Over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as more and more vernacular commentaries on the Decalogue were produced throughout Europe, the moral system of the Ten Commandments gradually became more prominent. The Ten Commandments proved to be a topic from which numerous proponents of pastoral and lay catechesis drew inspiration. God's commands were discussed and illustrated in sermons and confessor's manuals, and they spawned new theological and pastoral treatises both Catholic and Reformed. But the Decalogue also served several authors, including Dante, Petrarch, and Christine de Pizan. Unlike the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten Commandments supported a more positive image of mankind, one that embraced the human potential for introspection and the conscious choice to follow God's Law.

By focusing on a number of significant moments in the interlocking histories of the book's two central concepts--literature and consolation--this study makes readers aware of the premises that underlie the assumption that literary writings can bring comfort. What is it in literary texts that provides this special experience? How does literature help us to understand what consolation means and the effects it can have on individual readers? The intersecting ideas of literature and consolation in Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Flaubert through to Roland Barthes, Denise Riley and Julian Barnes, guide today's readers on how literature provides examples, food for thought and good companionship in times of grief and pain. Taking its cue from the rich history of consolatory thinking, the book shows how writers from different times have explored the potential of their writing to offer solace. The result of these explorations, this book argues, has shaped the history of Western literature decisively.

Lyric Address in Dutch Literature, 1250-1800 provides accessible and comprehensive readings of ten Dutch lyrical poems, discussing each poem's historical context, revealing its political or ideological framing, religious elements, or the self-representational interests of the poet. The book focuses on how the use of the speaker's "I" creates distance or proximity to the social context of the time. Close, detailed analysis of rhetorical techniques, such as the use of the apostrophe, illuminates the ways in which poetry reveals tensions in society.

This book deals with the special power of literary texts to put us in contact with the past. A large number of authors, coming from different ages, have described this power in terms of 'the conversation with the dead': when we read these texts, we somehow find ourselves conducting a special kind of dialogue with dead authors.

The book covers a number of texts and authors that make use of this metaphor -- Petrarch, Machiavelli, Sidney, Flaubert, Michelet, Barthes. In connecting these texts and authors in novel ways, JA1/4rgen Pieters tackles the all-important question of why we remain fascinated with literature in general and with the specific texts that to us are still its backbone. Siituated in the aftermath of New Historicism, the book challenges the idea that literary history as a reading practice stems from a desire to 'speak with the dead'.

Key Features

Offers a broad survey (a combination of classical literature, Renaissance literature and modern theory and history)

Issues a plea for the importance of reading literary texts and the power of literature

Discusses key figues from the Western canon -- Homer, Virgil, Dante, Machiavelli -- in light of the idea that we can learn from the past by talking to 'the dead'.

Combines theoretical discussions of the relationsip between literature and history with close reading of works by major literary authors and historians.

In January 1977 Roland Barthes became professor of literary semiology at the College de France, where he taught for three years until his death in March 1980. His lectures from those years, published more than two decades after his death, represent the final intellectual journey of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. In his late teaching, Barthes continuously challenged his previous work, seeking out new ways of reading and living. In his idiosyncratic style, he sketched the outlines of a critical and ethical project that is still thought- provoking and relevant today. Taking the College de France lectures as a starting point, leading specialists assess Barthes's legacy and the constituent fantasies that haunted his entire oeuvre. This volume reveals the untimely force of Barthes's thinking, whereby looking back often means discovering unexpected possibilities for contemporary literary and cultural studies. This is also published as a Special Issue of the journal Paragraph.

By focusing on a number of significant moments in the interlocking histories of the book's two central concepts--literature and consolation--this study makes readers aware of the premises that underlie the assumption that literary writings can bring comfort. What is it in literary texts that provides this special experience? How does literature help us to understand what consolation means and the effects it can have on individual readers? The intersecting ideas of literature and consolation in Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Flaubert through to Roland Barthes, Denise Riley and Julian Barnes, guide today's readers on how literature provides examples, food for thought and good companionship in times of grief and pain. Taking its cue from the rich history of consolatory thinking, the book shows how writers from different times have explored the potential of their writing to offer solace. The result of these explorations, this book argues, has shaped the history of Western literature decisively.