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Contingency as a Cause (or Little Things Mean a Lot)

Richard N. Rosecrance

in The Next Great War?: The Roots of World War I and the Risk of U.S.-China Conflict

World War I was not inevitable but a series of factors or influences compounded its occurrence: the strict balance of power; offense-dominance, the need to pacify or secure allies, repetitive crisis, ... More

World War I was not inevitable but a series of factors or influences compounded its occurrence: the strict balance of power; offense-dominance, the need to pacify or secure allies, repetitive crisis, pervasive nationalism and inadequate diplomatic leadership. These issues are still with us, and unless China and the U.S. form or join a new and more powerful organization to deal with them, war remains a possibility.Less

Introduction

Barbara Lounsberry

in Virginia Woolf, the War Without, the War Within: Her Final Diaries and the Diaries She Read

The introduction presents the book’s main argument: the new view that Woolf enters a third stage as a diarist (after her first experimental stage and her second, lean modernist diary stage). In ... More

The introduction presents the book’s main argument: the new view that Woolf enters a third stage as a diarist (after her first experimental stage and her second, lean modernist diary stage). In Woolf's last dozen years, we see the final flowering of her diary, when she not only turns more often to her own diary than she did in the 1920s but also turns more to others' diaries as well. I suggest that Woolf seems to need diaries more in her final years as a counter to the hysteric drumbeat of war. I argue that Woolf's final diaries should be read as part of her inter-related and multiform battle against tyranny and war across the 1930s. I also call for Woolf's final diaries to be recognized as key texts in the current reassessment of the literary merits of the 1930s. This Introduction previews the book’s second major insight: the heretofore-unexplored role of other diaries in Woolf’s final writing, both fiction and nonfiction.Less

‘In a style very different’: and

Madeleine Callaghan

in Shelley's Living Artistry: Letters, Poems, Plays

Shelley’s preoccupation with embodying power struggle in language remains constant in The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound. This chapter argues that instead of reading Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci as ... More

Shelley’s preoccupation with embodying power struggle in language remains constant in The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound. This chapter argues that instead of reading Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci as antinomies, there is a difficult doubling between the poetical dramas. Shelley’s letter to Thomas Love Peacock of 6 November 1818 offers a suggestive perspective on the dramas through its fascination with the poet’s response to tyranny. The corruption of poets by a tyrannical society in Shelley’s Defence of Poetry is Beatrice’s destruction at her father’s hands writ large, and in Prometheus Unbound, Prometheus combines poetic with political power as he grows into his role as poet. This chapter reads experimentation as not merely formal but as ethical. Embodiment rather than description becomes the hallmark of Shelleyan dramaLess

Gorboduc: Absolutist decision and the two bodies of the king

Doyeeta Majumder

in Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence in Early Modern Drama

Taking up the discussion of the influence of Scottish political events on English drama, this chapter focuses on a play traditionally seen to be a dramatic commentary on the succession anxiety ... More

Taking up the discussion of the influence of Scottish political events on English drama, this chapter focuses on a play traditionally seen to be a dramatic commentary on the succession anxiety surrounding Mary Stuart’s presence in England. However, this chapter attempts to move beyond topical political references, in order to analyze Gorboduc as the transitional play that not only broaches the issue of usurpation for the first time on the English stage, but also depicts regicide at the hands of rebelling subjects, all the while making oblique but identifiable references to the threat of usurpation emanating from Scotland. The overlap between monarchical absolutism and tyranny underpins the action in this play. Invoking Ernst Kantorowicz’s theorization of the ‘king’s two bodies’ and Carl Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty as a critical framework, this chapter examines the way in which the play problematizes the relation of sovereign power to the person of the bearer, and thus problematizes the notion of monarchical absolutism itself.Less

Authority

Neema Parvini

in Shakespeare's Moral Compass

This chapter argues that Shakespeare’s response to the moral foundation of authority is not located in the speeches of his political leaders, because authority is not synonymous with power. Authority ... More

This chapter argues that Shakespeare’s response to the moral foundation of authority is not located in the speeches of his political leaders, because authority is not synonymous with power. Authority must be earned, whereas power is usually bestowed. Therefore, we must look to the relationships between characters of different social rank, especially between servants and their masters. In Shakespeare’s plays these relationships often take the form of freely chosen employment as opposed to feudal oaths of fealty. This is because paid employment became the new norm as early capitalism flourished in the 1500s, and the last remnants of the old feudal order were swept away. Focusing on the relationship between Adam and Orlando in As You Like It, the contrast between Kent and Oswald in King Lear, and the relationship between Flavius the steward and Timon in Timon of Athens, it contends that in Shakespeare’s plays virtuous authority entails reciprocal good service. Good service is found not in mere obedience, but in a sense of duty, which might on occasion directly contradict the wishes of the master. If authority is mistaken for oppressive power, and if liberty is mistaken for subversion, tyranny follows.Less

Hiero, or The Skilled Tyrant

in The Shorter Writings

Translation of and interpretive essay on the Hiero or the Skilled Tyrant. This dialogue between the tyrant Hiero and the poet Simonides contains Xenophon’s most sustained consideration of tyranny. It ... More

Translation of and interpretive essay on the Hiero or the Skilled Tyrant. This dialogue between the tyrant Hiero and the poet Simonides contains Xenophon’s most sustained consideration of tyranny. It focuses on two questions: whether tyrannical life is preferable to private life and how a tyrant should rule. The questions come together in that Simonides offers his account of how a tyrant should rule in response to Hiero’s criticisms of the tyrannical life. The dialogue thus indicates the ways in which tyrannical governments and the tyrannical way of life may be improved, as well as the essential limits to these improvements, that is, the distinctive weaknesses of tyranny as a form of rule and the dissatisfactions intrinsic to the tyrant’s way of life. The Hiero thereby sheds much light on Xenophon’s view of tyrannical, as opposed to free, governments, political ambition, and the best way of life.Less

Tocqueville and Liberty

Frank M. Turner

Richard A. Lofthouse (ed.)

in European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche

This chapter presents a reading of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Tocqueville stands as one of the thinkers who opened the intellectual path to an understanding of the new world of ... More

This chapter presents a reading of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Tocqueville stands as one of the thinkers who opened the intellectual path to an understanding of the new world of politics, economics, and ideologies that was emerging in the early nineteenth century. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville sought to provide a new conceptual framework with which to understand and analyze the newly emerging political world. The chapter examines his views on religion, democracy, patriotism, political obligation, and the concept of the Tyranny of the Majority. It concludes that in allowing himself to think freely and open-endedly about democracy, Tocqueville discerned as no one before him the ongoing conflict that would emerge in all states where political liberalism and liberal democratic structures prevailed. He saw that the problem of democracy would be tension between political and social demands.Less

The Koinon Dogma, the Mercenary Threat and the Consolidation of the Democratic Revolutions in Mid-Fifth-Century Sicily

David A. Teegarden

in Ancient Greek History and Contemporary Social Science

This chapter provides a partial explanation for the apparent success of the many democratic revolutions in mid 5th century Sicily. It makes three primary points. First, the presence of mercenaries ... More

This chapter provides a partial explanation for the apparent success of the many democratic revolutions in mid 5th century Sicily. It makes three primary points. First, the presence of mercenaries and displaced peoples constituted an existential threat to each of the new Sicilian democracies. For example, mercenaries – all of whom previously worked for the then recently deposed tyrants – might support an aspiring tyrant simply for pay. Second, no city could solve the problems posed by mercenaries and displaced peoples by itself. If City A, for example, does not welcome home its former residents currently living in City B, City B might not be able to welcome home its former residents currently living in City C, and so on. For the third point it draws upon the work of Michael Chwe and Barry Weingast and argues that the promulgation of a koinon dogma (Diod. Sic. 11.76.5) helped the citizens of the relevant poleis solve their “inter‐polis coordination problem” and thus helped consolidate the several democratic revolutions in Greek Sicily.Less

Law’s Nature: Philosophy as a Legal Argument in Cicero’s Writings

Benedikt Forschner

in Cicero's Law: Rethinking Roman Law of the Late Republic

The paper deals with the use of philosophical arguments in Cicero's legal writings, in particular his forensic speeches. It tries to demonstrate that Cicero developed a unique, holistic theory of ... More

The paper deals with the use of philosophical arguments in Cicero's legal writings, in particular his forensic speeches. It tries to demonstrate that Cicero developed a unique, holistic theory of law, which is not based on a juxtaposition of natural law and positive law, but tries to deduce the nature of law from the nature of men. Even though this theory probably did not influence the writings of the later classical jurists in a direct way, Roman law was open enough for philosophical arguments to allow Cicero to make use of this theory within the legal discourse. Using examples from Cicero's forensic speeches, the paper demonstrates how Cicero refers to his philosophical concept in order to develop specifically legal arguments.Less

The Agapeics of the Intimate Universal

William Desmond

in The Intimate Universal: The Hidden Porosity Among Religion, Art, Philosophy, and Politics

Chapter 8 explores the agapeics of the intimate universal: the promise of this is immanent from the outset. The agapeics of the intimate universal communicates a surplus generosity that was secretly ... More

Chapter 8 explores the agapeics of the intimate universal: the promise of this is immanent from the outset. The agapeics of the intimate universal communicates a surplus generosity that was secretly enabling in the idiotics, aesthetics and erotics. It is also prepared with the friend, the trusted companion in the labyrinth. The promise in the intimate universal is more than symmetrical relations between friends. Mindfulness of this surplus generosity offers a different picture to much of modern political thought where the underlying motivation of all human association is our lack, interiorized in anguish before death, extroverted in will to power, enacted in aggression against the other as a potential enemy.Less

Special Issues and Considerations

Gunnar Almgren

in Health Care as a Right of Citizenship: The Continuing Evolution of Reform

This chapter addresses a number of thorny issues having to do with segments of the national population that in one way or the other either 1) represent exceptions to the general case of American ... More

This chapter addresses a number of thorny issues having to do with segments of the national population that in one way or the other either 1) represent exceptions to the general case of American citizens that have the possibility of realizing/retaining the functional requisites of political citizenship, or 2) might possess special claims and entitlements that transcend the social rights to the majority of citizens. This chapter takes up that task by addressing such issues as: reconciling the escalating health care needs of aging citizens with the imperatives of intergenerational equity, identifying basis for and limits to a social right to health care for the severely disabled and incapacitated, defining the substantive health care rights for undocumented workers and their dependents, and incorporating the special status and health care obligations historically extended both to veterans in recognition and compensation for military service. and finally to Native Americans as fulfillment of both treaty rights and compensation for their tragic “embodiment” of historical oppression and cultural genocide.Less

Epilogue

Barbara Lounsberry

in Virginia Woolf, the War Without, the War Within: Her Final Diaries and the Diaries She Read

Virginia Woolf's third and final diary stage records the ever-nearing wars without that assailed her (and finally surrounded her) and her (artistic) wars within as she sought to address the outer ... More

Virginia Woolf's third and final diary stage records the ever-nearing wars without that assailed her (and finally surrounded her) and her (artistic) wars within as she sought to address the outer world’s state in a constructive and creative way. In her last dozen years, Woolf's diaries served as a vital tool in her fight against fascism, its tyranny and wars. To understand this is to probe the political implications of genre. A diary's very “ordinariness” works to counter fascism's false, hysterical melodrama. A diary's “prosaic discontinuities” both deflate and defuse the dictators' pumped-up play. Her complex diary portraits further challenge the fascist fantasy of villains and heroes. Woolf's diary is her last major work to reach the public. In this book, I have sought to reveal the foundational role this semi-private diary served for Woolf's public works and for her artistic renewal. Indeed, I believe that her published fiction and nonfiction would not exist without her diary. Among voracious readers, Woolf may be unique in her appreciation of the treasures hidden in diaries. In others' diaries, Woolf sought not only the natural human voice but also the life traces beyond her own, especially ones that she could transform into art. In the end, a diary becomes a perfect image for Virginia Woolf: fragile yet resilient, it is always subject to movement, is rich in renewal, and is inevitably subject to death—and yet, it is deathless as well.Less

Playing with history: Byron’s Italian dramas

Mirka Horová

in Byron and Italy

This chapter concentrates on Byron’s dramatic representations of Italian history – Marino Faliero, The Two Foscari and The Deformed Transformed. It demonstrates the extent to which ‘play’ – in its ... More

This chapter concentrates on Byron’s dramatic representations of Italian history – Marino Faliero, The Two Foscari and The Deformed Transformed. It demonstrates the extent to which ‘play’ – in its performative and sportive, but also competitive and manipulative senses – underpins Byron’s dramatic rendering of Italy in these works. It also highlights how these works combine the carnivalesque and the grotesque to paint a profoundly disturbing picture of Italy’s past. Indeed, Byron’s Italian dramas use Italian history to reflect on the ways in which European historical progress more generally, and the humanising role of art in that progress, repeatedly, endlessly and inevitably descend into sheer violence. As this chapter contends, Byron’s Italian dramas set up a distinctive, coherent and relentless reading of Italian history through particular episodes of it, a reading that places his ideas about the nature of, and the forces ruling, Italian history, but also history more generally, centre-stage.Less

Through the Arch: The Country House and the Tradition of English Tyranny in Woolf’s Between the Acts

Marlowe A. Miller

in Virginia Woolf and Heritage

Virginia Woolf’s writing in the 1930’s reveals her conviction that the training for male superiority and dominance begins in the family home, is "fostered and cherished by education and tradition," ... More

Virginia Woolf’s writing in the 1930’s reveals her conviction that the training for male superiority and dominance begins in the family home, is "fostered and cherished by education and tradition," and leads inevitably to the oppression of weaker nations by stronger nations. Woolf came to see herself in the battle against fascism as one who reveals dictatorship at home; she writes, “…I should evolve some plan for fighting English tyranny." Even Woolf’s working title for her final novel reflects her abiding interest in the home and the role it plays in the construction of “English tyranny.” As she composed her final novel Between the Acts, Woolf used the working title Pointz Hall, emphasizing the central role of the Oliver country home within the text. Spaces and objects in Pointz Hall foster despotism, from Lucy Swithin’s memories of rebuke conjured by a room, to portraits reifying patriarchal traditions. Even the daily copy of The Times contributes to this “education and tradition” within the house: Bart Oliver bullies his grandson with his rolled up newspaper; and in the same publication, Isa reads the story of a young woman raped by soldiers, a scene that Isa then “sees” projected “on the mahogany door panels” of the library. English heritage is embodied in stately homes; Woolf reveals that this heritage is one of tyranny, alive and well in Pointz Hall.Less

‘I wish to be no other but as he’: Persia, masculinity, and conversion in early-seventeenth-century travel writing and drama

Chloë Houston

in Conversions: Gender and Religious Change in Early Modern Europe

In classical descriptions, Persians and their rulers are seen as being given to both tyranny and femininity; early modern Europe thus inherited a view of Persia in which the performance of religious ... More

In classical descriptions, Persians and their rulers are seen as being given to both tyranny and femininity; early modern Europe thus inherited a view of Persia in which the performance of religious identity, political power and gender were inter-connected. Given the complex relationships between Islam, tyranny and gender, early modern European interest in the possible religious conversion of Persia and its people marks a moment at which contemporary anxieties about religious and gender identities converge. This chapter argues that European writers’ interest in the prospect of Persian conversion became tied up with their ideas about the links between Persian effeminacy and tyranny. The prospect of the conversion of Persian Shahs in early modern travel literature and drama gives rise to particular anxieties about masculinity, both in Persian figures and in the Christian European travellers and dramatists who portrayed them. Despite the tradition of viewing Persia as feminised and luxurious, the sources betray an underlying concern that Muslims’ gender and religious identities might in fact be more ‘fixed’ than those of Christian travellers, who experienced their own conversions to Islam and to Persian identities in ways that were troubling to them both as Christians and as men.  Less

Political relationships in context: the body politic

Irene O'Daly

in John of Salisbury and the medieval Roman renaissance

This chapter takes an indepth look at John’s famous metaphor of the body politic. After comparing his model to those of his contemporaries, it notes that John takes the metaphor a step further by ... More

This chapter takes an indepth look at John’s famous metaphor of the body politic. After comparing his model to those of his contemporaries, it notes that John takes the metaphor a step further by exploiting its physiology to suit his political theory. It looks in detail at John’s alleged letter from Plutarch to Trajan, examining the offices of the polity in turn. It looks first at internal, decision-making, offices of the body politic, then at it external, active, offices, before turning to the contested relationship between the prince and priesthood, its head and its soul.Less

The princely head

Irene O'Daly

in John of Salisbury and the medieval Roman renaissance

This chapter opens with a treatment of two of the cardinal virtues - fortitude and justice - virtues which have particular relevance for the prince. It suggests that, just as the good prince is ... More

This chapter opens with a treatment of two of the cardinal virtues - fortitude and justice - virtues which have particular relevance for the prince. It suggests that, just as the good prince is obliged to be virtuous, so the tyrant is defined by his lack of respect for the virtues and moderation. It investigates John’s account of tyranny in detail, looking at his grounds for validating tyrannicide. It situates John’s political theories in their context of production by looking his presentation of three contemporary political events - the reign of King Stephen, the activities of Frederick Barbarossa, and the exile and subsequent murder of Thomas Becket.Less