Books are listed in order of publication - most recent ones first

What does ‘autonomy’ mean today? Is the Enlightenment understanding of autonomy still relevant for contemporary challenges? How have the limits and possibilities of autonomy been transformed by recent developments in artificial intelligence and big data, political pressures, intersecting oppressions and the climate emergency? The challenges to autonomy today reach across society with unprecedented complexity, and in this book leading scholars from philosophy, economics, linguistics, literature and politics examine the role of autonomy in key areas of contemporary life, forcefully defending a range of different views about the nature and extent of resistance to autonomy today. These essays are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the predicament and prospects of one of modernity’s foundational concepts and one of our most widely cherished values.

Literature and Event: Twenty-First Century Reformulations: Mantra Mukim (Warwick) and Derek Attridge (York) November 2021

If "event" is a proper name we reserve for monumental changes, crises, transitions and ruptures that are by their very nature unnameable or unthinkable, then this volume is an attempt to set up an encounter between such eventhood as it comes to have a bearing on literary works and the work of reading literature.

As the event continues to provide a valuable analytical paradigm for work undertaken within the newer subdisciplines of literary and critical theory, including close reading, bio- politics, world literature, and eco- criticism, this volume makes a concerted effort to update the scholarship in this area and foreground the recent resurgence of interest in the concept. The book provides both a retrospective appraisal of the significance of events to literary studies and the literary humanities, as well as contemporary and prospective appraisals of the same, and thus would appeal scholars and instructors in the areas of literary theory, comparative literature and philosophical aesthetics alike.

Along with a specialist focus on thinkers such as Derrida, Badiou, Deleuze and Malabou, the essays in this volume read a wide corpus of literature ranging from Han Kang, Homer, Renee Gladman, Proust and Flaubert to Yoruba ideophones, Browning, Anne Carson, Jenichiro Oyabe and Ben Lerner.

Allegory Studies: Contemporary Perspectives: Vladimir Brljak (Warwick) July 2021

Allegory Studies: Contemporary Perspectives brings together some of the most compelling current work in allegory studies, by an international team of scholars from a range of disciplines and specializations in the humanities and cognitive sciences. The volume tracks the subject across established disciplinary, cultural, and period-based divides, from its shadowy origins to its uncertain future, and from the rich variety of its cultural and artistic manifestations to its deep cognitive roots. Allegory is everything we already know it to be: a mode of literary and artistic composition, and a religious as well as secular interpretive practice. It is, however, much more than that—much more than a sum of its parts. Collectively, the phenomena that we now tend to subsume under this term comprise a dynamic cultural force which has left a deep imprint on our history, whose full impact we are only beginning to comprehend, and which therefore demands precisely such dedicated cross-disciplinary examination as this book seeks to provide.

Interdisciplinary Essays on Cannibalism - Bites Here and There: Giulia Champion (Warwick)

Archaeology of the Unconscious Italian Perspectives, 1st Edition: Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti (Italian) June 2019

In reconstructing the birth and development of the notion of ‘unconscious’, historians of ideas have heavily relied on the Freudian concept of Unbewussten, retroactively projecting the psychoanalytic unconscious over a constellation of diverse cultural experiences taking place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries between France and Germany. Archaeology of the Unconscious aims to challenge this perspective by adopting an unusual and thought-provoking viewpoint as the one offered by the Italian case from the 1770s to the immediate aftermath of WWI, when Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno provides Italy with the first example of a ‘psychoanalytic novel’. Italy’s vibrant culture of the long nineteenth century, characterised by the sedimentation, circulation, intersection, and synergy of different cultural, philosophical, and literary traditions, proves itself to be a privileged object of inquiry for an archaeological study of the unconscious; a study whose object is not the alleged ‘origin’ of a pre-made theoretical construct, but rather the stratifications by which that specific construct was assembled. In line with Michel Foucault’s Archéologie du savoir (1969), this volume will analyze the formation and the circulation, across different authors and texts, of a network of ideas and discourses on interconnected themes, including dreams, memory, recollection, desire, imagination, fantasy, madness, creativity, inspiration, magnetism, and somnambulism. Alongside questioning pre-given narratives of the ‘history of the unconscious’, this book will employ the Italian ‘difference’ as a powerful perspective from whence to address the undeveloped potentialities of the pre-Freudian unconscious, beyond uniquely psychoanalytical viewpoints.

Prohibitions and Psychoactive Substances in History, Culture and Theory; Susannah Wilson (French) May 2019

This volume is a new contribution to the dynamic scholarly discussion of the control and regulation of psychoactive substances in culture and society. Offering new critical reflections on the reasons prohibitions have historically arisen, the book analyses "prohibitions" as ambivalent and tenuous interactions between the users of psychoactive substances and regulators of their use. This original collection of essays engages with contemporary debates concerning addiction, intoxication and drug regulation, and will be of interest to scholars in the arts, humanities and social sciences interested in narratives of prohibition and their social and cultural meanings.

Mood, Interdisciplinary Perspectives, New Theories; Birgit Breidenbach and Thomas Docherty (English) April 2019

Mood is a phenomenon whose study is inherently interdisciplinary. While it has remained resistant to theorisation, it nonetheless has a substantial influence on art, politics and society. Since its practical omnipresence in every-day life renders it one of the most significant aspects of affect studies, it has garnered an increasing amount of critical attention in a number of disciplines across the humanities, sciences and social sciences in the past two decades. Mood: Aesthetics, Psychology, Philosophy provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical exploration of the phenomenon of mood from an interdisciplinary angle. Building on cutting-edge research in this emerging field and bringing together established and new voices, it bridges the existing disciplinary gap in the study of mood and further consolidates this phenomenon as a crucial concept in disciplinary and interdisciplinary study. By combining perspectives and concepts from the literary studies, philosophy, musicology, the social sciences, artistic practice and psychology, the volume does the complexity and richness of mood-related phenomena justice and benefits from the latent connections and synergies in different disciplinary approaches to the study of mood.

Beyond the Rhetoric of Pain; Stella Bruzzi and Berenike Jung (Film and TV Studies) January 2019

Beyond the Rhetoric of Pain presents a fresh, interdisciplinary approach to the current research on pain from a variety of scholarly angles within Literature, Film and Media, Game Studies, Art History, Hispanic Studies, Memory Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, and Law. Through the combination of these perspectives, this volume goes beyond the existing structures within and across these disciplines framing new concepts of pain in attitude, practice, language, and ethics of response to pain.

Comprised of fourteen unique essays, Beyond the Rhetoric of Pain maintains a common thread of analysis using a historical and cultural lens to explore the rhetoric of pain. Considering various methodologies, this volume questions the ethical, social and political demands pain makes upon those who feel, watch or speak it. Arranged to move from historical cases and relevance of pain in history towards the contemporary movement, topics include pain as a social figure, rhetorical tool, artistic metaphor, and political representation in jurisprudence.

Sing Aloud Harmonious Spheres: Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony; Jacomien Prins, Maude Vanhaelen (CSR) September 2017

This is the first volume to explore the reception of the Pythagorean doctrine of cosmic harmony within a variety of contexts, ranging chronologically from Plato to 18th-century England. This original collection of essays engages with contemporary debates concerning the relationship between music, philosophy, and science, and challenges the view that Renaissance discussions on cosmic harmony are either mere repetitions of ancient music theory or pre-figurations of the ‘Scientific Revolution’. Utilizing this interdisciplinary approach, Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony offers a new perspective on the reception of an important classical theme in various cultural, sequential and geographical contexts, underlying the continuities and changes between Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This project will be of particular interest within these emerging disciplines as they continue to explore the ideological significance of the various ways in which we appropriate the past.

Food, Drink and the Written Word in Britain, 1820–1954; Christopher Yiannitsaros (Dept of English and Comparative Literary Studies) November 2016

This volume explores the intersection between culinary history and literature across a period of profound social and cultural change. Split into three parts, essays focus on the food scandals of the early Victorian era, the decadence and greed of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and the effects of austerity caused by two world wars.

New Jazz Conceptions; Roger Fagge (Dept of History), Nicolas Pillai (Birmingham City University) December 2016

This volume builds on recent studies by considering the production, reception, adaptation, and survival of jazz. It captures the vibrancy of British-based jazz studies in the early 21st century, highlighting the developing methodologies and growing interdisciplinary nature of the field. In particular, the collection breaks down barriers between jazz historians, theorists, and practitioners, questioning popular American-centered narratives of jazz, and casting fresh light on the cultural processes and economic circumstances that make the music. Essays explore the role of the musician and administrator, the critical and historical reception of jazz, the saliency of its recorded legacy, its situation within debates on trade and labour, its pedagogic and educative role, its interaction with broadcast media, and its persistent survival as a digital artefact. This book promotes a critical and democratic engagement with jazz, and sets a ‘new’ new jazz studies in motion.

Knowing Nature in Early Modern Europe; David Beck (Dept of History) February 2015

Today we are used to clear divisions between science and the arts. But early modern thinkers had no such distinctions, with ‘knowledge’ being a truly interdisciplinary pursuit. Each chapter of this collection presents a case study from a different area of knowledge, including the acceptance of the Gregorian calendar, Shakespeare's use of science and magic in The Tempest, and the use of scripture to refute Descartes' claims in A Discourse on Method (1637). The book comes out of an ongoing project, Scientiae, examining the nexus of Renaissance Europe and the history and philosophy of science.

Picturing Women's Health; Fran Scott, Kate Scarth and Ji Chung (Dept of English) June 2014

Women’s lives changed considerably over the course of the long nineteenth century. As new roles and behaviours became available to them, the ways in which they were represented also increased. The essays in this collection examine women in diverse roles; mother, socialite, prostitute, celebrity, medical practitioner and patient. The wide range of commentators allows a diverse picture of women’s health in this period. Findings are discussed within the historical, medical, sociological, literary and art historical contexts of the period to make a truly interdisciplinary study.

Gender and Space in Rural Britain 1840 - 1920;Gemma Goodman and Charlotte Mathieson (Dept of English) March 2014

The essays in this collection focus on the ways rural life was represented during the long nineteenth century. Issues of national vs regional identity, class, gender and sexuality are discussed. Contributors bring expertise from the fields of history, geography and literary studies to present an interdisciplinary study of the interplay between rural space and gender during a time of increasing industrialization and social change.

Rome, Postmodern Narratives of a Cityscape; Dom Holdaway and Filippo Trentin (Dept of Italian) May 2013

Until the mid-twentieth century the Western imagination seemed intent on viewing Rome purely in terms of its Classical past or as a stop on the Grand Tour. This collection of essays looks at Rome from a postmodern perspective, including analysis of the city's 'unmappability', its unity, and its iconic status in literature and film.

'Classicism and Romanticism in Italian Literature: Leopardi's Discourse on Romantic Poetry'; Fabio Camilletti (Dept of Italian): March 2013

The ‘Discourse of an Italian on Romantic Poetry’ is a literary manifesto written in 1818 by the twenty-year old philologist, philosopher and poet Giacomo Leopardi, which remained however unpublished since the early twentieth-century. Inspired by the quarrel between Classicists and Romantics that was engulfing post-Napoleonic Italy, Leopardi’s ‘Discourse’ articulates an original and thought-provoking reflection on the possibility itself of making literature in modern times, rejecting both the Classicist’s precepts of sterile imitation and the Romantics’ yearning for absolute newness in terms of themes and formal choices. Fabio Camilletti’s Classicism and Romanticism in Italian Literature takes Leopardi’s ‘Discourse’ as a starting point for reflecting on the Classicist-Romantic quarrel as a field of tension in post-revolutionary Italy, and for reconfiguring a critical analysis of Leopardi’s though in a quintessentially comparative perspective. Enriched by the first complete translation of the ‘Discourse’ by Gabrielle Sims (New York University), the book aims to be a reference work for all scholars interested in Romantic literature as a trans-national phenomenon.

Routledge Warwick Studies in the Humanities

George Eliot and Europe; John Rignall: January 1997

This book is based on a conference held in Warwick in July 1995. It is a collection of essays which explore various aspects of George Eliot's relation to the literature and culture of Continental Europe. The essays range widely over the novelist's life and work, examining her Journals and Impressions of Theophratus Such as well as her novels, and focusing on different countries and cultures, including not only France, Germany and Italy, but also Holland and Spain. Some essays examine the complex general issues of language and culture raised in her work, while others concentrate on her response to specific European writers and texts. There are investigations of intertextualities and possibilities of influence, as well as contextual discussions and comparative readings of her novels alongside works by European writers. The overall effect is to illuminate her writing by setting it in the wider European context which, with her knowledge of languages, her travels and her extraordinary wide reading, she knew so well.

Epistolary Selves Letters and Letter-Writers, 1600-1945; Rebecca Earle: August 1999

This volume of ten essays discusses the pivotal role that letters have played in social, economic and political history from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. The recent scholarly interest in the history of reading has as yet yielded few studies which consider letters as a category of readable material. The contributors to this book seek to redress this oversight, viewing letters as texts which can reveal information, not only about their writers and readers, but about the wider historical context in which they were written. Topics covered include the mercantile letter, diplomatic correspondence, and what these epistolary forms suggest about the rise of a polite, literate culture in the eighteenth century; the experience of immigration from Europe to America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the relationship through the letter; and the working of gender in the epistolary form. Rebecca Earle provides an overview of how the study of letter-writing can open up new avenues of historical as well as literary investigation. This, together with contributions form leading international scholars, makes Epistolary Selves an essential text for those researching the letter genre.

German Culture and the Uncomfortable Past Representations of National Socialism in Contemporary Germanic Literature; Helmut Schmitz: 2001

Beginning with the question of the role of the past in the shaping of a contemporary identity, this volume spans three generations of German and Austrian writers and explores changes and shifts in the aesthetics of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past). The purpose of the book is to assess contemporary German literary representations of National Socialism in a wider context of these current debates. The contributors address questions arising from a shift over the last decade, triggered by a generation change-questions of personal and national identity in Germany and Austria, and the aesthetics of memory. One of the central questions that emerges in relation to the Hitler youth generation is that of biography, as examined through Gunter Grass' and Martin Walser's conflicting views on the subject of National Socialism. Other themes explored here are the conflict between the post-war generations and the contributions of that conflict to (West)-German mentality, and the growing historical distance and its influence on the aesthetics of representation.

Staging Dario Fo and Franca Rame: Anglo-American Approaches to Political Theatre; Stefania Taviano : 2005

This is the first extended treatment of the English translations, stagings, and reception of the political plays of Dario Fo and Franca Rame. Focusing on the United Kingdom and the United States, Stefania Taviano offers a critique of the cultural stereo typing and political conservatism that have pursued these playwrights in translation and argues for the possibility of remaining true to Fo and Rame's political commitment while preserving the comic nature of their plays. Taviano shows how the choices made by the translators and stagers of Fo and Rame's political theatre reveal attitudes toward foreign cultures and theatre generally and Italy in particular. Among the questions she poses are 'What characterizes the process of acculturation that takes place when political theatre is transposed from one culture to another?' 'To what extent are images of foreign literary production affected by dominant translation practices and theatre traditions?' Perhaps most important, 'What constitutes political theatre in a given society, and how are such definitions used to categorize and contain theatre texts that are disturbing, challenging, and difficult to stage?' Her book concludes with an investigation of the meaning of Fo and Rame's political theatre today that points the way for future critical studies of the politics behind the translation and stage production of political theatre outside its culture of origin.

Ignazio Silone in Exile Writing and Antifascism in Switzerland 1929-1944; Deborah Holmes: 2005

Italian writer and political activist Ignazio Silone spent fifteen years from 1929 to 1944 as a political exile in Switzerland. Focusing on this period, this book throws new light on Silone's complex biography and shows how his literary production influenced and was influenced by fellow antifascist German émigrés and the Swiss socialist intelligentsia. Using previously unknown archival materials, letters, and diaries, and following a flexible chronological structure, the book examines the developing role Silone played in the intellectual life of Zurich. Its analysis of Silone's links with 'Bauhaus' circles, disciples of C.J. Jung, and Zurich's socialist city council offers an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective on Silone's exile that both questions and celebrates his status as an 'un-Italian' Italian author. Holmes also considers wider topics such as the functions of the engagé writer in times of crisis, the dynamics of cultural transfer through translation, and the phenomenon of exile literature. Italian antifascist exile writing is an area of Italian literature that has never been explored as an entity. With its painstaking archival research and critical approach to the pioneering methods and results of German 'Exilforschung,' Ignazio Silone in Exile opens the way for further studies on this little-known aspect of Italian emigration culture.