Joy is an experience of reunion or fulfilment, of desire at least temporarily laid to rest, of a good thing that comes to pass or seems sure to happen soon. In this wide-ranging and highly original book Adam Potkay explores the concept of joy, distinguishing it from related concepts such as happiness and ecstasy. He goes on to trace the literary and intellectual history of joy in the Western tradition, from Aristotle, the Bible and Provencal troubadours through contemporary culture, centring on British and German works from the Reformation through Romanticism. Describing the complex interconnections between literary art, ethics, and religion, Potkay offers fresh readings of Spenser, Shakespeare, Fielding, Schiller, English Romantic poets, Wilde and Yeats. Winner of the 2009 Harry Levin prize, The Story of Joy will be of special interest to scholars of the Renaissance to the late Romantic period, but will also appeal to readers interested in the changing perceptions of joy over time.

This book brings together for the first time works by four Afro-Anglican writers who published between 1774 and 1789: Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, John Marrant, Ottobah Cugoano, and Olaudah Equiano. These men share a dramatic story of captivity and liberation, wayfaring and adventure.

Joy is an experience of reunion or fulfilment, of desire at least temporarily laid to rest, of a good thing that comes to pass or seems sure to happen soon. In this wide-ranging and highly original book Adam Potkay explores the concept of joy, distinguishing it from related concepts such as happiness and ecstasy. He goes on to trace the literary and intellectual history of joy in the Western tradition, from Aristotle, the Bible and Provencal troubadours through contemporary culture, centring on British and German works from the Reformation through Romanticism. Describing the complex interconnections between literary art, ethics, and religion, Potkay offers fresh readings of Spenser, Shakespeare, Fielding, Schiller, English Romantic poets, Wilde and Yeats. Winner of the 2009 Harry Levin prize, The Story of Joy will be of special interest to scholars of the Renaissance to the late Romantic period, but will also appeal to readers interested in the changing perceptions of joy over time.

Why read Wordsworth's poetry - indeed, why read poetry at all? Beyond any pleasure it might give, can it make one a better or more flourishing person? These questions were never far from William Wordsworth's thoughts. He responded in rich and varied ways, in verse and in prose, in both well-known and more obscure writings. Wordsworth's Ethics is a comprehensive examination of the Romantic poet's work, delving into his desire to understand the source and scope of our ethical obligations. Adam Potkay finds that Wordsworth consistently rejects the kind of impersonal utilitarianism that was espoused by his contemporaries James Mill and Jeremy Bentham in favor of a view of ethics founded in relationships with particular persons and things. The discussion proceeds chronologically through Wordsworth's career as a writer-from his juvenilia through his poems of the 1830s and '40s-providing a valuable introduction to the poet's work. The book will appeal to readers interested in the vital connection between literature and moral philosophy.

This engaging and insightful book explores the fate of eloquence in a period during which it both denoted a living oratorical art and served as a major factor in political thought. Seeing Hume's philosophy as a key to the literature of the mid-eighteenth century, Adam Potkay compares the staus of eloquence in Hume's Essays and Natural History of Religion to its status in novels by Sterne, poems by Pope and Gray, and Macpherson's Poems of Ossian. Potkay explains the sense of urgency that the concept of eloquence evoked among eighteenth-century British readers, for whom it recalled Demosthenes exhorting Athenian citizens to oppose tyranny. Revived by Hume and many other writers, the concept of eloquence resonated deeply for an audience who perceived its own political community as being in danger of disintegration. Potkay also shows how, beginning in the realm of literature, the fashion of polite style began to eclipse that of political eloquence. An ethos suitable both to the family circle and to a public sphere that included women, "politeness" entailed a sublimation of passions, a "feminine modesty as opposed to "masculine" display, and a style that sought rather to placate or stabilize than to influence the course of events. For Potkay, the tension between the ideals of ancient eloquence and of modern politeness defined literary and political discourses alike between 1726 and 1770: although politeness eventually gained ascendancy, eloquence was never silenced.

Hope for us has a positive connotation. Yet it was criticized in classical antiquity as a distraction from the present moment, as the occasion for irrational and self-destructive thinking, and as a presumption against the gods. To what extent do arguments against hope today remain useful? If hope sounds to us like a good thing, that reaction stems from a progressive political tradition grounded in the French Revolution, aspects of Romantic literature and the influence of the Abrahamic faiths. Ranging both wide and deep, Adam Potkay examines the cases for and against hope found in literature from antiquity to the present. Drawing imaginatively on several fields and creatively juxtaposing poetry, drama, and novels alongside philosophy, theology and political theory, the author brings continually fresh insights to a subject of perennial interest. This is a bold and illuminating new treatment of a long-running literary debate as complex as it is compelling.

Why read Wordsworth's poetry--indeed, why read poetry at all? Beyond any pleasure it might give, can it make one a better or more flourishing person? These questions were never far from William Wordsworth's thoughts. He responded in rich and varied ways, in verse and in prose, in both well-known and more obscure writings.

"Wordsworth's Ethics" is a comprehensive examination of the Romantic poet's work, delving into his desire to understand the source and scope of our ethical obligations. Adam Potkay finds that Wordsworth consistently rejects the kind of impersonal utilitarianism that was espoused by his contemporaries James Mill and Jeremy Bentham in favor of a view of ethics founded in relationships with particular persons and things.

The discussion proceeds chronologically through Wordsworth's career as a writer--from his juvenilia through his poems of the 1830s and '40s--providing a valuable introduction to the poet's work. The book will appeal to readers interested in the vital connection between literature and moral philosophy.

Great literature is more often praised for compelling depictions of conflict and tragedy than for moving portrayals of harmony and well-being. This collection of verse brings together poems of felicity, capturing what it means to be well in the fullest sense. Presented in 14 thematic sections, these works offer inspiring readings on wisdom, self-love, ecstasy, growth, righteousness, love and lust, inspiration, oneness with nature, hope, irreverence, awe, the delights of the senses, gratitude and compassion, relation to the sacred, justice, and unity. At times elegant, at others blunt, these poems reflect on what it means to live a rich, fulfilling life.