Literature of Pity

Pity represents a combination of fear, helplessness and overwhelming agitation. It is a term which suffuses our everyday lives; it is also a dangerous term hovering between approval of sympathy and disapproval of emotional wallowing (as in ''self-pity''). This book traces an entire history of pity, as an emotion and as an element in the arts, engaging as it does so with a wealth of theoretical ideas including Freud, Derrida, Levinas and others. It begins with an ''Introduction: Distinguishing Pity'', followed by chapters on the Aristotelian framework; Buddhism and pity; the pieta in the Middle Ages and Renaissance; Shakespeare on pity; Milton''s pitiless Christianity; pity and charity in the early novel; Blake''s views on pity; the Victorian debate, from Austen to Dickens and George Eliot; Brecht and Chekhov on pity and self-pity; ''war, and the pity of war''; Jean Rhys and Stevie Smith; pity, immigration and the colony; and finally three contemporary texts by Michel Faber, Kazuo Ishiguro and Cormac McCarthy.Features* Original treatment of the concept of pity providing detailed textual criticism and speculative argument* Wide-ranging: running from ancient Greek theory to the present day* Covers a wide variety of texts, including fiction, poetry and drama* Engages with the most recent theoretical debates about literature and the emotions