Promoting Postcolonial Australia: New Readings of Miles Franklin and Joseph Furphy uses Australian literary practice as a case study in the emergence of modern democratic literary culture. John Uhr merges traditional political theory and contemporary literary theory in this political reinterpretation of novels by two classic Australian writers: the feminist Miles Franklin and civic republican Joseph Furphy. Examines three of Franklin's novels: My Brilliant Career, Som...

This book examines the performative role of influential thinkers in the history of modern Western political thought. The case studies examine influential political philosophers who saw their writing role ‘performatively’, as an exercise in pedagogy designed to generate a new type of political following among their readers. Machiavelli, Mill and Nietzsche wrote classic works in political theory (The Prince, On Liberty, Genealogy of Morals) to reform and reshape th...

This book examines both the rhetorical content of contemporary public leadership and the leadership methods pioneered by early English statesman Sir Francis Bacon. In particular, it considers the use of public rhetoric to defend leadership legitimacy in six case studies, drawing on leadership contests in recent Australian political history. The authors map out the complex language of leadership in contemporary politics through chapter-length portraits of the inter-related political rhetori...

Why do people choose authoritarianism over freedom? The classic study of the psychological appeal of fascism by the New York Times –bestselling author.The pursuit of freedom has indelibly marked Western culture since Renaissance humanism and Protestantism began the fight for individualism and self-determination. This freedom, however, can make people feel unmoored, and is often accompanied by feelings of isolation, fear, ...

The thinkers who have been most influential on the attitudes of the New Left are examined in this study by one of the leading critics of leftist orientations in modern Western civilization. Scruton begins with a ruthless analysis of New Leftism and concludes with a critique of the key strands in its thinking. He conducts a reappraisal of such major left-wing thinkers as: E. P. Thompson, Ronald Dworkin, R. D. Laing, Jurgen Habermas, Gyorgy Lukacs, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Z...

A foundational moment in the history of modern European thought, the Enlightenment continues to be a reference point for philosophers, scholars and opinion-formers. To many it remains the inspiration of our commitments to the betterment of the human condition. To others, it represents the elevation of one set of European values to the world, many of whose peoples have quite different values. But what is the relationship between the historical Enlightenment and the idea of 'Enlightenment', ...

How do we know the stories told by historians are true? To what extent can we rely on their interpretations of the past?Histories and Fallacies is a primer on the conceptual and methodological problems in the discipline of history. Historian Carl Trueman presents a series of classic historical problems as a way to examine what history is, what it means, and how it can be told and understood. Each chapter in Histories and Fallacies gives an account of a particular ...

How to live in a supposedly faithless world threatened by religious fundamentalism? Terry Eagleton, formidable thinker and renowned cultural critic, investigates in this thought-provoking book the contradictions, difficulties, and significance of the modern search for a replacement for God. Engaging with a phenomenally wide range of ideas, issues, and thinkers from the Enlightenment to today, Eagleton discusses the state of religion before and after 9/11, the ironies surrounding Western ...

Here is a natural companion to Christopher Booker's bestselling The Seven Basic Plots (Continuum) and John Gross's seminal study The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (Weidenfeld and Nicolson).The most eminent cultural and social historian Frank Furedi presents an eclectic and entirely original history of reading. The very act of reading and the choice of reading material endow individuals with an identity that possesses great symbolic significa...

First published in 1951 Arnold Hausers commanding work presents an account of the development and meaning of art from its origins in the Stone Age through to the Film Age. Exploring the interaction between art and society, Hauser effectively details social and historical movements and sketches the frameworks in which visual art is produced.This new edition provides an excellent introduction to the work of Arnold Hauser. In his general introduction to The Social History of Art,

"I cannot imagine a more engaging and instructive introduction to the fascinations of historical writing than Fritz Stern's classic The Varieties of History." —Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. City University of New York"This book contains not only an excellent selection of passages which characterize the ideas and the work of leading historians from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, but the book in its entirety provides a stimulating survey of the entire development of mo...

What is intellectual history?Those who practice intellectual history have described themselves as eavesdroppers upon the conversations of the past, explorers of alien ideological worlds, and translators between historic societies and our own, while their critics have often derided them as narrow-mindedly studying the ideas of dead white men. Some consider the discipline to be among the most important in the humanities and social sciences because it facilitates a be...