The Literature of Pity

• Date de parution : 31/03/2014
• Editeur : Edinburgh University Press
• EAN : 9780748691975
• Série : (-)
• Support : Livre numérique

• Nombre de pages : (-)
• Collection : (-)
• Genre : (-)
• Thème : Non attribué
• Prix littéraire(s) : (-)

Pity represents a combination of fear, helplessness and overwhelming agitation. It is a term which suffuses our everyday lives; it is also a dangerous term hovering between approval of sympathy and disapproval of emotional wallowing (as in 'self-pity'). David Punter here engages with a wealth... Voir plus

Pity represents a combination of fear, helplessness and overwhelming agitation. It is a term which suffuses our everyday lives; it is also a dangerous term hovering between approval of sympathy and disapproval of emotional wallowing (as in 'self-pity'). David Punter here engages with a wealth of theoretical ideas to explore the literature of pity, including Freud, Derrida, Levinas and others. His chapters cover "Distinguishing Pity", the Aristotelian framework; Buddhism and pity; the pieta in the Middle Ages and Renaissance; Shakespeare on pity; Milton's pitiless Christianity; pity and charity in the early novel; Blake's views on pity; the Victorian debate, from Austen to Dickens and George Eliot; Brecht and Chekhov on pity and self-pity; "war, and the pity of war"; Jean Rhys and Stevie Smith; pity, immigration and the colony; and finally three contemporary texts by Michel Faber, Kazuo Ishiguro and Cormac McCarthy.