» » Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings

Download Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings fb2

by Gail Godwin

Gail_Godwin Essays_and_Correspondence English
  • ISBN: 0380977958
  • Category: Fiction
  • Author: Gail Godwin
  • Subcategory: Essays & Correspondence
  • Other formats: lit lrf rtf mbr
  • Language: English
  • Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (January 9, 2001)
  • Pages: 320 pages
  • FB2 size: 1849 kb
  • EPUB size: 1290 kb
  • Rating: 4.3
  • Votes: 748
Download Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings fb2
Download FB2 Download EPUB

See a Problem? We’d love your help.

See a Problem? We’d love your help.

Books for People with Print Disabilities. Internet Archive Books. Uploaded by DeannaFlegal on July 28, 2009.

Heart, Heart, Heart in literature. New York : William Morrow. Books for People with Print Disabilities. SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata). Terms of Service (last updated 12/31/2014).

Gail Godwin takes us on a breathtaking journey that spans the entire history of human civilization, combining literature, myth, religion, philosophy, medicine, the fine arts, and intensely personal stories from the writer's own past to explore the full and complex character of this unique icon.

Gail Godwin is the author of ten novels, three of which were nominated for National Book Awards. A Southern Family and Father Melancholy's Daughter were both NYT bestsellers and Main Selections of the Book of the Month Club. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and the recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and letters.

Heart : A Natural History of the Heart-Filled Life. In this remarkable book, critically acclaimed author Gail Godwin takes us on a breathtaking journey that spans the history of human civilization, combining myth, art and religion to understand how humans have conceived of the heart through time

From the time a primitive artist painted a small, red shape on a cave wall in Asturias, Spain, some 12,000 years ago, the heart has captured the imagination, defining the way cultures view themselves and what they hold most dear.

Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings (2001). The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961–1963 (2006). The Making of a Writer, Volume Two: Journals, 1963–1969 (2011).

There is little about human hearts that she has not covered. Hearts are divided into four chambers, and her book is divided into four sections called chambers.

Godwin, Gail 1937–(Gail Kathleen Godwin) Source for information on Godwin, Gail 1937–: Concise Major 21st . Heart: A Personal Journey through Its Myths and Meanings (nonfiction), Morrow (New York, NY), 2001

Godwin, Gail 1937–(Gail Kathleen Godwin) Source for information on Godwin, Gail 1937–: Concise Major 21st Century Writers dictionary. Heart: A Personal Journey through Its Myths and Meanings (nonfiction), Morrow (New York, NY), 2001.

Lively and moving, Heart offers us a profound new look at where we come from and what has sustained us. .

Lively and moving, Heart offers us a profound new look at where we come from and what has sustained us across millennia-in short, what it is that makes us human. see all 3 descriptions). Library descriptions. In this truly remarkable work, bestselling author Gail Godwin takes us on a breathtaking journey of the heart that spans the entire history of human civilization, combining literature, myth, religion, philosophy, medicine, the fine arts, and intensely personal stories from the writer's own past to explore the full and complex character of that unique symbol.

"The Italians have a musical notation not found in any other language: tempo giusto 'the right tempo.' It means a steady, normal heat, between 66 and 76 on the metronome. Tempo giusto is the appropriate heat of the human heart."

One of the preeminent literary artists of our time turns her attention, her profound insight, and her passion to humankind's most enduring, important, evocative, and provocative symbol:

What is heart? It is the muscle of life, sending our most vital fluid coursing through our veins to every striving hungry part of our being. It is what keeps us striving against impossible odds; that fortifying something that is the cornerstone of every triumph. It elates us when we discover love and pains us greatly when that love is lost or proves unrequited. It is a gentleness that colors what we give to others. It is a symbol that we see on greeting cards: a small, red shape that was drawn on the wall of a cave in Spain more than 12,000 years ago

In this truly remarkable work, acclaimed, bestselling author Gall Godwin takes us on a breathtaking journey of the heart that spans the entire history of human civilization, combining literature, myth, religion, philosophy, medicine, the fine arts, and intensely personal stories from the writer's own past to explore the full and complex character of that unique symbol. Brimming with intelligence and wit, Godwin's explorations and meditations brilliantly track themes of the heart in life, legend, and art -- from the first valentine to the first stethoscope, from Gilgamesh to Confucius, from the heart of darkness to wearing one is heart on one's sleeve.

Here is a gift of the heart from an eminent American writer at the pinnacle of her creative talents. It is a work of extraordinary power, creativity, scholarship, and passion. Lively and moving, Heart offers us a profound new look at where we come from and what has sustained us across millennia-in short, what it is that makes us human.


Reviews about Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings (6):
Kabei
Disappointing. Though I'm a big Gail Godwin fan, and reread her later novels with delight at least once a year, this one will get put out at my next garage sale. Imagine a monster movie in which the Paralyzingly Tedious High Church Anglican Sermon meets the Deadly First Draft Graduate Thesis. I wish that Godwin had condensed her best heart insights and research into a sermon for a character like her Reverend Margaret Gower, from Evensong, to preach; or a lecture for a character like Magda Danvers, from The Good Husband, to deliver. The book's structure fails. Godwin hops unpredictably between historic characters or events to which she arbitrarily assigns a relationship with the theme of the heart. The treatments of complex historic traditions and world religions are distressingly superficial. Godwin has no command of comparative religion. The conclusions that she draws from one poorly-planned visit to a Buddhist meditation session are shallow. She gallops through Taoism, Shintoism and Confucianism, sweeping up a few easy generalizations about these complex traditions. In the best sections, Godwin writes about what she has obviously pondered longest: the Christian tradition and family relationships. She treats these subjects so well through the medium of fiction, and so clumsily in essays. I look forward to her next novel.
Vudozilkree
So beautifully written, it swept me away when I badly needed to be swept away. The sections about the author's personal life are interspersed and I found myself quite choked up at the death of her brother under the section on the broken heart...something of which it is possible, even in our sophisticated world, to die. The first half remains the most intensely for me now (I want to reread the whole book), with its brief stories into the heart of many faiths. I wrote down many of the quotes and noted books for further reading. A very unusual book, truly occupying its own space among other volumes.
Dawncrusher
Godwin, best known for her fiction (Father Melancholy's Daughter and Evensong), gives us a change of pace with her book, Heart. She begins by looking at "a painting of a wooly mammoth on a cave wall in Spain [circa 10,000 BCE], showing a red, heart-shaped spot where the beast's heart would naturally be" and ends with Paul Klee's "most striking pictorial representations of the heart." In between, we meet the Buddha--"cool mind and a warm heart" as well as Japan's unique form of poetry, haiku--images that "arise naturally out of the...heart-mind." We come across teaching concerning the heart through Jesus, Mohammad, Confucius, as well as the Upanishads. We learn about the rift that "fractured seventeenth-century thought" as James Hillman reflects, "Thought lost its heart, heart its thought."
Interspersed throughout Heart are anecdotes that give us intimate access into the author's "heart journeys." Godwin's description of her brother's death is telling. "Though the official cause of death was gunshot wounds to the head, I believe my brother Tommy died of a broken heart."
Particularly instructive to me was the section entitled "Absence of Heart/Heartlessness." Gilbert Osmond, a character in Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, illustrates the behavior of somebody "without heart." Gilbert lacks empathy--he is not able to "feel what it's like to want to give someone else something without getting something for it yourself." He appreciates Isabel Archer's efforts to promote his welfare, but doesn't understnad it.
All this and more await the reader in Godwin's ambitious heart-felt work. Her proclivity toward wordiness works better in her fiction, nonetheless, this volume is well worth your investment of time.
Brannylv
HEART is fascinating. Not a novel, but a meditation on all the meanings human beings have given the heart. Godwin uses an ancient myth of Ianna, who challenges herself by a descent into the underworld, to illustrate how we can expand our capacity for loving and understanding others. She writes vividly and fluently of famous theologians, authors, and epics, to make you think about illuminating your relationship to others. For example, the Buddha is he of the cool mind and warm heart. A life enhancing read.
Ndlaitha
Heart is a marvelous piece of writing! Every chapter has opened my mind a little more. I am very thankful to Mrs. Godwin for that interesting book. I have learned so many new facts about the different religions of the world. I recommend the reading of "Heart" to everybody curious enough to learn a little more about the persons around us thinking that the heart is important in life. Mrs. Godwin is my favorite author! Thank you for writing "Heart"! Doris VeilletteHamel, Canada
kolos
I found this journey into the meanings and aspects of the human heart uplifting, inspirational and thoroughly enlightening. Especially intriguing to me was the story of St. Augustine's search for God "from a period of violent floundering into joyful conversion." Godwin writes with a kind of intimacy that invites you to pick this book up to enjoy again and again.

Related to Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings fb2 books: