Bøker utgitt av EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS

This is a reassessment of the moral and theological foundations of modern Europe. It challenges a number of deeply rooted assumptions about the basis of both Scottish culture and of Enlightenments in general. It argues that the formidable dual influences of humanism and Calvinism forced a discussion about the essentially moral function of scholarship and learning to the very centre of intellectual debate in early modern Scotland, and that this in turn led to the growth of an "e;enlightened"e; community amongst the Scottish literati. As such, the text is a direct challenge to conventional accounts of the Scottish Enlightenment as an unanticipated, short-lived explosion of ideas.

This lively collection of essays gives a non-technical, but profound analysis of the essential relationship between politics and literature. Bernard Crick shows how 'political theatre' is often both bad theatre and simplistic politics, but how good producers can bring out political messages in such seemingly 'unpolitical' dramas as Twelfth Night. The essays begin with general themes, including a vigorous critique of RSC and NT producers' views of the political, and a denial of the myth that the far left dominated 1930s writing. They then move on to an analysis of George Orwell and finally to celebrate specific occasions and events in modern British theatre. With his refreshing disrespect for over-ornate and overly scholastic Marxist and academic writers, Professor Crick's book will be of interest to all those concerned with the arts and the theatre, as well as political philosophers and English literature students.

Following a long tradition of objectification, 20th-century French feminism often sought to liberate the female body from the confines of patriarchal logos and to inscribe its rhythms in writing. Amaleena Damle addresses questions of bodies, boundaries and philosophical discourses by exploring the intersections between a range of contemporary philosophers and authors on the subject of contemporary female corporeality and transformation.

The literary potential of trauma is examined in this book, bringing trauma theory and literary texts together for the first time. Trauma Fiction focuses on the ways in which contemporary novelists explore the theme of trauma and incorporate its structures into their writing. It provides innovative readings of texts by Pat Barker, Jackie Kay, Anne Michaels, Toni Morrison, Caryl Phillips, W. G. Sebald and Binjamin Wilkomirski. It also considers the ways in which trauma has affected fictional form, exploring how novelists have responded to the challenge of writing traumatic narratives, and identifying the key stylistic features associated with the genre. In addition, the book introduces the reader to key critics in the field of trauma theory such as Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman and Geoffrey Hartman. The linking of trauma theory and literary texts not only sheds light on works of contemporary fiction, it also points to the inherent connections between trauma theory and the literary which have often been overlooked. The distinction between literary theme and style in the book opens up major questions regarding the nature of trauma itself. Trauma, like the novels discussed, is shown to take an uncertain but productive place between content and form.Key Features*Idenitifes and explores a new and evolving genre in contemporary fiction*Thinks through the relation between trauma and literature*Produces innovative readings of key works of contemporary fiction *Provides an introduction to key ideas in trauma theory

A compelling cultural reinterpretation of humanist discourses of boyhood The English epyllion, the highly erotic mythological verse that swept the London literary scene in the 1590s, is as much about rhetoric as about sex. So argues William Weaver in this fascinating study of Renaissance education and poetry. Rhetoric, moreover, is erotic. Far being merely formal, rhetoric is the key to deciphering the cultural meanings of an enigmatic genre. Weaver attends to one of the epyllions defining dramas: boys in transition to adulthood. Whereas recent studies of the epyllion have posited sexuality as the primary, even exclusive, means of representing beautiful boys, Weaver discovers that Renaissance male sexuality itself is an effect of a disciplinary drama of pedagogical transition from boyhood to adolescence, grammar to rhetoric. This drama of differentiation, lucidly expounded by Weaver, is at the heart of the erotic epyllia of Shakespeare, Marlowe and their imitators.Key Features*Focuses on six poems written between 1592 and 1594, looking to the most inventive period of the English epyllion *Documents previously unknown sources of Marlowes Hero and Leander and Shakespeares Venus and Adonis*Makes the first cultural critique of the Renaissance progymnasmata, the popular rhetorical exercises*Shows the vital connections between English poetry and continental rhetoric*Productively complements histories of sexuality, queer theory and feminist criticism

The Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788) was Thomas Reid's last major work. It was conceived as part of one large work, intended as a final synoptic statement of his philosophy. The first and larger part was published three years earlier as Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (edited as vol. 3 of the Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid). These two works are united by Reid's basic philosophy of common sense, which sets out native principles by which the mind operates in both its intellectual and active aspects. The Active Powers shows how these principles are involved in volition, action, and the ability to judge morally. Reid gives an original twist to a libertarian and realist tradition that was prominently represented in eighteenth-century British thought by such thinkers as Samuel Clarke and Richard Price.

Studying the work of Joyce, Woolf, Stein and Beckett, Sara Crangle explores the everyday human longings found in Modernist writing. This discussion is set within a framework of continental philosophy, particularly the thinking of Emmanuel Levinas.

This ambitious book examines the encounter between Gaels and Europeans in Scotland in the central Middle Ages, offering new insights into an important period in the formation of the Scots' national identity. It is based on a close reading of the texts of several thousand charters, indentures, brieves and other written sources that record the business conducted in royal and baronial courts across the length and breadth of the medieval kingdom between 1150 and 1400.Under the broad themes of land, law and people, this book explores how the customs, laws and traditions of the native inhabitants and those of incoming settlers interacted and influenced each other. Drawing on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, the author places her subject matter firmly within the recent historiography of the British Isles and demonstrates how the experience of Scotland was both similar to, and a distinct manifestation of, a wider process of Europeanisation.

This book could easily be called 'A Guide for the Modern Muslim', for someone to whom the sentiments of his or her ancestors resonate but who cannot accept the canonised formulas of a stultified education. Charfi spells out what, for him, is the essential message of Islam, followed by a history of its unfolding through the person of the Prophet Muhammad, who was a visionary seeking to change the ideals, attitudes and behaviours of the society in which he lived. The message and its history are delineated as two separate things, conflated by tradition. Charfi's reflections cross those horizons where few Muslim scholars have dared until now to tread. He confronts with great lucidity those difficult questions with which Muslims are struggling, attempting to reconsider them from a moral and political perspective that is independent of the frameworks produced by tradition."e;

Recent discussions of the 'Chinese economic development model', the emergence of an alternative 'Muslim model' over the past quarter century and the faltering globalisation of the 'Washington Consensus' all point to the need to investigate more systematically the nature of these models and their competitive attractions. This is especially the case in the Muslim world which both spans different economic and geographic categories and is itself the progenitor of a development model. The 'Chinese model' has attracted the greatest attention in step with that country's phenomenal growth and therefore provides the primary focus for this book. This volume examines the characteristics of this model and its reception in two major regions of the world - Africa and Latin America. It also investigates the current competition over development models across Muslim contexts. The question of which model or models, if any, will guide development in Muslim majority countries is vital not only for them, but for the world as a whole. This is the first political economy study to address this vital question as well as the closely related issue of the centrality of governance to development.

Robert Rowland Smith takes Freud's work on the death-drive and compares it with other philosophies of death - Pascal, Heidegger and Derrida in particular. He also applies it in a new way to literature and art - to Shakespeare, Rothko and Katharina Fritsch, among others. He asks whether artworks are dead or alive, if artistic creativity isn't actually a form of destruction, and whether our ability to be seduced by fine words means we don't put our selves at risk of death. In doing so, he proposes a new theory of aesthetics in which artworks and literary texts have a death-drive of their own, not least by their defining ability to turn away from all that is real, and where the effects of the death-drive mean that we are constantly living in imaginary, rhetorical or 'artistic' worlds. The book also provides a valuable introduction to the rich tradition of work on the death-drive since Freud.Key Features* Includes a general introduction to the death-drive* Presents an original theory of aesthetics* Analyses both theoretical and clinical psychoanalysis* Offers in-depth treatment of Freud* Provides an overview of philosophies of death

Robert Southey did not exaggerate when he described the England of his day as "e;South American mad."e; As Spain's hold on its colonies progressively weakened during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, thousands of British scientists, soldiers, entrepreneurs, and settlers rushed to take advantage of the enticing opportunities Spanish America offered. Britain's fascination with the region displayed itself in poems, plays, operas, political tracts, news reportage, travel narratives, and stock market quotations. Creole patriots such as Francisco de Miranda and Andres Bello gathered in London to solicit aid for their revolutions while ministers debated tactics for liberating both the peoples and the untapped wealth of Spain's colonies. Through critical reconsiderations of both canonical and lesser-known Romantic texts, from Helen Maria Williams's Peru to Samuel Rogers's The Voyage of Columbus and Byron's The Age of Bronze, Heinowitz reveals the untold story of Romantic-era Britain's Spanish American obsession. Although historians have traditionally characterized Britain's relationship with Spanish America as commercial rather than colonial, this book explores the significant rhetorical overlap between formal and informal strategies of rule. In the absence of a coherent imperial policy regarding Spain's colonies, Britain struggled to justify its actions by means of the problematic assertion that British primacy was authorized by a political, cultural, ethical, and even historical identification with the peoples of Spanish America. By examining the ways in which this discourse of British-Spanish American similitude was deployed and increasingly strained throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Heinowitz demonstrates that British writing about Spanish America redefines the anxieties, ambivalences, and contradictions that characterize Romantic Imperialism.

Race in Modern Irish Literature and Culture presents a radical re-reading of the cultural history of the Irish state, by demonstrating through original historical research and insightful new readings of key literary and artistic works that race has been central to the ways in which modern Ireland has defined itself. John Brannigan examines the tropes of racial identity and racist distinction that underpin modern expressions of Irishness, and shows how a persistent concern with racial ideologies can be traced through twentieth-century Irish culture. In this study, Ulysses is read anew in the context of the gathering of the Irish Race Congress in Paris, and the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922. The works of Liam O'Flaherty, Samuel Beckett, W.B. Yeats and Jack Yeats are shown to engage critically with anthropological representations of 'the Irish face'. Brannigan reads a wide range of mid-century fiction as part of a public discourse about 'foreign bodies', and goes on to examine the critical conversations taking place in the sixties and seventies about figurations of blackness in Irish culture. A provocative revision of modern Irish cultural history, this book makes challenging interventions in Irish studies, literary and cultural studies, and critical race studies. .Key Features:*Provides new research on the social history of racial ideologies and racist expressions in the Irish state since 1922*Offers new readings of Irish cultural productions and literary texts (by James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Liam O'Flaherty, Kate O'Brien, Edna O'Brien, Brendan Behan, James Plunkett, Paul Durcan, Austin Clarke, Aidan Higgins, Denis Johnston, and others) emphasising how they engage with the histories of Irish racism and raciology*Demonstrates how a new understanding of the constitutive role of race and racism in modern Irish culture might necessitate a revision of the dominant precepts and trends in contemporary Irish studies*Addresses the significa

Phenomenology or Deconstruction? challenges traditional understandings of the relationship between phenomenology and deconstruction through new readings of the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricur and Jean-Luc Nancy. A constant dialogue with Jacques Derrida's engagement with phenomenological themes provides the impetus to establishing a new understanding of 'being' and 'presence' that exposes significant blindspots inherent in traditional readings of both phenomenology and deconstruction. In reproducing neither a stock phenomenological reaction to deconstruction nor the routine deconstructive reading of phenomenology, Christopher Watkin provides a fresh assessment of the possibilities for the future of phenomenology, along with a new reading of the deconstructive legacy. Through detailed studies of the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Ricur and Nancy, he shows how a phenomenological tradition much wider and richer than Husserlian or Heideggerean thought alone can take account of Derrida's critique of ontology and yet still hold a commitment to the ontological. This new reading of being and presence fundamentally re-draws our understanding of the relation of deconstruction and phenomenology, and provides the first sustained discussion of the possibilities and problems for any future 'deconstructive phenomenology'.

This first major study of Thomas Jefferson's reputation in nearly fifty years is concerned with Jefferson and history-both as something Jefferson made and something that he sought to shape.Jefferson was acutely aware that he would be judged by posterity and he deliberately sought to influence history's judgment of him. He did so, it argues, in order to promote his vision of a global republican future. It begins by situating Jefferson's ideas about history within the context of eighteenth-century historical thought, and then considers the efforts Jefferson made to shape the way the history of his life and times would be written: through the careful preservation of his personal and public papers and his home, Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia.The second half of the book considers the results of Jefferson's efforts to shape historical writing by examining the evolution of his reputation since the Second World War. Recent scholarship has examined Jefferson's attitudes and actions with regard to Native Americans, African slaves, women and civil liberties and found him wanting.Jefferson has continued to be a controversial figure; DNA testing proving that he fathered children by his slave Sally Hemings being the most recent example, perhaps encapsulating this best of all. This is the first major study to examine the impact of the Hemings controversy on Jefferson's reputation.Key Features*The first study of Jefferson's reputation to be published since 1960*Considers the impact of slavery on Jefferson's reputation and Jefferson's relationship with slavery*Explores the history of the Sally Hemings controversy

This book examines how participation in the British Empire shaped constructions of Scottish national identity. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of 19th-century and early 20th-century Scottish society through its original use of a wide range of primary sources, and covers new ground in its assessment of the impact of empire at home.Esther Breitenbach shows how, in the course of the 19th century, Scots acquired a knowledge of empire and voiced opinions on imperial administration and on imperialism itself through philanthropic and religious, learned and scientific, and imperial propagandist activities. She explores the role that the foreign mission movement of the leading Presbyterian churches played in creating a vision of empire. And, focusing on Edinburgh as a case study, she discusses the social basis of support for the movement, including the increasingly prominent role played by women. Through analysing writings by and about missionaries in the missionary and secular press, Empire and Scottish Society asks how the foreign mission movement came to be a source of national pride, and provides new insights into the shaping of Scottish national identity and its relationship to the concept of Britishness.

Derrida and Lacan: Another Writing argues that Jacques Derrida's philosophical understanding of language should be supplemented by Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic approach to the symbolic order. Lacan adopts a non-philosophical, genetic or developmental approach to the question of language and in doing so isolates a dimension that Derrida cannot properly envisage: the imaginary. Michael Lewis argues that the real must be understood not just in relation to the symbolic but also in relation to the imaginary. The existence of an alternative approach to the real that is other than language allows us to identify the idiosyncrasies of Derrida's purely transcendental approach, an approach that addresses language in terms of its conditions of possibility. Lacan shows us that an attention to the genesis of the symbolic order of language and culture should lead us to understand this real other in a different way.This book relates transcendental thought to the insights of non-philosophical thought, and, more specifically, it proposes a way in which philosophy might relate to the insights of the human and natural sciences. By critically juxtaposing Derrida and Lacan, Derrida and Lacan: Another Writing attempts to systematise Slavoj Zizek's presentation of a Lacanian alternative to Derridean deconstruction. This work should be of interest to all readers in continental thought and transcendental philosophy, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and literary studies.

This book explores the dynamics of language and social change in central Europe in the context of the end of the Cold War and eastern expansion of the European Union. One outcome of the profound social transformations in central Europe since the Second World War has been the reshaping of the relationship between particular languages and linguistic varieties, especially between 'national' languages and regional or ethnic minority languages. Previous studies have investigated these transformed relationships from the macro perspective of language policies, while others have taken more fine-grained approaches to individual experiences with language. Combining these two perspectives for the first time--and focusing on the German language, which has a uniquely complex and problematic history in the region--the authors offer an understanding of the complex constellation of language politics in central Europe. Stevenson and Carl's analysis draws on a range of theoretical, conceptual and analytical approaches - language ideologies, language policy, positioning theory, discourse analysis, narrative analysis and life histories - and a wide range of data sources, from European and national language policies to individual language biographies. The authors demonstrate how the relationship between German and other languages has played a crucial role in the politics of language and processes of identity formation in the recent history of central Europe.

This book offers the first extended comparison of the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and David Hume. Jeffrey Bell argues that Deleuze's early work on Hume was instrumental to Deleuze's formulation of the problems and concepts that would remain the focus of his entire corpus. Reading Deleuze's work in light of Hume's influence, along with a comparison of Deleuze's work with William James, Henri Bergson, and others, sets the stage for a vigorous defence of his philosophy against a number of recent criticisms. It also extends the field of Deleuze studies by showing how Deleuze's thought can clarify and contribute to the work being done in political theory, cultural studies and history, particularly the history of the Scottish Enlightenment. By engaging Deleuze's thought with the work of Hume, this book clarifies and supports the work of Deleuze and exemplifies the continuing relevance of Hume's thought to a number of contemporary debates.

'A pioneering work in ethics and economics for the new global era raising all the hard questions that we need to think about in the coming decades, and proposing a radically new way of thinking about how the global community should function.'Peter Singer, IRA W. De Camp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University'One of those rare books whose every chapter is a source of both exhilaration and despair.'William E. Rees, University of British ColumbiaIn the first edition of this remarkable book Peter G. Brown identified three challenges that lay ahead of us:* to come up with an adequate account of our minimal obligations to each other, and to the rest of the natural order;* to redefine and reshape the institutions of economics, government, and civil society to reflect those obligations;* and to re-conceptualize and redirect relations between nations so as to foster those institutions and discharge those obligations.In this second edition he revisits and expands on those original ideas and draws some new, and innovative, conclusions that will redirect what we do and give substance and direction to the institutions that must be adopted if life is to flourish. Finding our historical attitude of 'full-human- use' toward the environment unsatisfactory, Brown offers an alternative: an 'all-species- use'. What he calls 'the commonwealth of life' and the acceptance of this reasoning has vital implications for all life that share this planet.

Winner of the Houshang Pourshariati Iranian Studies Book Award 2009This beautifully illustrated history of Safavid Isfahan (1501-1722) explores the architectural and urban forms and networks of socio-cultural action that reflected a distinctly early-modern and Perso-Shi'i practice of kingship.An immense building campaign, initiated in 1590-91 at the millennial threshold of the Islamic calendar (1000 A.H.), transformed Isfahan from a provincial, medieval, and largely Sunni city into an urban-centered representation of the first Imami Shi'i empire in the history of Islam. The historical process of Shi'ification of Safavid Iran and the deployment of the arts in situating the shifts in the politico-religious agenda of the imperial household informs Sussan Babaie's study of palatial architecture and urban environments of Isfahan and the earlier capitals of Tabriz and Qazvin.Babaie argues that since the Safavid claim presumed the inheritance both of the charisma of the Shi'i Imams and of the aura of royal splendor integral to ancient Persian notions of kingship, a ceremonial regime was gradually devised in which access and proximity to the shah assumed the contours of an institutionalized form of feasting. Talar-palaces, a new typology in Islamic palatial designs, and the urban-spatial articulation of access and proximity are the architectural anchors of this argument. Cast in the comparative light of urban spaces and palace complexes elsewhere and earlier-in the Timurid, Ottoman, and Mughal realms as well as in the early modern European capitals-Safavid Isfahan emerges as the epitome of a new architectural-urban paradigm in the early modern age.

This book presents an innovative analysis of the nature of democratic theory, focusing on the prevalence of pious discourses of democracy in contemporary politics. Democracy is now promoted in religious terms to such an extent that it has become sacrosanct in Western political theory. This book argues that such piety relies on unsophisticated political analysis paying scant attention to the complex conditions of contemporary politics. The contention is that it is more useful to think of democracy in terms of the centrality of political disagreement and its propensity to generate political violence. This argument is exemplified by the ways in which democracy and violence have been conceptualised in the war on terrorism.

This book examines the conflicts, dilemmas and contradictions that marked Englishness as the nation changed from an imperial power to a postcolonial state. The chapters deal with travel writing, popular song, music hall and variety theatre, dances, elocution lessons, cricket and football, and national festivals, as well as literature and film. 'High' and 'popular' cultures are brought together in dialogue, and the diversity as well as the problematic nature of English identity is emphasised. The case studies are linked by their interests in different kinds of performances of being English, and by a particular focus upon the voice and the body as key sites for the struggles of modern England. The book is a lively contribution to current interdisciplinary debates about Englishness, national cultures and postcolonial identities. It is relevant to undergraduate students of literature, drama, film, politics and sociology, and will also appeal to a general readership.

This book explores how Soviet film worked with time, the past, and memory. It looks at Stalinist cinema and its role in the production of history. Cinema's role in the legitimization of Stalinism and the production of a new Soviet identity was enormous. Both Lenin and Stalin saw in this 'most important of arts' the most effective form of propaganda and 'organisation of the masses'. By examining the works of the greatest Soviet filmmakers of the Stalin era--Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Grigorii Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg, Fridrikh Ermler--the author explores the role of the cinema in the formation of the Soviet political imagination.