Poisonous Muse

Download Poisonous Muse PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
ISBN 13 : 1609384032
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (93 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Poisonous Muse by : Sara L. Crosby

Download or read book Poisonous Muse written by Sara L. Crosby and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to Sara Crosby, the new popular ‘power of horror’—in writings by Poe and many others—gave American authors a new way of moving beyond beauty through the ‘poisonous muse.’ This new power corresponds to the vitalizing changes in Jacksonian America and brings with it a major change in US literary history. Her study of these changes in the US cultural scene is an incredibly engaging, vibrant narrative.

Dangerous Muse

Download Dangerous Muse PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Nan A. Talese
ISBN 13 : 0307822354
Total Pages : 466 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (78 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Dangerous Muse by : Nancy Schoenberger

Download or read book Dangerous Muse written by Nancy Schoenberger and published by Nan A. Talese. This book was released on 2012-07-18 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caroline Blackwood was born into the Guinness family in 1931, the daughter of the Fourth Marquess and Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava. Brought up on the ancestral estate in Northern Ireland, Blackwood moved easily among the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, the Soho bohemians of postwar England, and the liberal intelligentsia of 1960s New York. She was on intimate terms with some of the most celebrated artists and writers of her time. An unpredictable beauty known for her wit and her courage, she has been called a muse to genius. But her marriages to three brilliant men: the painter Lucian Freud, the composer Israel Citkowitz, and the poet Robert Lowell were as troubled as they were inspiring. During her marriage to Lucian Freud, Caroline became part of an artistic and literary group that included Francis Bacon and Cyril Connolly who was infatuated with her but eventually Freud's gambling caused irrevocable problems between them. Caroline was also in the grips of her own unfolding tragedy: a fatal attraction to alcohol that would plague the rest of her life. Upon the breakup of her first marriage, she moved to America , where she met her second and third husbands. Once regarded as the obvious successor to Aaron Copland, Israel Citkowitz had stopped composing long before he met Caroline. While he and Caroline had three children together, it was her subsequent seven year marriage to Robert Lowell that she considered her "main marriage." Her life with Lowell was probably the most difficult time of her life as she dealt with his increasingly frequent and worsening attacks of mania. And to Lowell she was not only an inspiration but_as he described in his Pulitzer-prize- winning book of verse The Dolphin, she was also "a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers." In 1977, Robert Lowell fled London to return to his former wife Elizabeth Hardwick. He died from a heart attack in the backseat of a taxi, clutching Girl in Bed, Lucian Freud's haunting portrait of Caroline. Blackwood was an artist in her own right. Her literary talents were dark and satiric; her ten books of fiction and nonfiction betrayed an extraordinary eye for human physiognomy, attire, and behavior. Arguably her best book, Great Granny Webster described the comic terrors of her upbringing in Northern Ireland, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She herself died of cancer on Valentine's Day 1996, at the age of sixty-four. Dangerous Muse is the first biography of Lady Caroline Blackwood. Drawing upon numerous interviews and unpublished letters from Blackwood's mother, Maureen Dufferin, and friends and family, including Andrew Harvey, Jonathan Raban, John Richardson, and Caroline's sister Perdita Blackwood, Nancy Schoenberger eloquently captures one of the most original and provocative figures in contemporary letters of the twentieth century.

The Drowned Muse

Download The Drowned Muse PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 019101897X
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Drowned Muse by : Anne-Gaëlle Saliot

Download or read book The Drowned Muse written by Anne-Gaëlle Saliot and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Drowned Muse is a study of the extraordinary destiny, in the history of European culture, of an object which could seem, at first glance, quite ordinary in the history of European culture. It tells the story of a mask, the cast of a young girl's face entitled "L'Inconnue de la Seine," the Unknown Woman of the Seine, and its subsequent metamorphoses as a cultural figure. Legend has it that the "Inconnue" drowned herself in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. The forensic scientist tending to her unidentified corpse at the Paris Morgue was supposedly so struck by her allure that he captured in plaster the contours of her face. This unknown girl, also referred to as "The Mona Lisa of Suicide", has since become the object of an obsessive interest that started in the late 1890s, reached its peak in the 1930s, and continues to reverberate today. Aby Warburg defines art history as "a ghost story for grown-ups." This study is similarly "a ghost story for grown-ups", narrating the aura of a cultural object that crosses temporal, geographical, and linguistic frontiers. It views the "Inconnue" as a symptomatic expression of a modern world haunted by the earlier modernity of the nineteenth century. It investigates how the mask's metamorphoses reflect major shifts in the cultural history of the last two centuries, approaching the "Inconnue" as an entry point to understand a phenomenon characteristic of 20th- and 21st-century modernity: the translatability of media. Doing so, this study mobilizes discourses surrounding the "Inconnue", casting them as points of negotiation through which we may consider the modern age.

Toxic Tourism

Download Toxic Tourism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Alabama Press
ISBN 13 : 0817355871
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (173 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Toxic Tourism by : Phaedra C. Pezzullo

Download or read book Toxic Tourism written by Phaedra C. Pezzullo and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2009-05-10 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book length study of the environmental justice movement, tourism, and the links between race, class, and waste

Healing with Poisons

Download Healing with Poisons PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295749016
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (957 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Healing with Poisons by : Yan Liu

Download or read book Healing with Poisons written by Yan Liu and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295749013 At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically employed as healing agents to cure everything from abdominal pain to epidemic disease. Healing with Poisons explores the ways physicians, religious figures, court officials, and laypersons used toxic substances to both relieve acute illnesses and enhance life. It illustrates how the Chinese concept of du—a word carrying a core meaning of “potency”—led practitioners to devise a variety of methods to transform dangerous poisons into effective medicines. Recounting scandals and controversies involving poisons from the Era of Division to the Tang, historian Yan Liu considers how the concept of du was central to how the people of medieval China perceived both their bodies and the body politic. He also examines the wide range of toxic minerals, plants, and animal products used in classical Chinese pharmacy, including everything from the herb aconite to the popular recreational drug Five-Stone Powder. By recovering alternative modes of understanding wellness and the body’s interaction with foreign substances, this study cautions against arbitrary classifications and exemplifies the importance of paying attention to the technical, political, and cultural conditions in which substances become truly meaningful. Healing with Poisons is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of the University of Buffalo.

Toxic Archipelago

Download Toxic Archipelago PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295803010
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (958 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Toxic Archipelago by : Brett L. Walker

Download or read book Toxic Archipelago written by Brett L. Walker and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every person on the planet is entangled in a web of ecological relationships that link farms and factories with human consumers. Our lives depend on these relationships -- and are imperiled by them as well. Nowhere is this truer than on the Japanese archipelago. During the nineteenth century, Japan saw the rise of Homo sapiens industrialis, a new breed of human transformed by an engineered, industrialized, and poisonous environment. Toxins moved freely from mines, factory sites, and rice paddies into human bodies. Toxic Archipelago explores how toxic pollution works its way into porous human bodies and brings unimaginable pain to some of them. Brett Walker examines startling case studies of industrial toxins that know no boundaries: deaths from insecticide contaminations; poisonings from copper, zinc, and lead mining; congenital deformities from methylmercury factory effluents; and lung diseases from sulfur dioxide and asbestos. This powerful, probing book demonstrates how the Japanese archipelago has become industrialized over the last two hundred years -- and how people and the environment have suffered as a consequence.

The Kinder Poison

Download The Kinder Poison PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 198483522X
Total Pages : 433 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (848 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Kinder Poison by : Natalie Mae

Download or read book The Kinder Poison written by Natalie Mae and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A DELICIOUS HIGH-STAKES ADVENTURE." --PEOPLE MAGAZINE Perfect for fans of Victoria Aveyard and Holly Black, this enthralling fantasy adventure follows a teenage girl chosen to be the human sacrifice in a deadly game between three heirs who will do anything for the crown. Zahru has long dreamed of leaving the kingdom of Orkena and having the kinds of adventures she's only ever heard about in stories. But as a lowly Whisperer, her power to commune with animals means that her place is serving in the royal stables until the day her magic runs dry. All that changes when the ailing ruler invokes the Crossing. A death-defying race across the desert, in which the first of his heirs to finish--and take the life of a human sacrifice at the journey's end--will ascend to the throne. With all of the kingdom abuzz, Zahru leaps at the chance to change her fate if just for a night by sneaking into the palace for a taste of the revelry. But the minor indiscretion turns into a deadly mistake when she gets caught up in a feud between the heirs and is forced to become the Crossing's human sacrifice. Now Zahru's only hope for survival hinges on the impossible: somehow figuring out how to overcome the most dangerous people in the world.

Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure of Poison

Download Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure of Poison PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031160002
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (311 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure of Poison by : Sylvia A. Pamboukian

Download or read book Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure of Poison written by Sylvia A. Pamboukian and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-12 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure of Poison examines Christie’s female poisoners in the context of Christie’s own experience in pharmacy and of detective fiction. In doing so, it uncovers an overlooked dynamic in which female poisoners deliver well-deserved comeuppance for gendered and classed wrongdoing ordinarily accepted in everyday life. While critics have long recognized male outlaws, like Robin Hood, who use crime to oppose a corrupt system, this book contends that female outlaws – witches and poisoners – offer a similar heritage of empowered femininity. Far from cozy and formulaic, Agatha Christie’s outlaw poisoners offer readers the surprising pleasures of comeuppance, and they set the stage for contemporary detective fiction writers, more recent films depicting poisoning as empowering, and even poison gardens, which are tourist destinations that offer visitors the guilty pleasure of poison.

The Dangerous Lover

Download The Dangerous Lover PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Ohio State University Press
ISBN 13 : 0814210341
Total Pages : 130 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (142 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Dangerous Lover by : Deborah Lutz

Download or read book The Dangerous Lover written by Deborah Lutz and published by Ohio State University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Dangerous Lover takes seriously the ubiquity of the brooding romantic hero - his dark past, his remorseful and rebellious exile from comfortable everyday living. Deborah Lutz traces the recent history of this figure, through the melancholy iconoclasm of the Romantics, the lost soul redeemed by love of the Brontes, and the tormented individualism of twentieth-century love narratives. The Dangerous Lover is the first book-length study of this pervasive literary hero; it also challenges the tendency of sophisticated philosophical readings of popular narratives and culture to focus on male-coded genres. In its conjunction of high and low literary forms, this volume explores new historical and cultural framings for female-coded popular narratives."--BOOK JACKET.

The Poison Plot

Download The Poison Plot PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501721321
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Poison Plot by : Elaine Forman Crane

Download or read book The Poison Plot written by Elaine Forman Crane and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accusation of attempted murder rudely interrupted Mary Arnold’s dalliances with working men and her extensive shopping sprees. When her husband Benedict fell deathly ill and then asserted she had tried to kill him with poison, the result was a dramatic petition for divorce. The case before the Rhode Island General Assembly and its tumultuous aftermath, during which Benedict died, made Mary a cause célèbre in Newport through the winter of 1738 and 1739. Elaine Forman Crane invites readers into the salacious domestic life of Mary and Benedict Arnold and reveals the seamy side of colonial Newport. The surprise of The Poison Plot, however, is not the outrageous acts of Mary or the peculiar fact that attempted murder was not a convictable offense in Rhode Island. As Crane shows with style, Mary’s case was remarkable precisely because adultery, criminality and theft, and even spousal homicide were well known in the New England colonies. Assumptions of Puritan propriety are overturned by the facts of rough and tumble life in a port city: money was to be made, pleasure was to be had, and if marriage became an obstacle to those pursuits a woman had means to set things right. The Poison Plot is an intimate drama constructed from historical documents and informed by Crane’s deep knowledge of elite and common life in Newport. Her keen eye for telling details and her sense of story bring Mary, Benedict, and a host of other characters—including her partner in adultery, Walter Motley, and John Tweedy the apothecary who sold Mary toxic drugs—to life in the homes, streets, and shops of the port city. The result is a vivid tale that will change minds about life in supposedly prim and proper New England.

A Strange and Formidable Weapon

Download A Strange and Formidable Weapon PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 0803222238
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (32 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis A Strange and Formidable Weapon by : Marion Girard

Download or read book A Strange and Formidable Weapon written by Marion Girard and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2008-06-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The advent of poison gas in World War I shocked Britons at all levels of society, yet by the end of the conflict their nation was a leader in chemical warfare. Although never used on the home front, poison gas affected almost every segment of British society physically, mentally, or emotionally, proving to be an armament of total war. Through cartoons, military records, novels, treaties, and other sources, Marion Girard examines the varied ways different sectors of British society viewed chemical warfare, from the industrialists who promoted their toxic weapons while maintaining private control of production,øto the politicians who used gas while balancing the need for victory with the risk of developing a reputation for barbarity. Although most Britons considered gas a vile weapon and a symptom of the enemy?s inhumanity, many eventually condoned its use. ø The public debates about the future of gas extended to the interwar years, and evidence reveals that the taboo against poison gas was far from inevitable. A Strange and Formidable Weapon uncovers the complicated history of this weapon of total war and illustrates the widening involvement of society in warfare.

The Poison King

Download The Poison King PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691150265
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Poison King by : Adrienne Mayor

Download or read book The Poison King written by Adrienne Mayor and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-27 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new account of one of Rome's most relentless but least understood foes. Claiming Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia as ancestors, Mithradates inherited a wealthy Black Sea kingdom at age fourteen after his mother poisoned his father. He fled into exile and returned in triumph to become a ruler of superb intelligence and fierce ambition. Hailed as a savior by his followers and feared as a second Hannibal by his enemies, he envisioned a grand Eastern empire to rival Rome. After massacring eighty thousand Roman citizens in 88 BC, he seized Greece and modern-day Turkey. Fighting some of the most spectacular battles in ancient history, he dragged Rome into a long round of wars and threatened to invade Italy itself. His uncanny ability to elude capture and surge back after devastating losses unnerved the Romans, while his mastery of poisons allowed him to foil assassination attempts and eliminate rivals.--From publisher description.

King of Poisons

Download King of Poisons PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 1597977039
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (979 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis King of Poisons by : John Parascandola

Download or read book King of Poisons written by John Parascandola and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, arsenic's image as a poison has been inextricably tied to images of foul play. In King of Poisons, John Parascandola examines the surprising history of this deadly element. From Gustave Flaubert to Dorothy Sayers, arsenic has long held a place in the literary realm as an instrument of murder and suicide. It was delightfully used as a source of comedy in the famous play Arsenic and Old Lace. But as Parascandola shows, arsenic has had a number of surprising real-world applications. It was frequently found in such common items as wallpaper, paint, cosmetics, and even candy, and its use in medical treatments was widespread. American ambassador Clare Boothe Luce suffered from exposure to arsenical paint in her study, and Napoleon's death has long been speculated to be the result of accidental or intentional poisoning. But arsenic poisoning is still a public menace. In the neighborhood surrounding American University in Washington, D.C., the army has undertaken a massive cleanup of artillery shells and bottles containing chemical warfare agents such as arsenical lewisite after a number of workmen and residents became ill. Arsenic contamination of the water supply in Bangladesh and in West Bengal, India, is a major public health problem today as well. From murder to crime fiction, from industrial toxin to chemical warfare, arsenic remains a powerful force in modern life.

Poison

Download Poison PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Crown Books for Young Readers
ISBN 13 : 1101932236
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (19 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Poison by : Sarah Albee

Download or read book Poison written by Sarah Albee and published by Crown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science geeks and armchair detectives will soak up this non-lethal, humorous account of the role poisons have played in human history. Perfect for STEM enthusiasts! For centuries, people have been poisoning one another—changing personal lives and the course of empires alike. From spurned spouses and rivals, to condemned prisoners like Socrates, to endangered emperors like Alexander the Great, to modern-day leaders like Joseph Stalin and Yasser Arafat, poison has played a starring role in the demise of countless individuals. And those are just the deliberate poisonings. Medical mishaps, greedy “snake oil” salesmen and food contaminants, poisonous Prohibition, and industrial toxins also impacted millions. Part history, part chemistry, part whodunit, Poison: Deadly Deeds, Perilous Professions, and Murderous Medicines traces the role poisons have played in history from antiquity to the present and shines a ghoulish light on the deadly intersection of human nature . . . and Mother Nature.

Social Poison

Download Social Poison PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421404664
Total Pages : 245 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Social Poison by : Howard Padwa

Download or read book Social Poison written by Howard Padwa and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comparative history examines the divergent paths taken by Britain and France in managing opiate abuse during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though the governments of both nations viewed rising levels of opiate use as a problem, Britain and France took opposite courses of action in addressing the issue. The British sanctioned maintenance treatment for addiction, while the French authorities did not hesitate to take legal action against addicts and the doctors who prescribed drugs to them. Drawing on primary documents, Howard Padwa examines the factors that led to these disparate approaches. He finds that national policies were influenced by shifts in the composition of drug-using populations of the two countries and a marked divergence in British and French conceptions of citizenship. Beyond shared concerns about public health and morality, Britain and France had different understandings of the threat that opiate abuse posed to their respective communities. Padwa traces the evolution of thinking on the matter in both countries, explaining why Britain took a less adversarial approach to domestic opiate abuse despite the productivity-sapping powers of this social poison, and why the relatively libertine French chose to attack opiate abuse. In the process, Padwa reveals the confluence of changes in medical knowledge, culture, politics, and drug-user demographics throughout the period, a convergence of forces that at once highlighted the issue and transformed it from one of individual health into a societal concern. An insightful look at the development of drug discourses in the nineteenth century and drug policy in the twentieth century, Social Poison will appeal to scholars and students in public health and the history of medicine.

Poisonous Pandas

Download Poisonous Pandas PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 150360456X
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (36 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Poisonous Pandas by : Matthew Kohrman

Download or read book Poisonous Pandas written by Matthew Kohrman and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A favorite icon for cigarette manufacturers across China since the mid-twentieth century has been the panda, with factories from Shanghai to Sichuan using cuddly cliché to market tobacco products. The proliferation of panda-branded cigarettes coincides with profound, yet poorly appreciated, shifts in the worldwide tobacco trade. Over the last fifty years, transnational tobacco companies and their allies have fueled a tripling of the world's annual consumption of cigarettes. At the forefront is the China National Tobacco Corporation, now producing forty percent of cigarettes sold globally. What's enabled the manufacturing of cigarettes in China to flourish since the time of Mao and to prosper even amidst public health condemnation of smoking? In Poisonous Pandas, an interdisciplinary group of scholars comes together to tell that story. They offer novel portraits of people within the Chinese polity—government leaders, scientists, tax officials, artists, museum curators, and soldiers—who have experimentally revamped the country's pre-Communist cigarette supply chain and fitfully expanded its political, economic, and cultural influence. These portraits cut against the grain of what contemporary tobacco-control experts typically study, opening a vital new window on tobacco—the single largest cause of preventable death worldwide today.

Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato

Download Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316885615
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (168 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato by : Rana Saadi Liebert

Download or read book Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato written by Rana Saadi Liebert and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a resolution of the paradox posed by the pleasure of tragedy by returning to its earliest articulations in archaic Greek poetry and its subsequent emergence as a philosophical problem in Plato's Republic. Socrates' claim that tragic poetry satisfies our 'hunger for tears' hearkens back to archaic conceptions of both poetry and mourning that suggest a common source of pleasure in the human appetite for heightened forms of emotional distress. By unearthing a psychosomatic model of aesthetic engagement implicit in archaic poetry and philosophically elaborated by Plato, this volume not only sheds new light on the Republic's notorious indictment of poetry, but also identifies rationally and ethically disinterested sources of value in our pursuit of aesthetic states. In doing so the book resolves an intractable paradox in aesthetic theory and human psychology: the appeal of painful emotions.