Speaking With the Dead

Jürgen Pieters teaches Literary Theory at Ghent University, Belgium. He is the author of Moments of Negotiation. The New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt (Amsterdam University Press, 2001) and Speaking With the Dead: Explorations in Literature and History (Edinburgh University Press, 2005).

Speaking With the Dead gives an eloquent account of the pastA's uncanny power to come alive in the present. This engaging book, genuinely international and transhistorical in its range of reference, never forgets the specific circumstances of the moments it defines or the current issues it addresses. -- Catherine Belsey, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University Jurgen Pieters' illuminating book is of compelling interest to anyone who has ever experienced, in encountering the traces of the past, the shiver of communion with people who no longer breathe the life-giving air. Speaking with the Dead deftly explores the rich record of this experience in the writing from Dante and Petrarch to Michelet and Roland Barthes. The remarkable Renaissance genius, Constantijn Huygens, like many of the figures in this book, claimed that his deepest and most abiding friendships were with the dead. Pieters' thoughtful and probing analysis enables us to grasp the significance, complexity, and poignancy of this claim. -- Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University Speaking With the Dead gives an eloquent account of the pastA's uncanny power to come alive in the present. This engaging book, genuinely international and transhistorical in its range of reference, never forgets the specific circumstances of the moments it defines or the current issues it addresses. Jurgen Pieters' illuminating book is of compelling interest to anyone who has ever experienced, in encountering the traces of the past, the shiver of communion with people who no longer breathe the life-giving air. Speaking with the Dead deftly explores the rich record of this experience in the writing from Dante and Petrarch to Michelet and Roland Barthes. The remarkable Renaissance genius, Constantijn Huygens, like many of the figures in this book, claimed that his deepest and most abiding friendships were with the dead. Pieters' thoughtful and probing analysis enables us to grasp the significance, complexity, and poignancy of this claim.

• Table of Contents; Introduction; Chapter 1: Among Ancient Men (Petrarch, Machiavelli, Sidney and Huygens); Chapter 2: The Gaze of Medusa and the Practice of the Historian (Rubens and Huygens); Chapter 3: The Historical Shiver (Flaubert, Michelet and Keats); Chapter 4: 'Now Let Us Go Into This Blind World' (Dante, Virgil, Homer and T. S. Eliot); Chapter 5: The Sounds of Silence (Roland Barthes); Epilogue; Index.