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Tracing the gender of representations of death in art and literature from medieval times to the present day, Guthke offers astonishing new insights into the nature and perception of the Western self in its cultural, intellectual, and literary context.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49527757209873,"sku":"GOR003852122","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50482826772753,"sku":"CIN0521644607G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51003188412689,"sku":"NIN9780521644600","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52476956672273,"sku":"NLS9780521644600","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0521644607.jpg?v=1751040163"},{"product_id":"b-traven-book-karl-s-guthke-9781556521317","title":"B.Traven","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49586339479825,"sku":"GOR004250320","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50498113372433,"sku":"CIN1556521316VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51324840444177,"sku":"CIN1556521316G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51882760667409,"sku":"GOR005786723","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":52816211050769,"sku":"CIN1556521316A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53251919708433,"sku":"GOR003046007","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1556521316.jpg?v=1750991042"},{"product_id":"last-words-book-karl-s-guthke-9780691056883","title":"Last Words","description":"Based on factual accounts, anecdotes, literary works and films, this study investigates the fascination society feels for last words, those utterances spoken at the border between this world and the next. 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Various epitaphic sub-cultures are analyzed, among them the time-honored custom of composing one's own tomb inscription as well as the ancient and modern convention of honoring animals with epitaphs. It also examines epitaph-collecting, epitaph lies, humorous epitaphs, and the change in social and religious attitudes toward suicides. The book concludes with a cultural and intellectual history of epitaphs. An epilogue addresses the question of the supposed disappearance of epitaph culture at the present time.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51006927667473,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51006930354449,"sku":"NIN9780773408470","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52594829885713,"sku":"NLS9780773408470","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0773408479.jpg?v=1751394694"},{"product_id":"exploring-the-interior-book-karl-s-guthke-9781783743933","title":"Exploring the Interior","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51049429631249,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51049432744209,"sku":"NIN9781783743933","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52475009106193,"sku":"NLS9781783743933","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/178374393X.jpg?v=1750865739"},{"product_id":"exploring-the-interior-book-karl-s-guthke-9781783743940","title":"Exploring the Interior","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this fascinating collection of essays Harvard Emeritus Professor Karl S. Guthke examines the ways in which, for European scholars and writers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, world-wide geographical exploration led to an exploration of the self. Guthke explains how in the age of Enlightenment and beyond intellectual developments were fuelled by excitement about what Ulrich Im Hof called the grand opening-up of the wide world, especially of the interior of the non-European continents. This outward turn was complemented by a fascination with the world within as anthropology and ethnology focused on the humanity of the indigenous populations of far-away lands - an interest in human nature that suggested a way for Europeans to understand themselves, encapsulated in Gauguin's Tahitian rumination What are we?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe essays in the first half of the book discuss first- or second-hand, physical or mental encounters with the exotic lands and populations beyond the supposed cradle of civilisation. The works of literature and documents of cultural life featured in these essays bear testimony to the crossing not only of geographical, ethnological, and cultural borders but also of borders of a variety of intellectual activities and interests. The second section examines the growing interest in astronomy and the engagement with imagined worlds in the universe, again with a view to understanding \u003cem\u003ehomo sapiens\u003c\/em\u003e, as compared now to the extra-terrestrials that were confidently assumed to exist. The final group of essays focuses on the exploration of the landscape of what was called the universe within; featuring, among a variety of other texts, Schiller's plays \u003cem\u003eThe Maid of Orleans\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eWilliam Tell\u003c\/em\u003e, these essays observe and analyse what Erich Heller termed The Artist's Journey into the Interior.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis collection, which travels from the interior of continents to the interior of the mind, is itself a set of explorations that revel in the discovery of what was half-hidden in language. Written by a scholar of international repute, it is eye-opening reading for all those with an interest in the literary and cultural history of (and since) the Enlightenment.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52584752021777,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52584752578833,"sku":"NLS9781783743940","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781783743940.jpg?v=1761051025"},{"product_id":"life-without-end-book-karl-s-guthke-9781571139740","title":"Life without End","description":"The idea of earthly immortality has a tradition in literature dating to the Gilgamesh epic. But what would it mean to attain such immortality? Answers are suggested in novels and plays that explore the theme using varieties of Borges's rational imagination, often in connection with projections of biology or cybernetics. In this groundbreaking study, Karl S. Guthke examines key works in this vein, throwing into relief fascinating instances of human self-awareness across the last three hundred years. Authors discussed in detail include J. M. Barrie, Calvino, Shaw, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Swift, Aldous Huxley, Walter Besant, Arthur C. Clarke, Wilde, Borges, William Godwin, P. B. and Mary Shelley, Capek, Machado de Assis, Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Amis, Dino Buzzati, Houellebecq, Iris Barry, Saramago, Rushdie, Gabi Gleichmann, and Pascal Mercier. Guthke finds that the fictional triumph over death is only rarely viewed positively, and mostly as a curse - for a variety of reasons. Almost always, however, literary experiments with immortality suggest an alternative: the chance to take our limited lifetime into our own hands, shapingit meaningfully and thereby experiencing a new way of being in the world (Mercier). The fictional immortals reject this challenge, thus depriving themselves of what makes humans human and life worth living. And what that mightbe is also at least hinted at in the works Guthke analyzes. As a result, an aspect of cultural history comes into view that is revealing and stimulating at a time that is, as Der Spiegel put it in 2014, obsessed by the invention of immortality. Karl S. Guthke is the Kuno Francke Professor of Germanic Art and Culture, Emeritus, of Harvard University.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52615379124497,"sku":"NLS9781571139740","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781571139740.jpg?v=1761523882"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-karl-s-guthke.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}