Contributors: Samuel G. Armistead, Roger Boase, Charles Burnett, Alan Deyermond, John Edwards, Brenda Fish, T.J. Gorton, Richard Hitchcock, David Hook, Francisco Marcos Marin, Ralph Penny, Barry Taylor, Roger M. Walker, Milija Pavlovic

Ross and Rachel had a baby, Britney and Justin broke up, and Time magazine asked if Bono could save the world. From the glittering tinsel of Hollywood to the advertising slogan you can't get out of your head, we are surrounded by popular culture. In A Matrix of Meanings Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor analyze aspects of popular culture and ask, What are they doing? What do they represent? and What do they say about the world in which we live? Rather than deciding whether Bono deserves our admiration, the authors examine the phenomenon of celebrity idolization. Instead of deciding whether Nike's "Just do it" campaign is morally questionable, they ask what its success reflects about our society.
A Matrix of Meanings is a hip, entertaining guide to the maze of popular culture. Plentiful photos, artwork, and humorous sidebars make for delightful reading. Readers who distrust popular culture as well as those who love it will find useful insight into developing a Christian worldview in a secular culture.

The treatment of mythological material in the poetry, prose, drama, art and music of the Hispanic Baroque. Thirteen essays engage with one of the most obsessive aspects of the Baroque aesthetic, a dedicated commitment in distinct artistic contexts to the treatment of mythological material. Within the various 'Baroques' uncovered, thereis a single unity of purpose. Meaning is always negotiable, but the process of interpretation is dependent upon intertextual forms of understanding, and presupposes the active participation of the receiver. The volume explores how the paradigmatic mythical symbols of a Renaissance epistemological world view can be considered a barometer of rupture and a gauge of the contradictory impulses of the time. Essays explore the differing functions of mythology in poetry [Quevedo, Espinosa, Gongora], prose [Cervantes], drama [Lope de Vega, Sor Juana, Calderon], art [Velazquez], and music [Latin American opera]. Collectively they trace the dialectic of continuity and rupture that underpins the appropriation of classical mythology in the period; demonstrating that the mythological legacy was not as uniform, as allegorically dominated, nor as depleted of potential as we are sometimes led to believe. ISABEL TORRES is Head of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at Queen's University, Belfast. Contributors: JEAN ANDREWS , STEPHEN BOYD, D. W. CRUICKSHANK, TREVOR. J. DADSON, B.W. IFE, ANTHONY LAPPIN, OLIVER NOBLE WOOD, JEREMY ROBBINS, BRUCE SWANSEY, BARRY TAYLOR, ISABEL TORRES, D. GARETH WALTERS

Barry Taylor spent the early years of his working life as a director of companies and charities in the City of London, including time as treasurer of the then London Marriage Guidance Council. Since1985 he has worked with charities in Glastonbury, including Chalice Well Trust as treasurer, and the Glastonbury Trust as co-founder and chair. His experience with conventional and less conventional companies and charities gives him a useful base from which to compare their differences. In this book he looks at the management of successful spiritually influenced projects. Starting with an outline of contemporary spirituality and Glastonbury, it looks at the subtle differences found in the successful running of spiritually inspired projects and the problems experienced. This is based upon experience in Glastonbury, UK but is applicable wherever similar influences are to be found. This book contains useful ideas for anyone working with this type of project.

Love Your Body: Your Path to Transformation, Health, and Healing provides a holistic understanding of the life-sustaining systems that support wellbeing in your body, mind, and spirit. It begins by looking at those individual physical systems within the body that maintain and contribute to optimal health. Then it looks at the context in which healing takes place and the different tools and practices readers might consider using along their journey. Dr. Barry Taylor has practiced Naturopathic medicine in the New England area for nearly four decades. He has lectured internationally on topics of holistic health and wellness, and has taught courses throughout the United States. Since 1981 more than ten thousand people have participated in his Love Your Body workshop, which he designed as a comprehensive detoxification method that considers the multifaceted nature of our lives.

Elvis Presley. Andy Warhol. Nike. Stephen King. Ellen DeGeneres. Sim City. Facebook. These American pop culture icons are just a few examples of entries you will find in this fascinating guide to religion and popular culture. Arranged chronologically from 1950 to the present, this accessible work explores the theological themes in 101 well-established figures and trends from film, television, video games, music, sports, art, fashion, and literature. This book is ideal for anyone who has an interest in popular culture and its impact on our spiritual lives. Contributors include such experts in the field as David Dark, Mark I. Pinsky, Lisa Swain, Steve Turner, Lauren Winner, and more.

Barry Taylor's book mounts an argument against one of the fundamental tenets of much contemporary philosophy, the idea that we can make sense of reality as existing objectively, independently of our capacities to come to know it. Part One sets the scene by arguings that traditional realism can be explicated as a doctrine about truth - that truth is objective, that is, public, bivalent, and epistemically independent. Part Two, the centrepiece of the book, shows how a form of Hilary Putnam's model-theoretic argument demonstrates that no such notion of truth can be founded on the idea of correspondence, as explained in model-theoretic terms (more traditional accounts of correspondence having been already disposed of in Part One). Part Three argues that non-correspondence accounts of truth - truth as superassertibility or idealized rational acceptability, formal conceptions of truth, Tarskian truth - also fail to meet the criteria for objectivity; along the way, it also dismisses the claims of the latterday views of Putnam, and of similar views articulated by John McDowell, to constitute a new, less traditional form of realism. In the Coda, Taylor bolsters some of the considerations advanced in Part Three in evaluating formal conceptions of truth, by assessing and rejecting the claims of Robert Brandom to have combined such an account of truth with a satisfactory account of semantic structure. He concludes that there is no defensible notion of truth which preserves the theses of traditional realism, nor any extant position sufficiently true to the ideals of that doctrine to inherit its title. So the only question remaining is which form of antirealism to adopt.

Survey articles and fresh readings of the Libro. Este nuevo volumen ofrece ensayos de especialistas anglofonos sobre el Libro de Buen Amor, obra monumental del siglo XIV. El volumen responde a la necesidad de un enfoque actualizado que examina el estado de las cuestionesprincipales (como son la de la autoria y su contexto, la metrica, las tradiciones manuscrita e impresa, el uso de exempla y proverbios, y las aproximaciones teoricas al Libro) y sus implicaciones para una lectura delLibro. Ademas aporta dos estudios de uno de los episodios principales (el encuentro del arcipreste con Don Amor hasta la muerte de Dona Endrina). Se explora tambien la estructura de la obra juanruizana como un texto pre-novelistico en el sentido bajtiniano y desde la teoria del caos. Contribuyen: Laurence de Looze, Alan Deyermond, Martin Duffell, Elizabeth Drayson, Jeremy Lawrance, Dorothy S. Severin, Barry Taylor, y los editores. This volume of essays on the fourteenth-century Libro de Buen Amor by Anglophone Hispanists comprises survey articles (author and milieu, print and manuscript traditions, metrics, exempla and proverbs, modern theoretical treatments of the Libro), fresh readings of a key passage (the encounter between Don Amor and the Archpriest, and don Melon and dona Endrina), and appraisals of the Libro's meanings and structure as pre-novelistic discourse, and through chaos theory. Contributors are Alan Deyermond, Elizabeth Drayson, Martin Duffell, Jeremy Lawrance, Laurence de Looze, Dorothy S. Severin, Barry Taylor, and the editors.