Bøker av Conal Condren

This book explores closely related aspects of the historical study of humour. It challenges much that has been taken for granted in a field of study for which history has been marginal. It disputes the conventional genealogical view that humour theory dates from antiquity and outlines an alternative conceptual history. It critically examines the nostrum that humour is universal. It then explores the methodological difficulties in treating both verbal and non-verbal humour historically, dealing with contextualisation, intentionality, translation and reception. It explores the variable relationships between satire and definition and concludes with a detailed case study from recent history: the iconic Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister television comedies. These are commonly seen as realistic, but better understood as presenting popularised theories for satiric and propagandistic effect. Only in their treatment of language can we assess a putative political realism. The satires are often highly perceptive but largely dependent on misleading and inadequate theories of political discourse.Conal Condren is an Emeritus Scientia Professor at UNSW, a member of two Cambridge Colleges and a fellow both of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and The Social Sciences in Australia. He has published widely and principally in early modern intellectual history. Among his books are The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts; Argument and Authority in Early Modern England; Political Vocabularies: Word Change and the Nature of Politics.

This book explores closely related aspects of the historical study of humour. It challenges much that has been taken for granted in a field of study for which history has been marginal. It disputes the conventional genealogical view that humour theory dates from antiquity and outlines an alternative conceptual history. It critically examines the nostrum that humour is universal. It then explores the methodological difficulties in treating both verbal and non-verbal humour historically, dealing with contextualisation, intentionality, translation and reception. It explores the variable relationships between satire and definition and concludes with a detailed case study from recent history: the iconic Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister television comedies. These are commonly seen as realistic, but better understood as presenting popularised theories for satiric and propagandistic effect. Only in their treatment of language can we assess a putative political realism. The satires are often highly perceptive but largely dependent on misleading and inadequate theories of political discourse.Conal Condren is an Emeritus Scientia Professor at UNSW, a member of two Cambridge Colleges and a fellow both of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and The Social Sciences in Australia. He has published widely and principally in early modern intellectual history. Among his books are The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts; Argument and Authority in Early Modern England; Political Vocabularies: Word Change and the Nature of Politics.

Considers how political language has changed through time, looking at concrete examples from English and other languages.Conal Condren's fifth and final volume in a decades-long examination of political language, Political Vocabularies: Word Change and the Nature of Politics is a study of the mechanisms of change in political vocabularies over time. Though the main focus of the study is on English political vocabulary, Condren also compares political terms in other languages, such as French, German, Latin, Greek, Italian, and Japanese, and discusses how some of theseterms are imported into English. Considering concrete examples of extension and intension of meaning, neologism, euphemism, translation, loan words, and metaphor as used in political discourse, Condren constructs a theoretical model of the political that describes what precisely goes on when political words are used or when words are used politically. Thus Condren's analysis in this study is not merely linguistic but it bears on perennial questions about the nature of politics.The book will thus appeal not only to linguists and political scientists but to a broad readership of those interested in history, politics, and philosophy. Conal Condren is Emeritus Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales and honorary professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, Australia.

This is a study of the words of political discourse in seventeenth-century England from which we now reconstruct its theories. Part 1 presents an overview of the political domain in the seventeenth century arguing that what we see as the political was fugitive and subject to reductionist pressures from better established fields of discourse.

Satire was core to the work of Thomas Hobbes although his critics also used it as a weapon to ridicule him. Condren uses Hobbes as an example to demonstrate that an examination of the persona is needed to advance our understanding of a writer's philosophy.

This is the first full account, analysis and subsequent history of George Lawson's Politica, 1660-89. For long accepted as a significant figure, through his criticism of Hobbes and his possible influence on Locke, Lawson has never been studied in depth, nor has his biography been previously established.