Love, intimacy and power

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Patrick Joyce

This history is the story of two men, and of the stories they and others told in order that it might be known who they were. It is a history of identity, 'the self' and social identity, and the realm of 'the social' itself in which identity is located. It explores critically the nature of class identity by looking at the formation and influence of two men who might be taken as representative of what 'working class' and 'middle class' meant in England in the nineteenth century. Class is seen to have been less significant than the various shapes of demos, and the two studies of individuals are complemented by a further study on narrative in pointing to the great importance of the collective subjects upon which democracy rested. The book indicates the way forward to a new history of democracy as an imagined entity. It represents a deepening of Patrick Joyce's engagement with 'post-modernist' theory, seeking the relevance of this theory for the writing of history, and in the process offering a critique of the conservatism of much academic history, particularly in Britain.

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Tim Hitchcock and Michèle Cohen

This collection of essays provides a framework within which to understand 18th-century men. The book is divided into four parts looking at: sociability, virtue and friendship, violence, and sexuality.

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William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts

Fear of fire, flood, plague, invasion by the infidel, purgatory, death, witchcraft - these are just some of the fears that plagued the early modern world which are dealt with in this fascinating well-integrated collection of essays, based on extensive and ground-breaking new research. Drawing on British and Continental examples, the volume explores the panoply of personal and communal tragedies which tormented and terrified both elite and popular communities in this period, and shows how they formed strategies for dealing both practically and psychologically with their fears; it tells of the creation of the first fire service in France, of dog-massacres in times of plague in England, and of flood emergency plans in Holland.

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Andrea Freud Loewenstein

Biases held by artists have been a constant source of controversy in appraisals of their works, most recently in critiques of such authors as H.L. Mencken and Paul de Man. Should the belief systems of these thinkers be taken into account in assessing the value of the works which they made public? Andrea Freud Loewenstein here undertakes to address this crucial issue. At the heart of her study is an examination of the figures of Jew and woman in the works of three British male authors written between 1929 and 1945. While instances of misogyny and anti-Semitism were not uncommon in the literature of the period, Loewenstein argues that a hatred and fear of women was often the dominating preoccupation of their work, from which stemmed the intertwined and closely related loathing of Jews. Basing her interpretations on biographical information and on the close analysis of a large body of fiction by each author, Loewenstein reconstructs the psychological system through which each one envisions the world, showing how Jews and women function in their texts, and in each individual psychopathology, as a representation of the Other. Ranging far beyond a narrow study of three authors, Loewenstein situates the works studied in the context of the history of Jews in Britain, concentrating on recent historical scholarship on Britain and the Jews in the 1930s. She questions the widespread belief that the British government was a friend to the Jews and shows, as evident in the double-talk and hypocrisy behind some British governmental policies, that Britain instead actively collaborated in the Jews' destruction. To provide a greater context for her argument, Loewenstein presents a timeline of the history of the Jews in Britain. Firmly grounded in a range of disciplines, Loathsome Jews and Engulfing Women is a masterful blend of history, psychology, and literary criticism.