Suchergebnisse

1 Introduction -- Part I Laughter and the Study of Humour -- 2 Laughter and the Formation of a Concept of Humour -- 3 The Universality and the Genealogy of Humour -- Part II Method and Its Limits in the Historical Study of Humour -- 4 Context and Intention -- 5 Translation and Reception -- Part III Defining Satire and Satiric Humour -- 6 Definition by Dictionary, Origin and Implications -- 7 Definition by Adjacent Terms, Genre and Satiric Definition -- Part IV Satiric Humour in Popular Culture: The Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister Television Satires -- 8 Theory and the Absent Political System -- 9 The Satiric Presence of Political Discourse -- 10 Conclusion -- Bibliography.

pt. 1, 1. Hobbes, Lucianic humour and the philosophic persona. 2. Hoisting Hobbes on the satiric petard -- pt. 2, 3. The seriousness of the absurd : the Scriblerian philosophic persona. 4. Identity, materiality and the language of philosophical absurdity. 5. Hobbes and the Scriblerians.

Conal Condren offers a radical reappraisal of the character of moral and political theory in early modern England through an exploration of pervasive arguments about office. In this context he explores the significance of oath-taking and three of the major crises around oaths and offices in the seventeenth century. This fresh focus on office brings into serious question much of what has been taken for granted in the study of early modern political and moral theory concerning, for example, the interplay of ideologies, the emergence of a public sphere, of liberalism, reason of state, de facto theory, and perhaps even political theory and moral agency as we know it. Argument and Authority is a major new work from a senior scholar of early modern political thought, of interest to a wide range of historians, philosophers and literary scholars

This is the first full account, analysis and subsequent history of George Lawson's Politica, 1660–89. For long accepted as a significant figure, through his criticism of Hobbes and his possible influence on Locke, Lawson has never been studied in depth, nor has his biography been previously established. Professor Condren here provides the context and the analysis of Lawson's major work, in the process re-dating it and providing a quite different interpretation from previous readings. A substantial section is devoted to the history of the text and its use in controversies in the period 1660–89, and there is some reassessment of the relationship between Hobbes, Locke and Lawson. The study also uses Lawson's text to reopen questions about English seventeenth-century political theory in general, and to prefigure a theoretical study on metaphor and political conceptualisation. The book thus operates on a number of levels, philosophical and linguistic as well as historical

AbstractMany readers have taken the garden scene inRichard IIand the voice of its Gardener to constitute a relatively straightforward statement of Shakespeare's notions of good government and constancy in political conduct, in stark contrast to the political disorder depicted in the play. I argue, however, that read in the context of the political and moral issues Shakespeare explored, its value or even relevance to his political world is questionable. The choric voice of the Gardener was not necessarily Shakespeare's. The dramatic point may have been to present, without resolving, the dissonance between the Gardener's vision and the imponderables of political conduct lying beyond his tiny realm.

Although academic disciplines are given to mythologising their own histories, corrective historicisation is no straightforward matter. Anachronisms are most difficult to avoid where our own tacit understandings of the world are used to help structure contexts that are themselves often unstable and indeterminate. This is often the case in attempts to relate agents and propositions to a context of pre-existing problems. Propositions and concepts that are the result of satiric reduction, or unintended consequence, disrupt narrative sequences that lead directly and neatly to present disciplinary identities. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]