Includes bibliographical references (p. 228-238) and index.
Contents:
Civic humanism: Said, Brecht and Coriolanus / Nigel Wood. Part III. Literature as Ersatz Theology: Deep selves: Introduction / Andy Mousley; Faith, feeling, reality: Anne Brontë as an existentialist poet / Rebecca Styler; Virginia Woolf, sympathy and feeling for the human / Kirsty Martin; Being human and being animal in twentieth-century horse-whispering writings: 'Word-bound creatures' and 'the Breath of horses' / Elspeth Graham; Judith Butler and the catachretic human / Inge Arteel -- Part II. Scepticism, or Humanism at the Limit: Introduction / Andy Mousley; Shakespeare's refusers: humanism at the limit / Richard Chamberlain; Why Eliot killed Lydgate: 'Joyful Cruelty' in Middlemarch / Steven Earnshaw; Atomised: Mary Midgley and Michel Houellebecq / Jeff Wallace; Humanity without itself: Robert Musil, Giorgio Agamben and posthumanism / Ivan Callus and Stefan Herbrechter -- Part III. Literature, Democracy, Humanisms from Below: Introduction / Andy Mousley; Mobilising unbribable life: the politics of contemporary poetry in Bosnia and Herzegovina / Damir Arsenijević; HUM (-an, -ane, -anity, -anities, -anism, -anise) / Mark Robson; Humanising Marx: theory and fiction in the Fin de Siècle British Socialist periodical / Deborah Mutch' Civic humanism: Said, Brecht and Coriolanus / Nigel Wood.
Summary:
"Literature cultivates "deep selves" for whom books matter because they take over from religion fundamental questions about the meaning of existence. This volume embraces and questions this perspective, while also developing a "new humanist' critical vocabulary which specifies, and therefore opens to debate, the human significance of literature"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.