Books

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Literature & Literary Studies

May 2023

Counterfactual Romanticism

by Damian Walford Davies

Innovatively extending counterfactual thought experiments from history and the social sciences to literary historiography, criticism and theory, Counterfactual Romanticism reveals the ways in which the shapes of Romanticism are conditioned by that which did not come to pass. Exploring various modalities of counterfactual speculation and inquiry across a range of Romantic-period authors, genres and concerns, this collection offers a radical new purchase on literary history, on the relationship between history and fiction, and on our historicist methods to date - and thus on the Romanticisms we (think we) have inherited. Counterfactual Romanticism provides a ground-breaking method of re-reading literary pasts and our own reading presents; in the process, literary production, texts and reading practices are unfossilised and defamiliarised.

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Literature & Literary Studies

May 2023

Suicide and the Gothic

by William Hughes, Andrew Smith

Suicide and the Gothic is the first protracted study of how the act of self-destruction recurs and functions within one of the most enduring and popular forms of fiction. Comprising eleven original essays and an authoritative introduction, this collection explores how the act of suicide has been portrayed, interrogated and pathologised from the eighteenth century to the present. The featured fictions embrace both canonical and the less-studied texts and examine the crisis of suicide - a crisis that has personal, familial, religious, legal and medical implications - in European, American and Asian contexts. Featuring detailed interventions into the understanding of texts as temporally distant as Thomas Percy's Reliques and Patricia Highsmith's crime fictions, and movements as diverse as Wertherism, Romanticism and fin-de-siècle decadence, Suicide and the Gothic provides a comprehensive and compelling overview of this recurrent crisis in fiction and culture.

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Literature & Literary Studies

September 2019

Counterfactual Romanticism

by Damian Davies, Anna Barton, Andrew Smith

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Humanities & Social Sciences

July 2016

Romantic narratives in international politics

by Alexander Spencer

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Humanities & Social Sciences

November 2022

Chinese dreams in Romantic England

by Edward Weech

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Literature & Literary Studies

October 2024

The Legacy of John Polidori

The Romantic Vampire and its Progeny

by Sam George, Bill Hughes

John Polidori's novella The Vampyre (1819) is perhaps 'the most influential horror story of all time' (Frayling). Polidori's story transformed the shambling, mindless monster of folklore into a sophisticated, seductive aristocrat that stalked London society rather than being confined to the hinterlands of Eastern Europe. Polidori's Lord Ruthven was thus the ancestor of the vampire as we know it. This collection explores the genesis of Polidori's vampire. It then tracks his bloodsucking progeny across the centuries and maps his disquieting legacy. Texts discussed range from the Romantic period, including the fascinating and little-known The Black Vampyre (1819), through the melodramatic vampire theatricals in the 1820s, to contemporary vampire film, paranormal romance, and science fiction. They emphasise the background of colonial revolution and racial oppression in the early nineteenth century and the cultural shifts of postmodernity.

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Humanities & Social Sciences

August 2024

Ireland and the Renaissance court

by David Edwards, Brendan Kane

Ireland and the Renaissance court is an interdisciplinary collection of essays exploring Irish and English courts, courtiers and politics in the early modern period, c. 1450-1650. Chapters are contributed by both established and emergent scholars working in the fields of history, literary studies, and philology. They focus on Gaelic cúirteanna, the indigenous centres of aristocratic life throughout the medieval period; on the regnal court of the emergent British empire based in London at Whitehall; and on Irish participation in the wider world of European elite life and letters. Collectively, they expand the chronological limits of 'early modern' Ireland to include the fifteenth century and recreate its multi-lingual character through exploration of its English, Irish and Latin archives. This volume is an innovative effort at moving beyond binary approaches to English-Irish history by demonstrating points of contact as well as contention.

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The Arts

November 2011

The limits of performance in the French Romantic theatre

by Susan McCready, Mike Thompson

This volume analyses major French plays of the 1830s, focusing on their theatricality, and on the ways in which they expose the workings of the theatre rather than conceal them. Through an examination of performance within these plays, the study posits that the stage is a privileged site of demonstration, a literal 'proving ground' that lends a physical reality to abstract values announced in the text and shared or questioned by the audience. Negotiating between the literary study of drama and performance theory, this work breaks new ground in nineteenth-century theatre scholarship while proposing a fresh direction in the study of text and performance. The limits of performance 'challenges conventional wisdom', offering 'a novel take on the mal du siècle, that thematic hardy perennial of French Romanticism and the nineteenth century in general', combined with 'eminently readable and, therefore, compelling' analysis of plays - 'a thought-provoking addition to work in the field' (Glyn Hambrook, Modern and Contemporary France, November 2008). ;

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Does Movement Really Make Us Smart?

by Petra Jansen, Stefanie Richter

Media reports often praise movement as a cure-all. But apart from its undisputed positive effect on health, does movement really make us smarter? Consider a national football team, for example – are these excessively sports-driven players automatically the smartest people? Should we simply replace all school subjects with sports? The authors provide a detailed summary of the latest scientific findings on the influence of movement on cognitive ability. They describe the effects of movement, on old age, embodiment, emotion, school as well as other factors that influence cognition. Target Group: teachers, lecturers, psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, psychotherapists, movement therapists.

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The Arts

January 2020

The challenge of the sublime

by Hélène Ibata, Anne Dunan-Page

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Business, Economics & Law

June 2024

The labour movement in Lebanon

Power on hold

by Lea Bou Khater

The labour movement in Lebanon: Power on hold narrates the history of the Lebanese labour movement from the early twentieth century to today. Bou Khater demonstrates that trade unionism in the country has largely been a failure, for reasons including state interference, tactical co-optation, and the strategic use of sectarianism by an oligarchic elite, together with the structural weakness of a service-based laissez-faire economy. Drawing on a vast body of Arabic-language primary sources and difficult-to-access archives, the book's conclusions are significant not only for trade unionism, but also for new forms of workers' organisations and social movements in Lebanon and beyond. The Lebanese case study presented here holds significant implications for the wider Arab world and for comparative studies of labour. This authoritative history of the labour movement in Lebanon is vital reading for scholars of trade unionism, Lebanese politics, and political economy.

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Literature & Literary Studies

November 2021

The gothic novel in Ireland, c. 1760–1829

by Christina Morin

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Literature & Literary Studies

September 2022

William Blake's Gothic imagination

by Chris Bundock, Elizabeth Effinger

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The Arts

January 2019

The secret life of romantic comedy

by Celestino Deleyto

The secret life of romantic comedy offers a new approach to one of the most popular and resilient genres in the history of Hollywood. Steering away from the rigidity and ideological determinism of traditional accounts of the genre, this book advocates a more flexible theory, which allows the student to explore the presence of the genre in unexpected places, extending the concept to encompass films that are not usually considered romantic comedies. Combining theory with detailed analyses of a selection of films, including To Be or Not to Be (1942), Rear Window (1954), Kiss Me Stupid (1964), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Before Sunset (2004), the book aims to provide a practical framework for the exploration of a key area of contemporary experience - intimate matters - through one of its most powerful filmic representations: the genre of romantic comedy. Original and entertaining, The secret life of romantic comedy is perfect for students and academics of film and film genre.

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Humanities & Social Sciences

May 2024

Home front heroism

Civilians and conflict in Second World War London

by Ellena Matthews

Home front heroism investigates how civilians were recognised and celebrated as heroic during the Second World War. Through a focus on London, this book explores how heroism was manufactured as civilians adopted roles in production, protection and defence, through the use of uniforms and medals, and through the way that civilians were injured and killed. This book makes a novel contribution to the study of heroism by exploring the spatial, material, corporeal and ritualistic dimensions of heroic representations. By tracing the different ways that Home Front heroism was cultivated on a national, local and personal level, this study promotes new ways of thinking about the meaning and value of heroism during periods of conflict. It will appeal to anyone interested in the social and cultural history of Second World War as well as the sociology and psychology of heroism.

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Literature & Literary Studies

July 2018

European Erotic Romance

by Victor Skretkowicz, J. B. Lethbridge

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Literature & Literary Studies

January 2014

Court and civic society in the Burgundian Low Countries c.1420–1530

by Andrew Brown, Graeme Small

This volume is the first ever attempt to unite and translate some of the key texts which informed Johan Huizinga's famous study of the Burgundian court, The Waning of the Middle Ages, a work which has never gone out of print. It combines these texts with sources that Huizinga did not consider, those that illuminate the wider civic world that the Burgundian court inhabited and the dynamic interaction between court and city. Through these sources, and an introduction offering new perspectives on recent historiography, the book tests whether Huizinga's controversial vision of the period still stands. Covering subjects including ceremonial events, such as the spectacles and gargantuan banquets that made the Burgundian dukes the talk of Europe, the workings of the court, and jousting, archery and rhetoric competitions, the book will appeal to students of late medieval and early modern Europe and to those with wider interests in court culture, ritual and ceremony.

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Humanities & Social Sciences

July 2024

Romanticizing masculinity in Baathist Syria

Gender, identity and ideology

by Rahaf Aldoughli

This book provides a novel analysis of the conceptual sources and ideological contours of the Assad regime. The book documents the Baathists' fascination with Romanticised and 'muscular' ideas of the nation that emerged in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European social philosophy, and traces the implementation and impacts of these ideologies in the Syrian context. Emphasising the emergence of new forms of public gendered identity in Syria as a unifying feature of nationalism bound closely with the stability of the regime, the book shows how Romantic, muscular nationalism first rose to hegemony and then was shattered by its inherent violence, contradictions and inequalities. The final chapter closes by considering how a new vision of pluralism and civic belonging is today challenging the Romanticised Baathist ideal in contention for Syria's future.

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Humanities & Social Sciences

March 2004

From enlightenment to romanticism

by Martin Hargreaves

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The Arts

July 2024

Pasticcio opera in Britain

History and context

by Peter Morgan Barnes

This study overturns twentieth-century thinking about pasticcio opera. This radical way of creating opera formed a counterweight, even a relief, to the trenchant masculinity of literate culture in the seventeenth century. It undermined the narrowing of nationalism in the eighteenth century, and was an act of gross sacrilege against the cult of Romantic genius in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, it found itself on the wrong side of copyright law. However, in the twenty-first century it is enjoying a tentative revival. This book redefines pasticcio as a method rather than a genre of opera and aligns it with other art forms which also created their works from pre-existing parts, including sculpture. A pasticcio opera is created from pre-existing music and text, thus flying in face of insistence on originality and creation by a solo genius.

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by Damian Walford Davies

by William Hughes, Andrew Smith

by Damian Davies, Anna Barton, Andrew Smith

by Alexander Spencer

by Edward Weech

The Romantic Vampire and its Progeny

by Sam George, Bill Hughes

by David Edwards, Brendan Kane

by Susan McCready, Mike Thompson

by Petra Jansen, Stefanie Richter

by Hélène Ibata, Anne Dunan-Page

Power on hold

by Lea Bou Khater

by Christina Morin

by Chris Bundock, Elizabeth Effinger

by Celestino Deleyto

Civilians and conflict in Second World War London

by Ellena Matthews

by Victor Skretkowicz, J. B. Lethbridge

by Andrew Brown, Graeme Small

Gender, identity and ideology

by Rahaf Aldoughli

by Martin Hargreaves

History and context

by Peter Morgan Barnes

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