Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08637_Field_TCGG T402.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 960b | 16 lines

     concerning the “King’s two Bodies” achieved their final
     formulation. In both instances, there was a body mortal,
     God-made and therefore “subject to all Infirmities that
     come by Nature or Accident,” set against another body,
     man-made and therefore immortal, which is “utterly void
     of Infancy and old Age and other Defects and
     Imbecilities.”
          In short, one revelled in strong contrasts of
     fictitious immortality and man’s genuine mortality,
     contrasts which the Renaissance, through its insatiable
     desire to immortalize the individual by any contrivable
     tour de force , not only failed to mitigate, but rather
     intensified: there was a reverse side to the proud
     reconquest of a terrestrial aevum . At the same time,
     however, immortality—the decisive mark of divinity, but
     vulgarized by the artifice of countless fictions—was about