The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

Tang poetry is one of the most valuable cultural inheritances of Chinese history. Its distinctive aesthetics, delicate language and diverse styles constitute great literature in itself, as well as a rich topic for literary study. This two-volume set is the masterpiece of Professor Lin Geng, one of China's most respected literary historians, and reflects decades of active research into Tang poetry, covering the "Golden Age" of Chinese poetry (618-907 CE). In the first volume, the author provides a general understanding of poetry in the "High Tang" era from a range of perspectives. Starting with an indepth discussion of the Romantic tradition and historical context, the author focuses on poetic language patterns, Youth Spirit, maturity symbols, and prototypes of poetry. The author demonstrates that the most valuable part of Tang poetry is how it can provide people with a new perspective on every aspect of life. The second volume focuses on the prominent Tang poets and poems. Beginning with an introduction to the "four greatest poets"-Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei, and Bai Juyi-the author discusses their subjects, language, influence, and key works. The volume also includes essays on a dozen masterpieces of Tang poetry, categorized by topics such as love and friendship, aspirationsand seclusion, as well as travelling and nostalgia. As the author stresses, Tang poetry is worth rereading because it makes us invigorate our mental wellbeing, leaving it powerful and full of vitality. This book will appeal to researchers and students of Chinese literature, especially of classical Chinese poetry. People interested in Chinese culture will also benefit from the book.

"In a language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, the language contains neither ideas nor sounds that pre-exist the linguistic system, but only conceptual differences and phonic differences issuing from this system." (From the posthumous Course in General Linguistics, 1916.)
No one becomes as famous as Saussure without both admirers and detractors reducing them to a paragraph's worth of ideas that can be readily quoted, debated, memorized, and examined. One can argue the ideas expressed above - that language is composed of a system of acoustic oppositions (the signifier) matched by social convention to a system of conceptual oppositions (the signified) - have in some sense become "Saussure," while the human being, in all his complexity, has disappeared. In the first comprehensive biography of Ferdinand de Saussure, John Joseph restores the full character and history of a man who is considered the founder of modern linguistics and whose ideas have influenced literary theory, philosophy, cultural studies, and virtually every other branch of humanities and the social sciences.
Through a far-reaching account of Saussure's life and the time in which he lived, we learn about the history of Geneva, of Genevese educational institutions, of linguistics, about Saussure's ancestry, about his childhood, his education, the fortunes of his relatives, and his personal life in Paris. John Joseph intersperses all these discussions with accounts of Saussure's research and the courses he taught highlighting the ways in which knowing about his friendships and family history can help us understand not only his thoughts and ideas but also his utter failure to publish any major work after the age of twenty-one.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

Fred Beiser, renowned as one of the world's leading historians of German philosophy, presents a brilliant new study of Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805), rehabilitating him as a philosopher worthy of serious attention. Beiser shows, in particular, that Schiller's engagement with Kant is far more subtle and rewarding than is often portrayed. Promising to be a landmark in the study of German thought, Schiller as Philosopher will be compulsory reading for any philosopher, historian, or literary scholar engaged with the key developments of this fertile period.

This book looks at how Europe's refugee crisis has provoked different political and humanitarian responses, all similarly driven by technology. The author first explores the transformation of Europe into an increasingly militarised space, where technologies are mainly used to exercise surveillance and to distinguish between citizens and unwanted migrants. She then shifts the attention to refugees' practices of connectivity by looking at how technologies are used by refugees to communicate, perform and resist their exile. Finally, the book examines the opportunities and challenges that characterise the impact of digital social innovation in humanitarian settings. By focusing on how technologies are used to promote solidarity in crisis contexts, the volume provides an original contribution to studying the role of tech for good activism within the space of Fortress Europe. Based on interviews with refugees, digital humanitarians and social entrepreneurs, the book timely questions what Europe means today, and why dialogue is now more important than ever.

Jewish American literature covers a broad range of genres and literary works. Some of the United States' most compelling literature centers on the American Jewish experience; some of the most acclaimed authors write from the heart of their experience as Jewish Americans. This ground-breaking work is intended to guide readers and those who advise readers in selecting fiction and nonfiction books that match specific reading interests. It is the first readers' advisory guide to Jewish American literature. Like other titles in the Genreflecting Advisory Series, the book organizes titles by genre--mysteries, thrillers, historical fiction, science fiction and fantasy, stories of romance, and literary fiction. In addition, there are chapters on holocaust literature and on biography/autobiography. More than 700 titles are categorized and described. Each chapter is further organized by subgenre and theme. Award-winning titles are noted, as are books that appeal to young adult readers and titles appropriate for book clubs and reading discussions. In addition, the author presents guidelines for building and maintaining a collection of Jewish literature, tips for advising readers, and lists of further resources for exploring the genre; making this a thorough and practical resource. Young adult and adult - Grades 9 and up.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

This book explores Thomas Paine's French decade, from the publication of the first part of Rights of Man in the spring of 1791 to his return trip to the United States in the fall of 1802. It examines Paine's multifarious activities during this period as a thinker, writer, member of the French Convention, lobbyist, adviser to French governments, officious diplomat and propagandist. Using previously neglected sources and archival material, Carine Lounissi demonstrates both how his republicanism was challenged, bolstered and altered by this French experience, and how his positions at key moments of the history of the French experiment forced major participants in the Revolution to defend or question the kind of regime or of republic they wished to set up. As a member of the Lafayette circle when writing the manuscript of Rights of Man, of the Girondin constellation in the Convention, one of the few democrats who defended universal suffrage after Thermidor, and as a member of the Constitutional Circle which promoted a kind of republic which did not match his ideas, Paine baffled his contemporaries and still puzzles the present-day scholar. This book intends to offer a new perspective on Paine, and on how this major agent of revolutions contributed to the debate on the French Revolution both in France and outside France.

This edited book focuses on speech etiquette, examining the rules that govern communication in various online communities: professional, female, and ethnospecific. The contributors analyze online communication in the Slavic languages Russian, Slovak, Polish, and Belarusian, showing how the concept of speech etiquette differs from the concept of politeness, although both reflect the relationship between people in interaction. Online communities are united on the basis of common informative or phatic illocutions among their participants, and their speech etiquette is manifested in stable forms of conducting discussions - stimulating and responding. Each group has its own ideas of unacceptable speech behavior and approaches to sanitation, and the rules of speech etiquette in each group determine the degree of rapport and distancing between the participants in discourse. The chapters in this book explore how rapport and distance are established through acts such as showing attention to the addressee and increasing his or her communicative status; reducing or increasing the illocutionary power of evaluations and motivations; and evaluating one's own or someone else's speech. The volume will be of interest to researchers studying online communication in such diverse fields as linguistics, sociology, anthropology, programming, and media studies.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

The Other Hybrid Archipelago presents the postcolonial literatures of the Francophone Indian Ocean islands to an Anglophone audience. The islands of Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, the Comoros, and the Seychelles form a region that has a particular cultural identity because of the varied mixture of populations that have settled there and the dominant influence of French colonialism. This survey concentrates on the period since the Second World War, when most of the islands achieved independence, except for Reunion and Mayotte, which maintain a regional status within the French Republic. The postcolonial approach suggests certain recurrent themes and preoccupations of the islands' cultures and an appropriate way to define their recent cultural production, while taking account of the burden of their colonial past. The rich cocktail of cultural and linguistic influences surveyed is situated in relation to the contemporary political and social context of the islands and their marginal status within the global economy.

This book examines the speculative core of Karl Barth's theology, reconsidering the relationship between theory and practice in Barth's thinking. A consequence of this reconsideration is the recognition that Barth's own account of his theological development is largely correct. Sigurd Baark draws heavily on the philosophical tradition of German Idealism, arguing that an important part of what makes Barth a speculative theologian is the way his thinking is informed by the nexus of self-consciousness, reason and, freedom, which was most fully developed by Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. The book provides a new interpretation of Barth's theology, and shows how a speculative understanding of theology is useful in today's intellectual climate.

This study examines contemporary Spanish dystopian literature and films (in)directly related to the 2008 financial crisis from an urban cultural studies perspective. It explores culturally-charged landscapes that effectively convey the zeitgeist and reveal deep-rooted anxieties about issues such as globalization, consumerism, immigration, speculation, precarity, and political resistance (particularly by Indignados [Indignant Ones] from the 15-M Movement). The book loosely traces the trajectory of the crisis, with the first part looking at texts that underscore some of the behaviors that indirectly contributed to the crisis, and the remaining chapters focusing on works that directly examine the crisis and its aftermath. This close reading of texts and films by Ray Loriga, Elia Barcelo, Ion de Sosa, Jose Ardillo, David Llorente, Eduardo Vaquerizo, and Ricardo Menendez Salmon offers insights into the creative ways that these authors and directors use spatial constructions to capture the dystopian imagination.

This study examines the ways in which technological changes initiated during the Victorian period have led to the diminution of speech as a mode of critique. Much in the same ways that speech had been used to affirm intersubjectivity, print culture conditioned readers to accept uni-directional exchange of values and interests. It enabled the creation of a community of readers who would be responsive to the expansion of a industry and the emergence of a technical language and culture, a culture that precedes and predicts post-modern society. The purpose of this study is to employ Charlotte Bronte's Shirley (1849), Charles Dickens's Hard Times (1854), and George Eliot's Felix Holt (1866) to evidence how the growth of capitalist production and the development of new technologies of industry within the early- to mid-Victorian periods inspired the prioritization of the printed word over oratory and speech as a means for fulfilling the linguistic power exchanges found common in spoken discourse. Inventions such as Friedrich Gottlob Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer's high-speed printing press enabled mass production and low-cost readership among the working class, who experienced literacy on multiple levels: to educate themselves, to experience leisure and diversion, to confirm their religious beliefs, and to improve their labor skills. Much in the same ways that speech had been used to affirm intersubjectivity, print culture conditioned readers to accept uni-directional exchange of values and interests that would create a community of readers who would be responsive to the expansion of a new technical society and would eventually perform the routines of mechanized labor. This book employs Victorian novelists such as Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot to address representations of speech in fictional discourse. Critics like Nancy Armstrong and Garrett Stewart have considered these representations without addressing the ways in which print culture engendered and valued new forms of speech, forms which might re-engage critique of the human condition. More recent publications like The Crowd: British Literature and Public Politics, by John Plotz, do not respond to the ways in which individuals use the collective voice of crowd formations to redefine and resituate their subjective identities. This book serves to fill this gap in Victorian studies. Victorian novels are not, of course, pure representations of Victorian reality. However, many working-class Victorians engaged texts as authentic representations of society. How working-class readers then reconstructed their personal narratives in actuality suggests the affects of social assimilation upon subjective identity and advances the claim that Victorian novels did not provide solutions to the social and economic maladies they reported. Rather, they contextualized social and cultural problems without recognizing the dangers of how the decontextualized imagination of the reader locates placement within the same ontological and epistemological assumptions. Technologies of Power in the Victorian Period is an informative study that will appeal to members of academic groups such as the British Women's Writer's Association and the North American Victorian Association. Although the book bears relevance to scholars and students of Victorian studies, it will also serve as a point of reference for curious readers engaged in studies of the effects of industrial technologies on language acquisition and dissemination during the nineteenth century.

This book examines diverse literary writings in Bangla related to crime in late nineteenth and early twentieth century colonial Bengal, with a timely focus on gender. It analyses crime-centred fiction and non-fiction in the region to see how actual or imagined crimes related to women were shaped and fashioned into images and narratives for contemporary genteel readers. The writings have been examined within a social-historical context where gender was a fiercely contested terrain for publicly fought debates on law, sexual relations, reform, and identity as moulded by culture, class, and caste. Both canonized literary writings (like those of Bankim Chatterji) as well as non-canonical, popular writings (of writers who have not received sufficient critical attention) are scrutinised in order to examine how criminal offences featuring women (as both victims and offenders) have been narrated in early manifestations of the genre of crime writing in Bangla. An empowered and thought-provoking study, this book will be of special interest to scholars of criminology and social justice, literature, and gender.