New Spanish translation of the Old English elegies

Miguel Gomes's new translation of the Old English elegies has just been published. The poems, written down by an unknown scribe in the 10th century, present a world of lords, warriors, and icy Northern waters ringing with the cries of seabirds. These elegies are major works of world literature which challenge the Renaissance myth that the period following the fall of Rome was a cultural void. Miguel's translation is accompanied by an extensive study of the poems, which places them at the crossroads of the Germanic heroic world and the millenarian anxieties of medieval Christianity.

A festive publication

An illustration from The Present

You are never too young to debate questions of politics. That is the view of Dr Peter Hayes, Senior Lecturer in Politics.  He has just published a book called The Present, which introduces young readers to contested political issues through a story concerning Father Christmas.

“Father Christmas is magic but his Christmas gift giving involves him in a number of serious real-world issues,” Peter explains. “These issues include the working conditions of people making Christmas presents; the regimentation and surveillance that underpins our modern consumerist society; the increasingly hard border between those within the industrial core and those outside it, and the contribution of consumerism to global warming.  All of these international political issues lie behind the annual appearance of Father Christmas.”

The Present does not try to answer what we should do about all this, but it does raise questions, and encourages children and their family and friends to think about, discuss and perhaps argue over these matters.

The Present is available from online book retailers. Watch a video about the book here.

New book about William Blake

Dr David Fallon's new book on William Blake has been published by Palgrave Macmillan. Blake, Myth, and Enlightenment: The Politics of Apotheosis provides compelling new readings of Blake’s poetry and art, including the first sustained account of his visionary paintings of Pitt and Nelson. It focuses on the recurrent motif of apotheosis, both as a figure of political authority to be demystified but also as an image of utopian possibility. It reevaluates Blake’s relationship to Enlightenment thought, myth, religion, and politics, from The French Revolution to Jerusalem and The Laocoön. The book combines careful attention to cultural and historical contexts with close readings of the texts and designs, providing an innovative account of Blake’s creative transformations of Enlightenment, classical, and Christian thought.

Belligerent broadcasting book

Professor Angela Smith and Dr Michael Higgins (Strathclyde University) have published a book entitled Belligerent Broadcasting: Synthetic Argument in Broadcast Talk (Routledge 2017).  The volume reflects upon and analyses the development of 'belligerent broadcasting', beginning with an exploration of belligerence in its historical context and as an aspect of wider cultural concerns surrounding the retreat of civility.  With attention to the different relations of power expressed in the various forms of belligerent conduct across a range of media genres, Angela and Michael explore its manifestation in political interviews, in 'confrontation' in talk shows, in makeover television, as an 'authentic' means of proffering opinion, and as a form of sociability in banter. The book uses examples from a range of well-known shows such as The Apprentice, Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, The Jeremy Kyle Show, and Top Gear to reflect on the consequences and potentialities of belligerence in the media and the public sphere. 

Why Wittgenstein Matters

Dr Ian Ground has been invited by Bloomsbury to contribute a monograph on Why Wittgenstein Matters to their new high profile series “Why Philosophy Matters” edited by Constantine Sandis. As part of the promotion of the series, Ian has been invited to give a public lecture in 2014, on the impact of Wittgenstein, under the auspices of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

On 14th May 2013 Ian gave the Tenth Annual British Wittgenstein Society lecture. You can read a report of it by Neil O'Hara here.

The Language of Journalism

The Language of Journalism: A Multi-Genre Perspective by Dr Angela Smith (English) and Dr Michael Higgins (University of Strathclyde) has just been published by Bloomsbury. It is an accessible, wide-ranging introductory textbook which explores the significance of a range of linguistic practices occurring in journalism, and demonstrates and facilitates the use of analysis in aiding professional journalistic and media practice. The book introduces the differences in language conventions that develop across media platforms and covers the key journalistic mediums available today, including sport, online and citizen journalism alongside the more standard chapters on magazine, newspaper and broadcast journalism.

Kevin Yuill on assisted suicide

Dr Kevin Yuill (History and Politics) has published a monograph entitled Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). The book presents an up-to-date analysis of the direction discussion is taking, showing that atheists, libertarians, those favouring abortion rights and stem-cell research should stand beside their religious compatriots in opposing legalization of assisted suicide. Kevin shows that the real issue behind the debate is not euthanasia but suicide. Rather than focusing on tragic cases, he indicates the real damage that will be done if we affirm the suicidal wishes of even a small segment of the population. Analyzing the movement for the right to die in historical terms, Kevin shows that, though many proponents of a change in the law believe they are rationalist heirs of such thinkers as John Stuart Mill, legalizing assisted suicide will reduce privacy and freedom. Finally, Kevin suggests a radical alternative to legalization of assisted suicide that would embrace both the cause of freedom and the anxieties of many about securing good deaths.

Kath Kerr-Koch romances fascism

Dr Kathleen Kerr-Koch's Romancing Fascism: Modernity and Allegory in Benjamin, de Man, Shelley is to be published by Bloomsbury in spring 2013. In her monograph Kath takes a wide-ranging approach to the analysis of allegory as it is treated by three controversial writers whose works flank the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the middle and late periods of what we call modernity—Walter Benjamin, Paul de Man and Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the course of her study she argues that intellectual responsibility can only be safeguarded if criticism is mobilised both as a poetic and as a critically enlightened endeavour.

Angela Smith publishes a book about British widows of the First World War

Dr Angela Smith has published Discourses Surrounding British Widows of the First World War (Bloomsbury, 2012). The book develops a stream-lined version of the discourse-historical model of critical discourse analysis, and demonstrates how this can be used to handle a large corpus of mixed-text data. Drawing mainly on recently-released records held in the National Archive, Angela explores the discourses which surround British widows of the First World War with particular attention to national identity, social welfare and morality. Focusing on two widows, the book encourages their individual stories to emerge and gives a voice to an otherwise forgotten group of women whose stories have been lost under the literary tomes of middle-class writers such as Vera Brittain and May Wedderburn Cannon. The discussion is further informed by a wider reading of 300 other such files, which allows wider observations to be made about the nature of the discourses examined, and offers the most complete possible picture for such data.

Language in Science Fiction and Fantasy by Susan Mandala

Dr Susan Mandala's latest monograph Language in Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Question of Style (Continuum 2012) is now out in paperback.

"The language of science fiction, and of fantasy, has a steep challenge: that of the creation of other worlds, societies and characters that are alien to us in diverse and fundamental ways, but still compelling and knowable.  This exciting book steps away from the issues of race, gender and politics that have saturated sci-fi and fantasy criticism.  Rather, it challenges two widely held but poorly substantiated beliefs circulating about science fiction and fantasy - that they are a) written in plain and unremarkable prose and b) apt to present characters that are flat types rather than fully realised individuals.

Mandala draws on traditional syntactic categories of stylistic analysis as well as the relatively more recent pragmatic and sociolinguistic paradigms such that the original analyses here take our understanding of these two genres beyond the usual confines, to consider how language is used to draw alternative words, represent the far future and distant past, and create psychologically believable characters.

Covering both British and American fiction and television, this is a wide-ranging and perceptive book." (From the publisher's website.)

Writing Muslim Identity by Geoff Nash

Dr Geoff Nash's monograph Writing Muslim Identity (Continuum 2012) is now available in paperback.

"The relationship between Islam and the West is one of the most urgent and hotly debated issues of our time. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive overview of the way in which Muslims are represented within modern English writing, ranging from the novel, through memoir and travel writing to journalism. Covering a wide range of texts and authors, it scrutinises the identity ‘Muslim’ by looking at its inscription in recent and contemporary literary writing within the context of significant events like the Rushdie Affair and 9/11. Examining the wide range of writing internationally that takes Islam or Islamic cultures as its focus, the author discusses the representation of Muslim identity in writing by non-Muslim writers, former Muslim ‘native informants’, and practising Muslims." (From the publisher's website.)