Bøker av Peter Toohey

This work presents a comprehensive survey of the major surviving examples of Greek and Roman didactic poetry: Hesiod's "Works and Days", Lucretius' "On the Universe", Virgil's "Georgics" and Ovid's "Art of Love", amongst others.

In the first book to argue for the benefits of boredom, Peter Toohey dispels the myth that it's simply a childish emotion or an existential malaise like Jean-Paul Sartre's nausea. He shows how boredom is, in fact, one of our most common and constructive emotions and is an essential part of the human experience.This informative and entertaining investigation of boredomwhat it is and what it isn't, its uses and its dangersspans more than 3,000 years of history and takes readers through fascinating neurological and psychological theories of emotion, as well as recent scientific investigations, to illustrate its role in our lives. There are Australian aboriginals and bored Romans, Jeffrey Archer and caged cockatoos, Camus and the early Christians, Drer and Degas. Toohey also explores the important role that boredom plays in popular and highbrow culture and how over the centuries it has proven to be a stimulus for art and literature.Toohey shows that boredom is a universal emotion experienced by humans throughout history and he explains its place, and value, in today's world. Boredom: A Lively History isvital reading for anyone interested in what goes on when supposedly nothing happens.

This survey offers guidance through the major classical writers of epic to readers new to the subject: it begins with Homer and concludes with an overview of the development of late ancient epic and the interface between epic and the novel.