Oxford University Press (UK) – serie

Credit Risk Management: Basic Concepts is the first book of a series of three with the objective of providing an overview of all aspects, steps, and issues that should be considered when undertaking credit risk management, including the Basel II Capital Accord, which all major banks must comply with in 2008. The introduction of the recently suggested Basel II Capital Accord has raised many issues and concerns about how to appropriately manage credit risk. Managing credit risk is one of the next big challenges facing financial institutions. The importance and relevance of efficiently managing credit risk is evident from the huge investments that many financial institutions are making in this area, the booming credit industry in emerging economies (e.g. Brazil, China, India, ...), the many events (courses, seminars, workshops, ...) that are being organised on this topic, and the emergence of new academic journals and magazines in the field (e.g. Journal of Credit Risk, Journal of Risk Model Validation, Journal of Risk Management in Financial Institutions, ...). Basic Concepts provides the introduction to the concepts, techniques, and practical examples to guide both young and experienced practitioners and academics in the fascinating, but complex world of risk modelling. Financial risk management, an area of increasing importance with the recent Basel II developments, is discussed in terms of practical business impact and the increasing profitability competition, laying the foundation for books II and III.

In Person: Reenactment in Postwar and Contemporary Cinema delineates a new performative genre based on replay and self-awareness. The book argues that in-person reenactment, an actual person reenacting her past on camera, departs radically from other modes of mimetic reconstruction. In Person theorizes this figure's protean temporality and revisionist capabilities and it considers its import in terms of social representativity and exemplarity. Close readings of select, historicized examples define an alternate, confessional-performative vein to understand the self-reflexive nature of postwar and post-holocaust testimonial cinemas. The book contextualizes Zavattini's proposal that in neorealism everyone should act his own story in a sort of anti-individualist, public display (Love in the City and We the Women). It checks the convergence between verité experiments, a heightened self-critique in France and the reception of psychodrama in France (Chronicle of a summer and The Human Pyramid) in the late fifties. And, through Bazin, it reflects on the quandaries of celebrity biopics: how the circularity of the star's iconography is checked by her corporeal limits (Sophia her Own Story and the docudrama Torero!). In Person traces a shift from the exemplary and transformative ethos of fifties reenactment towards the un-redemptive stance of contemporary reenactment films such as Lanzmann's Shoah, Zhang Yuan's Sons, Andrea Tonacci's Hills of Chaos. It defines continuities between verite testimony (Chronicle, and Moi un Noir) and later para-juridical films such as the Karski Report and Rithy Panh's S21, the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine suggesting the power of co-presence and in person actualization for an ethics of viewership.

This book presents an international perspective on health care technology and its development providing fully up-to-date coverage of this most rapidly developing area. This is the only comprehensive review of the subject available. Thoroughly referenced it deals with all types of health technologies - drugs, devices, and procedures and combines cost and other socio-economic analyses with information on diffusion, dissemination and use, as well as efficacy and safety testing. For all those faced with decisions concerning health care technology, this is an unrivalled guide.

This major reference work is the first comprehensive text to review in detail the data currently available on the epidemiology of the main rheumatic and musco-skeletal diseases. The problems of disease definition and criteria are considered with data on the occurrence of these diseases, both prevalence and incidence, and their variation with age, sex, geographical area, ethnic group, and trends over time. The results of epidemiological investigations,looking at both genetic and environmental risk factors, are considered and the impact of specific diseases of survival is also considered. Covering 15 disease areas from inflammatory joint disease and connective tissue disease to degenerative joint disease and non-articular conditions, such as low back pain and carpel tunnel syndrome, this is the only text available which offers full coverage of the subject with a truly international perspective.

In September 1809, during the opening night of Macbeth at the newly rebuilt Covent Garden theatre, the audience rioted over the rise in ticket prices. Disturbances took place on a further sixty-six nights that autumn and the Old Price riots became the longest running theatre riots in English history. This book describes the events in detail, sets them in their wider context, and uses them to examine the interpenetration of theatre and disorder. Previous understandings of the riots are substantially revised by stressing populist rather than class politics and the book concentrates on the theatricality of audiences, the role of the stage in shaping English self-image, and the relationship between contention and consensus.

Byron's poetic reputation has been established in his comic epic Don Juan and its cognates Beppo and The Vision of Judgment. Poems lying outside this group are still regarded with some uncertainty. This study demonstrates that some of Byron's most deeply held critical and political convictions - but also certain aspects of his experience over which he had comparatively little conscious control - found expression in his historical dramas of 1820-21: Marino Faliero, Sardanapalus, and The Two Foscari. In these plays we find Byron responding with the fullest degree of imaginative intelligence to his work on the management subcommittee at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the background to which is given its most extensive treatment yet; to his involvement with the Italian nationalist movement; to his advocacy of neo-classical dramatic form and above all to his understanding of Shakespeare and of Shakespeare's reputation among Romantic critics. In this pioneering study Richard Lansdown sheds fresh critical and biographical light on Byron's contribution to the theatre, which will be of great interest to many studying the Romantics.

Drawing on a broad range of sources, De Quincey's Disciplines reveals the English Opium-Eater to be a more complex and contradictory figure than is usually portrayed. All too often pigeon-holed as a latter-day Roamntic and psychedelic dreamer, Thomas De Quincey is shown here to have been a prolific contributor to the periodicals of his day, on subjects as diverse as astronomy, economics, psychology, and politics.Josephine McDonagh traces the formulation of De Quincey's disciplines through an examination of his less frequently scrutinized works - political commentaries, translations of German philosophy, numerous essays, his treatise on economics - and shows that the writer aspired (often unsuccessfully) to participate in the major intellectual project of his time: the formation of new fields of knowledge, and the attempt to unify these into an organic whole. At the same time, De Quincey's works were often compromised by the demands of the market, his own political beliefs, and his tendency to produce works of 'the most provoking jumble'.Focusing on works produced in Edinburgh in reduced circumstances in the years after 1830, De Quincey's Disciplines portrays a transitional literary voice disseminating high Romantic values to a Victorian periodical audience, and a displaced High Tory regretting the end of England's ancien régime, even as he remains open to innovation in the diverse fields of knowledge. This innovative study recontextualizes De Quincey as a true interdiscipinarian, journalist, and man of letters. It will appeal to readers interested in new historicism and in literatures bridging the Romantic and Victorian periods.

Langland's Piers Plowman is a profoundly Christian poem which nevertheless has enjoyed a wide general appeal. Readers - both religious and non-religious - have been drawn by the power of Langland's fictive imagination, the rich variety of imaginary worlds in his great dream-poem.Langland's Fictions examines the construction of the ten dreams which make up the B Text of Pears Plowman, and explores the relation of these dream-fictions to those realities with which the poet was chiefly preoccupied. This relationship is discussed under three main headings: 'fictions of the divided mind', in which the poet's mixed feelings about matters such as the value of learning find expression in imagined scenes and actions; 'fictions of history', in which the main events of salvation history are relived in the parallel worlds of dream; and 'fictions of the self', in which Langland's doubtful sense of his own moral standing as a man and a poet apparently finds expression. This chapter also addresses the controversial question of 'autobiographical elements' in the poem.John Burrow's lively and considered study is a major contribution to our understanding of one of medieval literature's most enduring works.

A scholarly edition of poetical works by Charles Churchill. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Although Housman's three collections of poems, the third published posthumously, have remained popular, they have not received much serious critical attention. John Bayley makes good the omission in this thorough and comprehensive reappraisal of the whole oeuvre, placing Housman's achievement in the context of the poetry of his own time and of more recent European and American poetry. Close analysis and comparison with other poets - Hardy, Frost, Edward Thomas, Larkin, and Paul Celan - prove illuminating in relation to a poet who has usually been considered something of an odd man out, and even an anachronism in the modern era. Professor Bayley explores and explains the continuing appeal of the poet to present-day readers, and the nature of the craftsmanship and psychology which lie behind its deceptive simplicities. The book will be a valuable introduction to Housman's achievement for the specialist and the poetry-lover alike.

A scholarly edition of the poems of Thomas Gray. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

A scholarly edition of works by Sir Richard Steele. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Set in Hardy's Wessex, Tess is a moving novel of hypocrisy and double standards. Its challenging sub-title, A Pure Woman, infuriated critics when the book was first published in 1891, and it was condemned as immoral and pessimistic.

Dunbar's genius has been recognised not only by critics but by modern poets such as Auden and Eliot. This critical study examines Dunbar's view of himself as a poet, or `makar', and the way he handles various poetic genres. New emphasis is placed on the petitions, or begging-poems, and their use for poetic introspection. There is also a particularly full study of Dunbar's under-valued comic poems, and of the modes most congenial to him - notably parody, irony, `flyting', or invective, and black dream-fantasy. Priscilla Bawcutt takes account of recent scholarship on Dunbar and also the literary traditions available to him, both in Latin and the vernaculars, including `popular' and alliterative poetry as well as that of Chaucer and his followers. In contesting the over-simple and reductive views purveyed by some critics that Dunbar is primarily a moralist, or no more than a skilled virtuoso, she has written a well-informed, critically searching, and balanced account of the poetry.

This book examines the profound effect, on a major critic and novelist of the twentieth century, of the period of English literature's greatest glory, the Renaissance. Beginning in the sixteenth century with the poems and plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and with prose writings such as Hakluyt's Voyages, and continuing through the great lyric poets of the seventeenth century, the Renaissance influenced every aspect of Virginia Woolf's work. All her available writing - letters, diaries, reading-notes, drafts of essays, and novels, and feminist polemic - are explored in this illuminating study of Virginia Woolf's varied reactions to the period and its impact on her fiction and criticism. Each of the novels, in particular, is shown to integrate some element of Renaissance literature in its language, characterization, and often structure, enriching the fiction; thus this study deepens our understanding of Woolf's creative process, and our enjoyment of the works.

We are still a long way from knowing how to read the rhythms of free verse, a poetry which has been largely neglected by metrical theory. Clive Scott's readable and scholarly study indicates the strategies of reading needed if justice is to be done to free verse's rhythmic versatility.The core of Reading the Rhythm is an analysis of key French twentieth-century poets and poems, including Perse's Éloges, Cendrars's Prose du Transsibérien, Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques, and Documentaires; Apollinaire's Calligrammes; Supervielle's Gravitations; and Reverdy's Sources de vent. Contemporary trends in the visual arts - Cubism, Futurism, Orphism, photography - are called upon as perceptual models to illuminate free verse and a further perspective is added by the theme of travel and movement.This is an accomplished examination of the rhythms of free verse, and of its implications for our reading of regular verse. It is also a significant study of modernist poetics.

A scholarly edition of the correspondence of J.M.W. Turner. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

William Blake's The Four Zoas is one of the most challenging poems in the English language, and one of the most profound. It is also one of the least read of the major poetic narratives of the Romantic period.Spiritual History presents a much-needed introduction to the poem, although it will also be of great interest to those already familiar with it. This is the first full-length study to examine in detail Blake's numerous manuscript revisions of the poem. It offers a staged reading, one that moves, as Blake himself moved, from simpler to more complex forms of writing. Andrew Lincoln reads the poem in the light of two competing views of history: the biblical, which places history within the framework of Fall and Judgement, and that of the Enlightenment, which sees history as progress from primitive life to civil order. In so doing, he offers an account of the narrative that is more coherent - and accessible - than much previous criticism of the work, and Blake's much misunderstood poem emerges as the most extraordinary product of the eighteenth-century tradition of philosophical history.

Theatre of the Book is an account of the entangled histories of print and the theatre in Europe between the Renaissance and the late nineteenth century: a history of European dramatic publication (providing comparative and historical perspective to the growing field of textual studies); an examination of the creation of the modern notion of text and performance; and a comparative genealogy of ideas about theatrical and textual reception. It shows that, far from being marginal to Renaissance dramatists, the printing press had an essential role to play in the birth of the modern theatre, crucially shaping the normative conception of 'theatre' as a distinct aesthetic medium and of drama as a distinct narrative form, helping to forge a theatricalist aesthetics in opposition to 'the book'. Treating playtexts, engravings, actor portraits, notation systems, and theatrical ephemera at once as material objects and expressions of complex cultural formations, Theatre of the Book examines the European theatre's continual refashioning of itself in the world of print.

This first scholarly account of the Royal Navy in the Pacific War is a companion volume to Arthur Marder's Old Friends, New Enemies: Strategic Illusions, 1936-1941 (0-19-822604-7, OP). Picking up the story at the nadir of British naval fortunes - `everywhere weak and naked', in Churchill's phrase - it examines the Royal Navy's role in events from 1942 to the Japanese surrender in August 1945.Drawing on both British and Japanese sources and personal accounts by participants, the authors vividly retell the story of the collapse of Allied defences in the Dutch East Indies, culminating in the Battle of the Java Sea. They recount the attempts of the `fighting admiral', Sir James Somerville, to train his motley fleet of cast-offs into an efficient fighting force in spite of the reluctance of Churchill, who resisted the formation of a full-scale British Pacific Fleet until the 1945 assault on the Ryukyu Islands immediately south of Japan.Meticulously researched and fully referenced, this unique and absorbing account provides a controversial analysis of the key personalities who shaped events in these momentous years, and makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the Pacific War.This book also appears in the Oxford General Books catalogue for Autumn 1990.

Jack Cade's rebellion of 1450 was one of the most important popular uprisings to take place in England during the Middle Ages. It began as an orchestrated demonstration of political protest by the inhabitants of south-eastern England against the corruption, mismanagement, and oppression of Henry VI's government. When no assurance of any remedy came from the king the rising soon collapsed into violence.This is the first full-length study of Cade's revolt to be published this century. I. M. W. Harvey charts the course of the rebellion and its associated troubles during the early 1450s, and explores the nature of the society which gave rise to these upheavals. She makes full use of the available contemporary evidence, as well as the work of subsequent historians, in order to uncover the identities of the rebels, explain their actions, assess their relations with the magnates, and to examine their achievements. Dr Harvey's lucid and scholarly analysis of Jack Cade's rebellion helps make intelligible the eventual collapse of Henry VI's reign into the Wars of the Roses.

Copywriter: include this in European/French History rather than BritishThis is a comparative study of national labour movements in France and Britain during the First World War. Historians of labour in this period have concentrated on pacifism, and on the post-war radicalism and emergent communism to which that contributed. John N. Horne focuses instead on the majorities in both the French and the British labour movements which continued to support the war to its end. He examines the terms of their support, and the broader working-class experience which this reflected, showing how a critical programme of socialist reforms was gradually developed.Labour at War is a genuinely comparative analysis, based on intensive primary research in both countries. It is an important contribution both to labour history, and to the social and political history of the First World War.

By the middle years of the nineteenth century, there seem to have been few places on the globe where British and French commercial, colonial, or religious interests could not clash; and thanks to the extent and flexibility of their sea power the two rivals were able to support these interests with naval force virtually wherever there was enough water to float a warship. The Crimean War brought the British and French navies, the most technologically advanced in the world, into alliance after many years of common hostility. It was a period of enormous technological innovation and development, witnessing the transition from sail to screw, and the birth of the ironclad.In this extensively researched and thorough study, C. I. Hamilton traces the technological development of both British and French navies and analyses the political and diplomatic policies which formed the backdrop to the naval history of the period 1840-1870. Dr Hamilton compares the two navies in a variety of important ways: their recruitment and training systems, dockyard facilities, naval administrations, strategy and tactics. His book makes a noteworthy contribution both to naval history and to our knowledge of Anglo-French relations in the nineteenth century.

This book explores the making of British policy toward Germany in the aftermath of its defeat in the Great War. Douglas Newton shows how British pressures on Germany during the formative months of the new republic were crucial in debilitating the German Revolution and the faltering Weimar democracy. Using a vast array of private papers, Dr Newton reveals the inner workings of British policy-making: the long-standing reluctance to make any commitment to German democratization; the overwhelmingly hostile response to the socialist-led German Revolution; the shunning and starvation of the new socialist government; the support for the resuscitation of a degree of militarism to deal with 'Bolshevism' inside Germany; and the battle to achieve the only real concession made to Germany - the minor relaxation of the economic blockade, in March 1919, to allow emergency food relief. British policy towards the `new Germany' was forged in an atmosphere of great tension. The `moderates', especially strong in the intelligence services, who recommended policies of reconciliation, faced powerful ultra-patriotic and economic pressure groups, supported by the popular press who had long insisted upon a policy of aggrandizement in order to smother anticipated unrest in post-war Britain. Britain's decision-makers vacillated for months. With many misgivings, they eventually opted for a `harsh' treaty, in spite of an emerging consensus among the intelligence `experts' in favour of a moderate peace to consolidate Germany's transition to democracy. Douglas Newton shows how domestic political priorities triumphed over expert opinion, with ominous consequences for the fate of German democracy and for the rest of Europe.

Although much has been written about Lyon during the Great Terror of 1793-1794, this is the first detailed, integrated study of the four turbulent years which left France's second city marked out for savage repression by the Jacobin Republic. Taking account of recent research, the author emphasizes the interaction of social tensions with political rivalries in the succession of crises which set Lyon on a collision course with the national government. Deep social divisions had a close bearing on the two most notable features of the city's revolutionary history: the precocious emergence of a popular democratic movement, and the violent radicalism of the Lyonnais Jacobins. Through close study of these factors, the book contributes to the history of Jacobinism and political participation during the first European democratic revolution. It also throws light on Lyon's part in the `federalist' revolt against Jacobinism in 1793 and on the causes of the Great Terror. A postscript surveys the impact of the Terror on the defeated city.

This is the first full study of the persistent belief in the existence of a Jesuit conspiracy in nineteenth-century France. This is one of the most important and enduring conspiracy theories in modern European history, and France was one of its major focuses. In this scholarly and detailed survey, Geoffrey Cubitt examines the range of polemical literature through which the prevalent conviction of Jesuitical plots was expressed, and explores political attitudes both within and outside the Catholic church.

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg sits at the heart of the European Union, yet it forms a very private and close-knit community. The book addresses that apparent paradox, and shows how it is reflected in and sustained by the linguistic practices of the people who live there, both native and foreign. Letzebuergesch, the country's national language, is most closely related to the German dialects of the western Rhineland and the Moselle river valley, but the country's historical and cultural links with Belgium, the Netherlands, and France are much closer than with Germany. Since the demise of Latin in the late Middle Ages as the language of administration, that role has been filled at various times by the standard varieties of French and German. Declared a protected neutral country in 1867, Luxembourg has been twice invaded by Germany in the twentieth century. But since 1945 French and Letzebuergesch have come to predominate and the use of German has once again receded. It is the unwritten social code governing the use of these languages (and latterly also of English) which gives this volume of specially commissioned papers its focus: the purpose is to provide an insider's view of the community, and of its little-known language. The book contains the most detailed linguistic description of Letzebuergesch so far available in English.

Coleridge's status as a philosopher has often been questioned. `I am a poor poet in England,' he admitted, `but in America, I am a great philosopher.' J. S. Mill's assertion that `the time is yet far distant when, in the estimation of Coleridge, and of his influence upon the intellect of our time, anything like unanimity can be looked for' seems to have been justified.Mary Anne Perkins re-examines Coleridge's claim to have developed a `logosophic' system which attempted `to reduce all knowledges into harmony'. She pays particular attention to his later writings, some of which are still unpublished. She suggests that the accusations of plagiarism and of muddled, abstruse metaphysics which have been levelled at him may be challenged by a thorough reading of his work in which his unifying principle is revealed. She explores the various meanings for the term `Logos', a recurrent theme in every area of Coleridge's thought - philosophy, religion, natural science, history, political and social criticism, literary theory, and psychology.Coleridge was responding to the concerns of his own time, a revolutionary age in which increasing intellectual and moral fragmentation and confusion seemed to him to threaten both individuals and society. Drawing on the whole of Western intellectual history, he offered a ground for philosophy which was relational rather than mechanistic. He is one of those few thinkers whose work appears to become more interesting, his perceptions more acute, as the historical gulf widens. This book is a contribution to the reassessment that he deserves.