The Literature of Pity

David Punter author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Edinburgh University Press

Published:31st Mar '14

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Literature of Pity cover

This book traces an entire history of pity, as an emotion and as an element in the arts. 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. He begins with an 'Introduction: Distinguishing Pity'; followed by chapters on 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.

ISBN: 9780748639496

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 455g

256 pages