James Simpson – författare

This authoritative edition of the complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer presents Chaucer's works for a new generation of students, and for a wide range of general readers. It provides all that undergraduates and graduate students will need to understand and appreciate Chaucer in his original Middle English, as well as an extensive scholarly apparatus. A detailed introduction situates Chaucer's works in his life and culture and offers a guide on how to read and enjoy his language and verse forms. The edition contains all of Chaucer's surviving poetry and prose, edited using a coherent editorial practice that is explained to the reader; detailed glosses on each line to aid reading; literary introductions to each text; extensive explanatory notes designed both to help the beginner with the text and to guide the scholar; and textual introductions and notes to every text, providing a detailed rationale and all of the empirical evidence for the editing practice by which the texts have been presented.

Heralding a new era in literary studies, the Oxford English Literary History breaks the mould of traditional approaches to the canon by focusing on the contexts in which the authors wrote and how their work was shaped by the times in which they lived. Each volume offers a fresh, ground-breaking re-assessment of the authors, their works, and the events and ideas which shaped the literary voice of their age. Written by some of the leading scholars in the field, under the general-editorship of Jonathan Bate, the Oxford English Literary History is essential reading for everyone studying, teaching, and researching in English literature.Unlike most medieval literary histories, which end with the coming of the Tudors, this volume continues into the mid-sixteenth century, and registers the impact of Henry VIII's cultural revolution and the linking of Church and State after the break with Rome. Although potent traditions praise both 'Reformation' and 'Renaissance' as moments of liberation, this book argues the reverse. Simpson shows that the emergent centralized culture narrowed and simplified the literary possibilities that had been enjoyed by late medieval writers. The consequences for literature, and even for the varieties of English in which it was written, were dramatic.From roughly 1350, where the volume starts, a wide range of literary kinds flourished, in a wide range of dialects. Many of these texts can be described as a mixed commonwealth of styles and genres, such as Langland's Piers Plowman, Gower's Confessio Amantis, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the dramatic 'mystery' cycles, and Malory's Works. In the sixteenth century this stylistic variety gave way to a literary practice that prized coherence and unity above all. Some kinds of writing, especially romance, survived. Others, such as Langland's brand of ecclesiology, the 'Aristotelian' politics of Gower and Hoccleve, and the feminine visionary mode of Julian of Norwich, became untenable. Religious cycle drama outlived the 1530s but was suppressed within the next forty years. Sixteenth-century writing, by figures such as Wyatt, Surrey, and the dramatist John Bale, emerges in this book as the product of profoundly divided writers, torn between their commitment to the new order and their awareness of its painful, often destructive strictures.

This book capitalizes on brilliant recent work on sixteenth-century iconoclasm to extend the study of images, both their making and their breaking, into an earlier period and wider discursive territories. Pressures towards iconoclasm are powerfully registered in fourteenth and fifteenth-century writings, both heterodox and orthodox, just as the use of images is central to the practice of both politics and religion. The governance of images turns out, indeed, to be central to governance itself. It is also of critical concern in any moment of historical change, when new cultural forms must incorporate or destroy the images of the old order. The iconoclast redescribes images as pure matter, objects of idolatry worthy only of the hammer. Issues of historical memory, no less than of social ethics, are, then, inherent to the making, love, and destruction of images. These issues are the consistent concern of the essays of this volume, essays commissioned from a range of outstanding late medievalists in a variety of disciplines: literature, art history, Biblical studies, and intellectual history.

The original essays in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature mean to provoke rather than reassure, to challenge rather than codify. Instead of summarizing existing knowledge scholars working in the field aim at opening fresh discussion; instead of emphasizing settled consensus they direct their readers to areas of enlivened and unresolved debate. The deepest periodic division in English literary history has been between the Medieval and the Early Modern, not least because the cultural investments in maintaining that division are exceptionally powerful. Narratives of national and religious identity and freedom; of individual liberties; of the history of education and scholarship; of reading or the history of the book; of the very possibility of persuasive historical consciousness itself: each of these narratives (and more) is motivated by positing a powerful break around 1500. None of the claims for a profound historical and cultural break at the turn of the fifteenth into the sixteenth centuries is negligible. The very habit of working within those periodic bounds (either Medieval or Early Modern) tends, however, simultaneously to affirm and to ignore the rupture. It affirms the rupture by staying within standard periodic bounds, but it ignores it by never examining the rupture itself. The moment of profound change is either, for medievalists, just over an unexplored horizon; or, for Early Modernists, a zero point behind which more penetrating examination is unnecessary. That situation is now rapidly changing. Scholars are building bridges that link previously insular areas. Both periods are starting to look different in dialogue with each other. The change underway has yet to find collected voices behind it. Cultural Reformations volume aims to provide those voices. It will give focus, authority, and drive to a new area.

As the 'father' of the English literary canon, one of a very few writers to appear in every 'great books' syllabus, Chaucer is seen as an author whose works are fundamentally timeless: an author who, like Shakespeare, exemplifies the almost magical power of poetry to appeal to each generation of readers. Every age remakes its own Chaucer, developing new understandings of how his poetry intersects with contemporary ways of seeing the world, and the place of the subject who lives in it. This Handbook comprises a series of essays by established scholars and emerging voices that address Chaucer's poetry in the context of several disciplines, including late medieval philosophy and science, Mediterranean Studies, comparative literature, vernacular theology, and popular devotion.The volume paints the field in broad strokes and sections include Biography and Circumstances of Daily Life; Chaucer in the European Frame; Philosophy and Science in the Universities; Christian Doctrine and Religious Heterodoxy; and the Chaucerian Afterlife. Taken as a whole, The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer offers a snapshot of the current state of the field, and a bold suggestion of the trajectories along which Chaucer studies are likely to develop in the future.

This authoritative edition of the complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer presents Chaucer's works for a new generation of students, and for a wide range of general readers. It provides all that undergraduates and graduate students will need to understand and appreciate Chaucer in his original Middle English, as well as an extensive scholarly apparatus. A detailed introduction situates Chaucer's works in his life and culture and offers a guide on how to read and enjoy his language and verse forms. The edition contains all of Chaucer's surviving poetry and prose, edited using a coherent editorial practice that is explained to the reader; detailed glosses on each line to aid reading; literary introductions to each text; extensive explanatory notes designed both to help the beginner with the text and to guide the scholar; and textual introductions and notes to every text, providing a detailed rationale and all of the empirical evidence for the editing practice by which the texts have been presented.

The original essays in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature mean to provoke rather than reassure, to challenge rather than codify. Instead of summarizing existing knowledge scholars working in the field aim at opening fresh discussion; instead of emphasizing settled consensus they direct their readers to areas of enlivened and unresolved debate.The deepest periodic division in English literary history has been between the medieval and the early modern, not least because the cultural investments in maintaining that division are exceptionally powerful. Narratives of national and religious identity and freedom; of individual liberties; of the history of education and scholarship; of reading or the history of the book; of the very possibility of persuasive historical consciousness itself: each of these narratives (and more) is motivated by positing a powerful break around 1500.None of the claims for a profound historical and cultural break at the turn of the fifteenth into the sixteenth centuries is negligible. The very habit of working within those periodic bounds (either medieval or early modern) tends, however, simultaneously to affirm and to ignore the rupture. It affirms the rupture by staying within standard periodic bounds, but it ignores it by never examining the rupture itself. The moment of profound change is either, for medievalists, just over an unexplored horizon; or, for Early Modernists, a zero point behind which more penetrating examination is unnecessary. That situation is now rapidly changing. Scholars are building bridges that link previously insular areas. Both periods are starting to look different in dialogue with each other.The change underway has yet to find collected voices behind it. Cultural Reformations volume aims to provide those voices. It will give focus, authority, and drive to a new area.

Heralding a new era in literary studies, the Oxford English Literary History breaks the mould of traditional approaches to the canon by focusing on the contexts in which the authors wrote and how their work was shaped by the times in which they lived. Each volume offers a fresh, ground-breaking re-assessment of the authors, their works, and the events and ideas which shaped the literary voice of their age. Written by some of the leading scholars in the field, under the general-editorship of Jonathan Bate, the Oxford English Literary History is essential reading for everyone studying, teaching, and researching in English literature.Unlike most medieval literary histories, which end with the coming of the Tudors, this volume continues into the mid-sixteenth century, and registers the impact of Henry VIII's cultural revolution and the linking of Church and State after the break with Rome. Although potent traditions praise both 'Reformation' and 'Renaissance' as moments of liberation, this book argues the reverse. Simpson shows that the emergent centralized culture narrowed and simplified the literary possibilities that had been enjoyed by late medieval writers. The consequences for literature, and even for the varieties of English in which it was written, were dramatic.From roughly 1350, where the volume starts, a wide range of literary kinds flourished, in a wide range of dialects. Many of these texts can be described as a mixed commonwealth of styles and genres, such as Langland's Piers Plowman, Gower's Confessio Amantis, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the dramatic 'mystery' cycles, and Malory's Works. In the sixteenth century this stylistic variety gave way to a literary practice that prized coherence and unity above all. Some kinds of writing, especially romance, survived. Others, such as Langland's brand of ecclesiology, the 'Aristotelian' politics of Gower and Hoccleve, and the feminine visionary mode of Julian of Norwich, became untenable. Religious cycle drama outlived the 1530s but was suppressed within the next forty years. Sixteenth-century writing, by figures such as Wyatt, Surrey, and the dramatist John Bale, emerges in this book as the product of profoundly divided writers, torn between their commitment to the new order and their awareness of its painful, often destructive strictures.

As the 'father' of the English literary canon, one of a very few writers to appear in every 'great books' syllabus, Chaucer is seen as an author whose works are fundamentally timeless: an author who, like Shakespeare, exemplifies the almost magical power of poetry to appeal to each generation of readers. Every age remakes its own Chaucer, developing new understandings of how his poetry intersects with contemporary ways of seeing the world, and the place of the subject who lives in it. This Handbook comprises a series of essays by established scholars and emerging voices that address Chaucer's poetry in the context of several disciplines, including late medieval philosophy and science, Mediterranean Studies, comparative literature, vernacular theology, and popular devotion. The volume paints the field in broad strokes and sections include Biography and Circumstances of Daily Life; Chaucer in the European Frame; Philosophy and Science in the Universities; Christian Doctrine and Religious Heterodoxy; and the Chaucerian Afterlife. Taken as a whole, The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer offers a snapshot of the current state of the field, and a bold suggestion of the trajectories along which Chaucer studies are likely to develop in the future.

When we think of breaking images, we assume that it happens somewhere else. We also tend to think of iconoclasts as barbaric. Iconoclasts are people like the Taliban, who blew up Buddhist statues in 2001. We tend, that is, to look with horror on iconoclasm.This book argues instead that iconoclasm is a central strand of Anglo-American modernity. Our horror at the destruction of art derives in part from the fact that we too did, and still do, that. This is most obviously true of England's iconoclastic century between 1538 and 1643. That century of legislated early modern image breaking, exceptional in Europe for its jurisdictional extension and duration, stands at the core of this book. That's when written texts, especially poems, rather than visual images became our living monuments.Surely, though, the story of image breaking stops in the eighteenth century, with its enlightened cultivation of the visual arts and the art market. Not so, argues Under the Hammer: once started, iconoclasm is difficult to stop. It ripples through cultures, into the psyche, and it ripples through history. Museums may have protected images from the iconoclast's hammer, but also subject images to metaphorical iconoclasm. Aesthetics may have drawn a protective circle around the image, but as it did so, it also neutralised the image. The ripple effect also continues across the Atlantic, into puritan culture, into twentieth-century American Abstract Expressionism, and into the puritan temple of modern art. That, in fact, is where this book starts, with mid-twentieth-century abstract painting: the image has survived, just, but it bears the scars of a 500 year history.

Essays in this volume argue that it is time for a powerful reassessment of John Lydgate's poetic projects. The pre-eminent poet of his own century, Lydgate (c. 1370-1449) addressed the historical challenges of war with France, of looming civil war, and of new theological forces in the vernacular. He wrote for household, parish, city, monastery, Church, and state. Although an official poet of sorts—perhaps the first major official poet in the English poetic tradition—he was not by any means a merely celebratory or sycophantic writer. Instead, he drew on his authority as monk to shape a contestative poetic space, underlining the grief and treacherousness of power. Despite his exceptional cultural significance, Lydgate has, for different reasons, been marginalized by many literary historical movements since the sixteenth century. John Lydgate is energized by the challenge of an oeuvre so large and so ripe for reevaluation. Each essay here makes a decisive contribution to an area of Lydgate's corpus, and opens fresh perspectives for further investigation. Contributors write about Lydgate from a variety of critical perspectives and underscore the poet's diverse writings, which included beast fables, mummings, hagiographical and devotional poetry, and civic pageants. The essays also reassess better-known works and themes in the field of Lydgate studies, including Lydgate's unofficial laureateship, his relations to his patrons, and his relationship to Chaucer. This book makes an important contribution to medieval scholarship and it will be welcomed by scholars and students alike.

Essays in this volume argue that it is time for a powerful reassessment of John Lydgate's poetic projects. The pre-eminent poet of his own century, Lydgate (c. 1370-1449) addressed the historical challenges of war with France, of looming civil war, and of new theological forces in the vernacular. He wrote for household, parish, city, monastery, Church, and state. Although an official poet of sorts—perhaps the first major official poet in the English poetic tradition—he was not by any means a merely celebratory or sycophantic writer. Instead, he drew on his authority as monk to shape a contestative poetic space, underlining the grief and treacherousness of power. Despite his exceptional cultural significance, Lydgate has, for different reasons, been marginalized by many literary historical movements since the sixteenth century. John Lydgate is energized by the challenge of an oeuvre so large and so ripe for reevaluation. Each essay here makes a decisive contribution to an area of Lydgate's corpus, and opens fresh perspectives for further investigation. Contributors write about Lydgate from a variety of critical perspectives and underscore the poet's diverse writings, which included beast fables, mummings, hagiographical and devotional poetry, and civic pageants. The essays also reassess better-known works and themes in the field of Lydgate studies, including Lydgate's unofficial laureateship, his relations to his patrons, and his relationship to Chaucer. This book makes an important contribution to medieval scholarship and it will be welcomed by scholars and students alike.

The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics, published in 2011, has long been a standard introduction and essential reference point to the broad interdisciplinary field of Applied Linguistics.Reflecting the growth and widening scope of Applied linguistics, this new edition thoroughly updates and expands coverage. It includes 27 new chapters, now consists of two complementary volumes, and covers a wide range of topics from a variety of perspectives, Volume 1 is organised into two sections: Language Learning and Education and Key Areas and Approaches in Applied Linguistics and Volume 2 also two sections: Applied Linguistics in Society and Broadening Horizons. Each volume includes thirty chapters written by specialists from around the world. Each chapter provides an overview of the history of the topic, the main current issues, recommendations for practice and possible future trajectory. Where appropriate, authors discuss the impact and use of new research methods in the area. Suggestions for further reading and cross-references are provided with every chapter.The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics remains the authoritative overview to this dynamic field and essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, scholars and researchers of applied linguistics.

The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics, published in 2011, has long been a standard introduction and essential reference point to the broad interdisciplinary field of Applied Linguistics.Reflecting the growth and widening scope of Applied linguistics, this new edition thoroughly updates and expands coverage. It includes 27 new chapters, now consists of two complementary volumes, and covers a wide range of topics from a variety of perspectives, Volume 1 is organised into two sections: Language Learning and Education and Key Areas and Approaches in Applied Linguistics and Volume 2 also two sections: Applied Linguistics in Society and Broadening Horizons. Each volume includes thirty chapters written by specialists from around the world. Each chapter provides an overview of the history of the topic, the main current issues, recommendations for practice and possible future trajectory. Where appropriate, authors discuss the impact and use of new research methods in the area. Suggestions for further reading and cross-references are provided with every chapter.The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics remains the authoritative overview to this dynamic field and essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, scholars and researchers of applied linguistics.

The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics, published in 2011, has long been a standard introduction and essential reference point to the broad interdisciplinary field of applied linguistics.Reflecting the growth and widening scope of applied linguistics, this new edition thoroughly updates and expands coverage. It includes 27 new chapters, now consists of two complementary volumes, and covers a wide range of topics from a variety of perspectives. Volume One is organized into two sections – ‘Language learning and language education’ and ‘Key areas and approaches in applied linguistics’ – and Volume Two also has two sections – ‘Applied linguistics in society’ and ‘Broadening horizons’.Each volume includes 30 chapters written by specialists from around the world. Each chapter provides an overview of the history of the topic, the main current issues, recommendations for practice, and possible future trajectories. Where appropriate, authors discuss the impact and use of new research methods in the area. Suggestions for further reading and cross-references are provided with every chapter.The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics remains the authoritative overview to this dynamic field and essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, scholars, and researchers of applied linguistics.

The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics, published in 2011, has long been a standard introduction and essential reference point to the broad interdisciplinary field of applied linguistics.Reflecting the growth and widening scope of applied linguistics, this new edition thoroughly updates and expands coverage. It includes 27 new chapters, now consists of two complementary volumes, and covers a wide range of topics from a variety of perspectives. Volume One is organized into two sections – ‘Language learning and language education’ and ‘Key areas and approaches in applied linguistics’ – and Volume Two also has two sections – ‘Applied linguistics in society’ and ‘Broadening horizons’.Each volume includes 30 chapters written by specialists from around the world. Each chapter provides an overview of the history of the topic, the main current issues, recommendations for practice, and possible future trajectories. Where appropriate, authors discuss the impact and use of new research methods in the area. Suggestions for further reading and cross-references are provided with every chapter.The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics remains the authoritative overview to this dynamic field and essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, scholars, and researchers of applied linguistics.

The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics, published in 2011, has long been a standard introduction and essential reference point to the broad interdisciplinary field of applied linguistics.Reflecting the growth and widening scope of applied linguistics, this new edition thoroughly updates and expands coverage. It includes 27 new chapters, now consists of two complementary volumes, and covers a wide range of topics from a variety of perspectives. Volume One is organized into two sections – 'Language learning and language education' and 'Key areas and approaches in applied linguistics – and Volume Two also two sections – 'Applied linguistics in society' and 'Broadening horizons'.Each volume includes 30 chapters written by specialists from around the world. Each chapter provides an overview of the history of the topic, the main current issues, recommendations for practice, and possible future trajectories. Where appropriate, authors discuss the impact and use of new research methods in the area. Suggestions for further reading and cross-references are provided with every chapter.The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics remains the authoritative overview of this dynamic field and essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, scholars, and researchers of applied linguistics.

The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics, published in 2011, has long been a standard introduction and essential reference point to the broad interdisciplinary field of applied linguistics.Reflecting the growth and widening scope of applied linguistics, this new edition thoroughly updates and expands coverage. It includes 27 new chapters, now consists of two complementary volumes, and covers a wide range of topics from a variety of perspectives. Volume One is organized into two sections – 'Language learning and language education' and 'Key areas and approaches in applied linguistics – and Volume Two also two sections – 'Applied linguistics in society' and 'Broadening horizons'.Each volume includes 30 chapters written by specialists from around the world. Each chapter provides an overview of the history of the topic, the main current issues, recommendations for practice, and possible future trajectories. Where appropriate, authors discuss the impact and use of new research methods in the area. Suggestions for further reading and cross-references are provided with every chapter.The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics remains the authoritative overview of this dynamic field and essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, scholars, and researchers of applied linguistics.

A sweeping revision that speaks to how English literature is taught today.From the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eleventh Edition, showcases exciting new authors, works, and textual clusters that demonstrate the relevance of literature to contemporary students and trace the creative arc that has yielded the ever-changing and ever-fascinating body of material called English literature. This anthology offers the experience of literature as part of the world—not apart from it. It is also now available in ebook format for the complete anthology. The Norton Ebook Reader platform provides an active reading environment that equips students with tools for placing works within their social and historical contexts.

The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics serves as an introduction and reference point to key areas in the field of applied linguistics.The five sections of the volume encompass a wide range of topics from a variety of perspectives: applied linguistics in actionlanguage learning, language educationlanguage, culture and identityperspectives on language in usedescriptions of language for applied linguistics.The forty-seven chapters connect knowledge about language to decision-making in the real world. The volume as a whole highlights the role of applied linguistics, which is to make insights drawn from language study relevant to such decision-making. The chapters are written by specialists from around the world. Each one provides an overview of the history of the topic, the main current issues and possible future trajectory. Where appropriate, authors discuss the impact and use of new technology in the area. Suggestions for further reading are provided with every chapter. The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics is an essential purchase for postgraduate students of applied linguistics. Editorial board: Ronald Carter, Guy Cook, Diane Larsen-Freeman and Amy Tsui.

The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics serves as an introduction and reference point to key areas in the field of applied linguistics.The five sections of the volume encompass a wide range of topics from a variety of perspectives: applied linguistics in actionlanguage learning, language educationlanguage, culture and identityperspectives on language in usedescriptions of language for applied linguistics.The forty-seven chapters connect knowledge about language to decision-making in the real world. The volume as a whole highlights the role of applied linguistics, which is to make insights drawn from language study relevant to such decision-making. The chapters are written by specialists from around the world. Each one provides an overview of the history of the topic, the main current issues and possible future trajectory. Where appropriate, authors discuss the impact and use of new technology in the area. Suggestions for further reading are provided with every chapter. The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics is an essential purchase for postgraduate students of applied linguistics. Editorial board: Ronald Carter, Guy Cook, Diane Larsen-Freeman and Amy Tsui.

Adult Language Education and Migration: Challenging Agendas in Policy and Practice provides a lively and critical examination of policy and practice in language education for adult migrants around the world, showing how opportunities for learning the language of a new country both shape and are shaped by policy moves. Language policies for migrants are often controversial and hotly contested, but at the same time innovative teaching practices are emerging in response to the language learning needs of today’s mobile populations.This book:analyses and challenges language education policies relating to adult migrants in nine countries;provides a comparative study with separate chapters on policy and practice in each country; focuses on Australia, Canada, Spain (Catalonia), Finland, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.Adult Language Education and Migration is essential reading for practitioners, students and researchers working in the area of language education in migration contexts.

Adult Language Education and Migration: Challenging Agendas in Policy and Practice provides a lively and critical examination of policy and practice in language education for adult migrants around the world, showing how opportunities for learning the language of a new country both shape and are shaped by policy moves. Language policies for migrants are often controversial and hotly contested, but at the same time innovative teaching practices are emerging in response to the language learning needs of today’s mobile populations.This book:analyses and challenges language education policies relating to adult migrants in nine countries;provides a comparative study with separate chapters on policy and practice in each country; focuses on Australia, Canada, Spain (Catalonia), Finland, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.Adult Language Education and Migration is essential reading for practitioners, students and researchers working in the area of language education in migration contexts.

In this 1995 study James Simpson examines two great poems of the later medieval period, the Latin philosophical epic, Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus (1181-3), and John Gower's English poem, The Confessio Amantis (1390-3). Simpson locates these works in a cultural context dominated by two kinds of literary humanism: the absolutist, whose philosophical mentor is Plato, whose literary model is Virgil and whose concept of the self is centred in the intellect, and the constitutionalist, whose classical models are Aristotle and Ovid and whose concept of the self resides in the mediatory power of the imagination. Both poems are examples of the Bildungsroman, in which the self reaches its fullness only by traversing an educational cursus in the related sciences of ethics, politics and cosmology, but as this study shows, there are very different modes of thought behind their conceptions of selfhood and education.

In this 1995 study James Simpson examines two great poems of the later medieval period, the Latin philosophical epic, Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus (1181-3), and John Gower's English poem, The Confessio Amantis (1390-3). Simpson locates these works in a cultural context dominated by two kinds of literary humanism: the absolutist, whose philosophical mentor is Plato, whose literary model is Virgil and whose concept of the self is centred in the intellect, and the constitutionalist, whose classical models are Aristotle and Ovid and whose concept of the self resides in the mediatory power of the imagination. Both poems are examples of the Bildungsroman, in which the self reaches its fullness only by traversing an educational cursus in the related sciences of ethics, politics and cosmology, but as this study shows, there are very different modes of thought behind their conceptions of selfhood and education.

Spanish Agriculture: The Long Siesta, 1765-1965, first published in 1996, is a major study in English of Spanish agrarian history. James Simpson examines how traditional agriculture responded to population growth and the integration of commodity markets, emphasising both Spain's regional variations and its context in Europe. Using statistical data as well as his wide knowledge of the recent secondary literature, Simpson argues that decisive changes in farming techniques only occurred at the start of this century. He rejects arguments that slow growth can be explained by poor resources or inefficient farmers. Indeed, farmers were quick to change when they had market opportunities, but development was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War and subsequent short-sighted government policies, only resuming in the 1950s. This comprehensive study will be of relevance to students and scholars of historical geography and agrarian history, as well as economic history.

Spanish Agriculture: The Long Siesta, 1765-1965, first published in 1996, is a major study in English of Spanish agrarian history. James Simpson examines how traditional agriculture responded to population growth and the integration of commodity markets, emphasising both Spain's regional variations and its context in Europe. Using statistical data as well as his wide knowledge of the recent secondary literature, Simpson argues that decisive changes in farming techniques only occurred at the start of this century. He rejects arguments that slow growth can be explained by poor resources or inefficient farmers. Indeed, farmers were quick to change when they had market opportunities, but development was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War and subsequent short-sighted government policies, only resuming in the 1950s. This comprehensive study will be of relevance to students and scholars of historical geography and agrarian history, as well as economic history.

The evidence is everywhere: fundamentalist reading can stir passions and provoke violence that changes the world. Amid such present-day conflagrations, this illuminating book reminds us of the sources, and profound consequences, of Christian fundamentalism in the sixteenth century. James Simpson focuses on a critical moment in early modern England, specifically the cultural transformation that allowed common folk to read the Bible for the first time. Widely understood and accepted as the grounding moment of liberalism, this was actually, Simpson tells us, the source of fundamentalism, and of different kinds of persecutory violence. His argument overturns a widely held interpretation of sixteenth-century Protestant reading--and a crucial tenet of the liberal tradition. After exploring the heroism and achievements of sixteenth-century English Lutherans, particularly William Tyndale, Burning to Read turns to the bad news of the Lutheran Bible. Simpson outlines the dark, dynamic, yet demeaning paradoxes of Lutheran reading: its demands that readers hate the biblical text before they can love it; that they be constantly on the lookout for unreadable signs of their own salvation; that evangelical readers be prepared to repudiate friends and all tradition on the basis of their personal reading of Scripture. Such reading practice provoked violence not only against Lutheranism's stated enemies, as Simpson demonstrates; it also prompted psychological violence and permanent schism within its own adherents.The last wave of fundamentalist reading in the West provoked 150 years of violent upheaval; as we approach a second wave, this powerful book alerts us to our peril.

How did the Reformation, which initially promoted decidedly illiberal positions, end up laying the groundwork for Western liberalism?The English Reformation began as an evangelical movement driven by an unyielding belief in predestination, intolerance, stringent literalism, political quietism, and destructive iconoclasm. Yet by 1688, this illiberal early modern upheaval would deliver the foundations of liberalism: free will, liberty of conscience, religious toleration, readerly freedom, constitutionalism, and aesthetic liberty. How did a movement with such illiberal beginnings lay the groundwork for the Enlightenment? James Simpson provocatively rewrites the history of liberalism and uncovers its unexpected debt to evangelical religion.Sixteenth-century Protestantism ushered in a culture of permanent revolution, ceaselessly repudiating its own prior forms. Its rejection of tradition was divisive, violent, and unsustainable. The proto-liberalism of the later seventeenth century emerged as a cultural package designed to stabilize the social chaos brought about by this evangelical revolution. A brilliant assault on many of our deepest assumptions, Permanent Revolution argues that far from being driven by a new strain of secular philosophy, the British Enlightenment is a story of transformation and reversal of the Protestant tradition from within. The gains of liberalism were the unintended results of the violent early Reformation.Today those gains are increasingly under threat, in part because liberals do not understand their own history. They fail to grasp that liberalism is less the secular opponent of religious fundamentalism than its dissident younger sibling, uncertain how to confront its older evangelical competitor.