristophanic comedy in the modern world.

A broad look at the sex lives and sexual beliefs of ancient AtheniansThis book aims to make accessible the evidence for - and the controversies surrounding - the sexual behaviour and social attitudes of classical Athenians. Key areas such as marriage, same-sex relationships, prostitution, sexual fantasy, rape, adultery and sexual attraction are dealt with in chapters which discuss the original sources, highlight their strengths and weaknesses as evidence, and consider the main scholarly approaches to them. Throughout Part I there are regular cross references to the source material presented in Part II - which includes a wide range of literary, philosophical, archaeological, artistic and legal evidence.Key features:" A concise and lively introduction to this field of study" Major areas of debate are explored and trends in scholarship are reflected" Readers are encouraged to be active cultural historians through the presentation of the sources" Includes Further Reading, Essay Questions, a Glossary of Technical Terms and useful website sources

Huineng (638–713), author and hero of the Platform Sutra, is often credited with founding the Southern school of Chan Buddhism and its radical doctrine of "sudden enlightenment." However, manuscripts discovered at Dunhuang at the beginning of the twentieth century reveal that the real architect of the Southern school was Huineng’s student Shenhui (684–758). An ardent evangelist for his master’s teaching and a sharp critic of rival meditation teachers of his day, Shenhui was responsible for Huineng’s recognition as the "sixth patriarch," for the promotion and eventual triumph of the sudden teaching, and for a somewhat combative style of Chan discourse that came to be known as "encounter dialogue." Shenhui’s historical importance in the rise and success of Chan is beyond dispute, yet until now there has been no complete translation of his corpus into English.This volume brings together John McRae’s lifetime of work on the Shenhui corpus, including extensively annotated translations of all five of Shenhui’s texts discovered at Dunhuang as well as McRae’s seminal studies of Shenhui’s life, teachings, and legacy. McRae’s research explores the degree to which the received view of the Northern school teachings is a fiction created by Shenhui to score rhetorical points and that Northern and Southern teachings may have been closer to one another than the canonical narrative depicts. McRae explains Shenhui’s critical role in shaping what would later emerge as "classical Chan," while remaining skeptical about the glowing image of Shenhui as an effective mentor and inspired revolutionary. This posthumously published book is the fulfillment of McRae’s wish to make Shenhui’s surviving writings accessible through carefully annotated English translations, allowing readers to form their own opinions.

Countless Sands presents engaging analyses of the diverse relationships between Buddhism and the environment that existed in medieval Asia. Recent years have witnessed a surge in publications across the humanities that advance powerful ethical and political arguments to account for the human failure to respond effectively to global climate change. While the contributors to this volume are attuned to this challenge, rather than present explicit political arguments, they pursue a subtler effort to historicize the environment as a site and subject of Buddhist practice while providing research grounded in rigorous analysis of complex and fragmentary sources. The volume thereby mitigates against the Orientalist, East-West binaries that have long informed the invocation of Buddhism in Euro-American environmental discourses. As the chapters collectively demonstrate, there was no singular, consistently "Buddhist" understanding of the natural world, but innumerable, varied engagements preserved in discrete texts, images, and artifacts. We title the volume Countless Sands to echo the Buddhist metaphor of "sands of the Ganges" that implies an uncountable number. Through specific case studies, the authors consider such questions as: How did premodern Buddhists understand what we today call "the environment"? How did they think about their earth? How, when, and where did the various processes of the earth actually impinge on the practices of historical Buddhists? What kinds of "environmental imaginations" informed specific Buddhist practices? In so doing, the authors explore the connections between the ways in which historical Buddhist communities interacted with their environments and how they understood those environments. In the broader field of Buddhist studies, Countless Sands contributes to ongoing efforts to expand the locus of inquiry from textually based investigations of Buddhist doctrine to a broader examination of the complex and varied place of Buddhism in the lives of historical communities. The book furthers this broader process by casting it in environmental terms and will engage readers looking for models of thought-provoking historical analysis on environmental themes.

This is the first substantial study of Greek tragedies known to us only from small fragmentary remnants that have survived. The book discusses a variety of Greek tragic fragments from all three of the famous Athenian tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. The recent publication of translations of some of these fragments (Sophocles in the Loeb series, and Euripides in the Aris and Phillips series) means that the fragments are now more readily available than ever for study. The large number of extant fragments of ancient Greek tragedy can tell us enormous amounts about that genre and about the society which produced it. Papyrus finds over the last hundred years have drastically altered and supplemented our knowledge of ancient Greek tragedy; the book is at the cutting-edge of research in this field.

Looking at sex and sexuality from a variety of historical, sociological and theoretical perspectives, as represented in a variety of media, Sex in Antiquity represents a vibrant picture of the discipline of ancient gender and sexuality studies, showcasing the work of leading international scholars as well as that of emerging talents and new voices.Sexuality and gender in the ancient world is an area of research that has grown quickly with often sudden shifts in focus and theoretical standpoints. This volume contextualizes these shifts while putting in place new ideas and avenues of exploration that further develop this lively field. This broad study also includes studies of gender and sexuality in the Ancient Near East which not only provide rich consideration of those areas but also provide a comparative perspective not often found in such collections. Sex in Antiquity is a major contribution to the field of ancient gender and sexuality studies.

Lysistrata is the most notorious of Aristophanes’ comedies. First staged in 411 BCE, its action famously revolves around a sex strike launched by the women of Greece in an attempt to force their husbands to end the war. With its risqué humour, vibrant battle of the sexes, and themes of war and peace, Lysistrata remains as daring and thought-provoking today as it would have been for its original audience in Classical Athens.Aristophanes: Lysistrata is a lively and engaging introduction to this play aimed at students and scholars of classical drama alike. It sets Lysistrata in its social and historical context, looking at key themes such as politics, religion and its provocative portrayal of women, as well as the play’s language, humour and personalities, including the formidable and trailblazing Lysistrata herself. Lysistrata has often been translated, adapted and performed in the modern era and this book also traces the ways in which it has been re-imagined and re-presented to new audiences. As this reception history reveals, Lysistrata’s appeal in the modern world lies not only in its racy subject matter, but also in its potential to be recast as a feminist, pacifist or otherwise subversive play that openly challenges the political and social status quo.

Lysistrata is the most notorious of Aristophanes’ comedies. First staged in 411 BCE, its action famously revolves around a sex strike launched by the women of Greece in an attempt to force their husbands to end the war. With its risqué humour, vibrant battle of the sexes, and themes of war and peace, Lysistrata remains as daring and thought-provoking today as it would have been for its original audience in Classical Athens.Aristophanes: Lysistrata is a lively and engaging introduction to this play aimed at students and scholars of classical drama alike. It sets Lysistrata in its social and historical context, looking at key themes such as politics, religion and its provocative portrayal of women, as well as the play’s language, humour and personalities, including the formidable and trailblazing Lysistrata herself. Lysistrata has often been translated, adapted and performed in the modern era and this book also traces the ways in which it has been re-imagined and re-presented to new audiences. As this reception history reveals, Lysistrata’s appeal in the modern world lies not only in its racy subject matter, but also in its potential to be recast as a feminist, pacifist or otherwise subversive play that openly challenges the political and social status quo.