Including poems by writers from the dawn of the Early Modern period to the 21st Century, this anthology explores changing attitudes to medicine, health and the body. A Body of Work: An Anthology of Poetry and Medicine is divided into nine thematic sections, including poetry from all periods as well as historical documents that help students place the poetry in its cultural contexts and covering such topics as: -The material body -Nerves, nervous disorders and psychology -Consumption: food, drugs and alcohol -Contagion and disease -Doctors, hospitals and the experience of medicine -Treatments and cures -The body in pleasure and pain -Evolution, genetics and reproduction -Ageing, dying and death "A Body of Work "is supported by a companion website offering further contextual essays, class discussion questions and visual material.Includes work by such poets as: Daniel Abse, Maya Angelou, Matthew Arnold, W.H. Auden, Ann Bradstreet, William Blake, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver, S.T Coleridge, Erasmus Darwin, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin, Robert Lowell, Paul Muldoon, Sylvia Plath, Rainer Maria Rilke, Theodore Roetke, Christina Rossetti, Jo Shapcott, Jonathan Swift, Michael Symmons-Roberts, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, William Wordsworth.

In 1859, the historian Lord John Acton asserted: 'two great principles divide the world, and contend for the mastery, antiquity and the middle ages'. The influence on Victorian culture of the 'Middle Ages' (broadly understood then as the centuries between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance) was both pervasive and multi-faceted. This 'medievalism' led, for instance, to the rituals and ornament of the Medieval Catholic church being reintroduced to Anglicanism. It led to the Saxon Witan being celebrated as a prototypical representative parliament. It resulted in Viking raiders being acclaimed as the forefathers of the British navy. And it encouraged innumerable nineteenth-century men to cultivate the superlative beards we now think of as typically 'Victorian'-in an attempt to emulate their Anglo-Saxon forefathers. Different facets of medieval life, and different periods before the Renaissance, were utilized in nineteenth-century Britain for divergent political and cultural agendas. Medievalism also became a dominant mode in Victorian art and architecture, with 75 per cent of churches in England built on a Gothic rather than a classical model. And it was pervasive in a wide variety of literary forms, from translated sagas to pseudo-medieval devotional verse to triple-decker novels. Medievalism even transformed nineteenth-century domesticity: while only a minority added moats and portcullises to their homes, the medieval-style textiles produced by Morris and Co. decorated many affluent drawing rooms. The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism is the first work to examine in full the fascinating phenomenon of 'medievalism' in Victorian Britain. Covering art, architecture, religion, literature, politics, music, and social reform, the Handbook also surveys earlier forms of antiquarianism that established the groundwork for Victorian movements. In addition, this collection addresses the international context, by mapping the spread of medievalism across Europe, South America, and India, amongst other places.

John Thelwall was London Corresponding Society's most prominent orators and was tried for high treason along with Thomas Hardy and John Horne Tooke in 1794. This edition brings together Thelwall's most important political writing ranging from scientific pamphlets and writings on the art of elocution, to political philosophy and journalism.

John Thelwall was London Corresponding Society's most prominent orators and was tried for high treason along with Thomas Hardy and John Horne Tooke in 1794. This edition brings together Thelwall's most important political writing ranging from scientific pamphlets and writings on the art of elocution, to political philosophy and journalism.

John Thelwall was London Corresponding Society's most prominent orators and was tried for high treason along with Thomas Hardy and John Horne Tooke in 1794. This edition brings together Thelwall's most important political writing ranging from scientific pamphlets and writings on the art of elocution, to political philosophy and journalism.

John Thelwall was London Corresponding Society's most prominent orators and was tried for high treason along with Thomas Hardy and John Horne Tooke in 1794. This edition brings together Thelwall's most important political writing ranging from scientific pamphlets and writings on the art of elocution, to political philosophy and journalism.

John Thelwall was London Corresponding Society's most prominent orators and was tried for high treason along with Thomas Hardy and John Horne Tooke in 1794. This edition brings together Thelwall's most important political writing ranging from scientific pamphlets and writings on the art of elocution, to political philosophy and journalism.

In 1859, the historian Lord John Acton asserted: 'two great principles divide the world, and contend for the mastery, antiquity and the middle ages'. The influence on Victorian culture of the 'Middle Ages' (broadly understood then as the centuries between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance) was both pervasive and multi-faceted. This 'medievalism' led, for instance, to the rituals and ornament of the Medieval Catholic church being reintroduced to Anglicanism. It led to the Saxon Witan being celebrated as a prototypical representative parliament. It resulted in Viking raiders being acclaimed as the forefathers of the British navy. And it encouraged innumerable nineteenth-century men to cultivate the superlative beards we now think of as typically 'Victorian'—in an attempt to emulate their Anglo-Saxon forefathers. Different facets of medieval life, and different periods before the Renaissance, were utilized in nineteenth-century Britain for divergent political and cultural agendas. Medievalism also became a dominant mode in Victorian art and architecture, with 75 per cent of churches in England built on a Gothic rather than a classical model. And it was pervasive in a wide variety of literary forms, from translated sagas to pseudo-medieval devotional verse to triple-decker novels. Medievalism even transformed nineteenth-century domesticity: while only a minority added moats and portcullises to their homes, the medieval-style textiles produced by Morris and Co. decorated many affluent drawing rooms. The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism is the first work to examine in full the fascinating phenomenon of 'medievalism' in Victorian Britain. Covering art, architecture, religion, literature, politics, music, and social reform, the Handbook also surveys earlier forms of antiquarianism that established the groundwork for Victorian movements. In addition, this collection addresses the international context, by mapping the spread of medievalism across Europe, South America, and India, amongst other places.

The texts in this unique collection range from the gothic revival of the late eighteenth century through to the late Victorian gothic, and from the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge to the short fiction of H.G. Wells and Henry James. Genres represented include medievalist poetry, psychological thrillers, dark political dystopias, sinister tales of social corruption, and popular ghost tales. The texts gathered here show the contradictory and paradoxical nature of gothic literature, and suggest that gothic ""monsters"" emerge from our own desires and fears. In addition to a wide selection of classic and lesser-known texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Gothic Evolutions includes key examples of the aesthetic, scientific, and cultural theory related to the Gothic, from John Locke and David Hume to Sigmund Freud and Julia Kristeva.

This book explores the important connections between medicine and political culture that often have been overlooked. In response to the French revolution and British radicalism, political propagandists adopted a scientific vocabulary and medical images for their own purposes. New ideas about anatomy and pathology, sexuality and reproduction, cleanliness and contamination, and diet and drink migrated into politics in often startling ways, and to significant effect. These ideas were used to identify individuals as normal or pathological, and as "naturally" suitable or unsuitable for public life. This migration has had profound consequences for how we measure the bodies, practices and abilities of public figures and ourselves.