Author: David Hopkins File Type: pdf Casting a fresh perspective on the greatest long poem in English, David Hopkins guides the reader through the inspiring poetic landscape of Miltons great epic Paradise Lost, a work of literature which has compelled and fascinated readers down the ages and which offers enduring insight into the human condition * A welcome aesthetic focus on the poetic experience of reading Paradise Lost rather than its religious or political context * Provides a nuanced, unified vision of the poem from a celebrated authority on English poetry of the period * Includes consideration of the poems earlier champions and critics * Passionately advocates Paradise Losts continuing artistic and philosophical relevance**

Author: Richard J. Golsan File Type: pdf The Vichy Past in France Today Corruptions of Memory is an interdisciplinary study examining the continuing impact of the memory of Vichy and World War II in French politics, literature, intellectual discourse and debates, and the law. It argues that despite multiple efforts in all of these areas to come to terms with Frances World War II past and to fulfill a duty to memory to Vichys Jewish victims, the nation is still not reconciled to the so-called Dark Years, even seventy years after the Liberation. Indeed the Vichy past occupies important recent works of literature, inflects much political discussion and debate, often serving as a metaphor for political (and moral) evil. Its legacies include the passage of problematic laws that dangerously distort and simplify complex historical realities. Chapter I examines the historical and legal legacies of the 1990s trials for crimes against humanity and traces their impact on the so-called memorial laws of the new century. Chapter II revisits the 2002 presidential elections in France and the impact of Jean-Marie Le Pens first round victory on intellectual and cultural debate. Chapter III explores Alain Badious controversial characterization of Sarkozys presidential victory as a return of Petainism in The Meaning of Sarkozy. The discussion is cast against the backdrop of Badious radical political thought and Sarkozys political uses and misuses of the World War II past. Chapter IV examines the controversy surrounding the publication of Jonathan Littells The Kindly Ones (2006) and its morally and historically problematic portrayal of an unrepentant Nazi and SS officer. Chapter V discusses Yannick Haenels fictional recreation of the Polish resistance hero Jan Karski (The Messenger, 2009) in his novel by that name, and the polemics between the novels author and the maker of the classic Holocaust documentary film, Shoah, Claude Lanzmann. The Conclusion first explores the ways in which the memory of Vichy inflects literary and political reflections on the recent terrorist attacks in France. It also examines strategies proposed by French philosophers for moving beyond the impasse of Vichys memory in France before concluding with a different strategy proposed by the author for the French nation to move beyond the memory of the Dark Years. **

Author: Barbara Novak File Type: pdf In this distinguished work, which Hilton Kramer in The New York Times Book Review called surely the best book ever written on the subject, Barbara Novak illuminates what is essentially American about American art. She highlights not only those aspects that appear indigenously in our art works, but also those features that consistently reappear over time. Novak examines the paintings of Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Fitz H. Lane, William Sidney Mount, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. She draws provocative and original conclusions about the role in American art of spiritualism and mathematics, conceptualism and the object, and Transcendentalism and the fact. She analyzes not only the paintings but nineteenth-century aesthetics as well, achieving a unique synthesis of art and literature.Now available with a new preface and an updated bibliography, this lavishly illustrated volume--featuring more than one hundred black-and-white illustrations and sixteen full-color plates--remains one of the seminal works in American art history.

Author: Didier Fassin File Type: pdf In the face of the worlds disorders, moral concerns have provided a powerful ground for developing international as well as local policies. Didier Fassin draws on case materials from France, South Africa, Venezuela, and Palestine to explore the meaning of humanitarianism in the contexts of immigration and asylum, disease and poverty, disaster and war. He traces and analyzes recent shifts in moral and political discourse and practices what he terms humanitarian reason and shows in vivid examples how humanitarianism is confronted by inequality and violence. Deftly illuminating the tensions and contradictions in humanitarian government, he reveals the ambiguities confronting states and organizations as they struggle to deal with the intolerable. His critique of humanitarian reason, respectful of the participants involved but lucid about the stakes they disregard, offers theoretical and empirical foundations for a political and moral anthropology.Review[A] brilliant compilation. . . . One of the most thought-provoking books this reviewer has read in many years.(Choice 2012-04-27) Meticulously researched, well balanced and absorbing. . . . Interesting and thought provoking.(European Review Of HistoryRevue Europeenne Dhistoire 2012-08-23) A very thought-provoking contribution to the literature. The analysis is precise and persuasive.(Mark Welch Metapsychology Online Review 2012-02-28) Humanitarian reason constitutes an outstanding study of contemporary Western moral and political economy.(Social Anthropology 2012-08-16) A sober, powerful book. (Survival 2013-04-01) From the Inside FlapThis is a field-defining volume. Based on ten years of comparative field research and a unique combination of medical and anthropological expertise, Didier Fassins Humanitarian Reason avoids moralizing in favor of careful sociological analysis. Humanitarianism emerges both as a form of reason and as a key force in the contemporary arts of government. --Claudio Lomnitz, Columbia University, author of Death and the Idea of Mexico This is a rigourous, principled, and compelling account of the emergence of humanitarianism and of what happens when humanitarianism is put into practice. Through a tour of various humanitarian projects in France and elsewhere, Didier Fassin develops a compelling case for a sea change in our social imaginary, one in which an ethics of suffering and compassion has come to displace a politics of rights and justice. Fassin moves with finesse between constructionist and realist arguments in this major transatlantic work of ethnographic reason from one of the most interesting voices writing today. --Michael Lambek, University of Toronto editor of Ordinary Ethics Anthropology, Language, and Action The rise of a field of humanitarian action accompanies cultural transformations in the category of the human and the idea of responsibility. In this important book, Didier Fassin addresses the nature of obligation to strangers and solidarity amid inequality, and connects these themes to the question of whether to think of global moral community as an attractive ideal, a problematic fantasy, or both. --Craig Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council and author of Nations Matter This is a field-defining volume. Based on ten years of comparative field research and a unique combination of medical and anthropological expertise, Didier Fassins Humanitarian Reason avoids moralizing in favor of careful sociological analysis. Humanitarianism emerges both as a form of reason and as a key force in the contemporary arts of government. --Claudio Lomnitz, Columbia University, author of Death and the Idea of MexicoThis is a rigourous, principled, and compelling account of the emergence of humanitarianism and of what happens when humanitarianism is put into practice. Through a tour of various humanitarian projects in France and elsewhere, Didier Fassin develops a compelling case for a sea change in our social imaginary, one in which an ethics of suffering and compassion has come to displace a politics of rights and justice. Fassin moves with finesse between constructionist and realist arguments in this major transatlantic work of ethnographic reason from one of the most interesting voices writing today. --Michael Lambek, University of Toronto editor of Ordinary Ethics Anthropology, Language, and ActionThe rise of a field of humanitarian action accompanies cultural transformations in the category of the human and the idea of responsibility. In this important book, Didier Fassin addresses the nature of obligation to strangers and solidarity amid inequality, and connects these themes to the question of whether to think of global moral community as an attractive ideal, a problematic fantasy, or both. --Craig Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council and author of Nations Matter