Liberty, Equality, and Humbug

Liberty, Equality, and Humbug
Author: David Dwan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2018-11-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191058416

George Orwell is watching you and you're watching him. Britain pays its respects in the form of the Orwell Prize, the Orwell Lecture, and, more recently, Orwell Day. A statue of Orwell now stands outside Broadcasting House in London and he continues to tower over broadsheet journalism. His ghost is repeatedly summoned in the houses of Parliament and in schools across Britain. In Europe and the US, citizens confront the perennial question: "What would Orwell say?" Orwell is part of the political vocabulary of our times, yet partly due to this popularity, what he stands for remains opaque. His writing confirms deep and widely shared intuitions about political justice, but much of its enduring fascination derives from the fact that these intuitions don't quite add up. David Dwan accounts for these inconsistencies by exploring the broader moral conflict at the centre of Orwell's work and the troubled idealism it yields. Examining the whole sweep of Orwell's writings, this book shows how literature can be a rich source of political wisdom.

George Orwell

George Orwell
Author: Peter Brian Barry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2023
Genre:
ISBN: 0197627404

"George Orwell is sometimes read as being disinterested in if not outright hostile to philosophy. Yet a fair reading of Orwell's work reveals an author whose work was deeply informed by philosophy and who often revealed his philosophical sympathies. Orwell said things of ethical significance, but he also affirmed and defended substantive ethical claims about humanism, well-being, normative ethics, free will and moral responsibility, moral psychology, decency, equality, liberty, justice, and political morality. George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality avoids a narrow reading of Orwell that considers only a few of his best-known works and instead considers the entirety of his corpus, contending that there are ethical commitments discernible throughout work that ground some of his best-known pronouncements and positions. While he is often read as a humanist, egalitarian, and socialist, too little attention has been paid to the nuanced versions of those doctrines that he endorsed and to those philosophical sympathies that led him to embrace them. George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality is the first monograph written by a philosopher that offers a reading of Orwell informed by historical and contemporary philosophy and promises to better our understanding of him and his work"--

The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four

The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four
Author: Nathan Waddell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2020-10-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108899706

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) remains a book of the moment. This Companion builds on successive waves of generational inheritance and debate in the novel's reception by asking new questions about how and why Nineteen Eighty-Four was written, what it means, and why it matters. Chapters on a selection of the novel's interpretative contexts, the literary histories from which it is inseparable, the urgent questions it raises, and the impact it has had on other kinds of media, ranging from radio to video games, open up the conversation in an expansive way. Established concerns (e.g. Orwell's attitude to the working class, his anxieties about the socio-political compartmentalization of the post-war world) are presented alongside newer ones (e.g. his views on evil, and the influence of Nineteen Eighty-Four on comics). Individual essays help us see in new ways how Orwell's most famous work continues to be a novel for our times.

More Equal than Others?

More Equal than Others?
Author: Daniele Amoroso
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2022-11-18
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9462655391

This book analyses the principle of equality from three perspectives: public international law, private international law and EU law. It is the first book in English providing a comprehensive overview of this principle in these areas of law and showing the current trends and issues concerning its application. Its main goal is to understand whether and to what extent the principle of equality has been affirmed in public and private international law, as well as EU law, and what – if any – the common core of this principle is. The analysis carried out in this contributed volume starts from general analyses of the principle of equality in the areas of the law covered by the book and then discusses the principle in more specific areas, such as human rights law, international adjudication (including investment law) and the law of international organizations. The book is intended to become a benchmark for academics dealing with matters of equality in public international law, private international law and EU law. It will be a useful tool for practitioners too, the collected chapters being based on the relevant case law dealing with the principle of equality. Daniele Amoroso is Professor of International Law in the Department of Law of the University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy. Loris Marotti is Assistant Professor of International Law in the Department of Law at the Federico II University of Naples, Italy. Pierfrancesco Rossi is Postdoctoral Fellow in International Law in the Department of Law of Luiss University, Rome, Italy. Andrea Spagnolo is Professor of International Law in the Department of Law of the University of Turin, Turin, Italy. Giovanni Zarra is Professor of International Law and International Litigation in the Department of Law at the Federico II University of Naples, Italy.

Contagion, Hygiene, and the European Avant-Garde

Contagion, Hygiene, and the European Avant-Garde
Author: David Hopkins
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2023-07-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 100090508X

This interdisciplinary collection of essays brings together scholars in the fields of art history, theatre, visual culture, and literature to explore intersections between the European avant-garde (c. 1880–1945) and themes of health and hygiene, such as illness, contagion, cleanliness, and contamination. Examining the artistic oeuvres of some of the canonical names of modern art – including Edgar Degas, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, George Orwell, Marcel Duchamp, and Antonin Artaud – this book investigates instances where the heightened political, social, and cultural currencies embedded within issues of hygiene and contagion have been mobilised, and subversively exploited, to fuel the critical strategy at play. This edited volume promotes an interdisciplinary and socio-historically contextualised understanding of the criticality of the avant-garde gesture and cultivates scholarship that moves beyond the limits of traditional academic subjects to produce innovative and thought-provoking connections and interrelations across various fields. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, literature, theatre, cultural studies, modern history, medical humanities, and visual culture.

George Orwell's Perverse Humanity

George Orwell's Perverse Humanity
Author: Glenn Burgess
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2023-04-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501394681

This is the first book to focus primarily on George Orwell's ideas about free speech and related matters – freedom of the press, the writer's freedom of expression, honesty and truthfulness – and, in particular, the ways in which they are linked to his political vision of socialism. Orwell is today claimed by the Left and Right, by neo-conservatives and neo-socialists. How is that possible? Part of the answer, as Glenn Burgess reveals, is that Orwell was an odd sort of socialist. The development of Orwell's socialism was, from the start, conditioned by his individualist and liberal commitments. The hopes he attached to socialism were for a fairer, more equal world that would permit human freedom and individuality to flourish, completing, not destroying, the work of liberalism. Freedom of thought was a central part of this, and its defence and use were essential parts of the struggle to ensure that socialism developed in a liberal, humane form that did not follow the totalitarian path of Soviet communism. Written in celebration of Orwell's dictum, 'We hold that the most perverse human being is more interesting than the most orthodox gramophone record,' George Orwell's Perverse Humanity is a portrait of Orwell that captures these themes and provides a new understanding of him as a political thinker and activist. Based on archival research and new materials that affirm his work as an activist for freedom, it also uncovers a socialist ideology that has been obscured in just the way that the author feared it would be – associated in many people's minds with totalitarian unfreedom.

Dystopian States of America

Dystopian States of America
Author: Matthew B. Hill
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2022-09-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1440873399

Dystopian States of America is a crucial resource that studies the impact of dystopian works on American society-including ways in which they reflect our deep and persistent fears about environmental calamities, authoritarian governments, invasive technologies, and human weakness. Dystopian States of America provides students and researchers with an illuminating resource for understanding the impact and relevance of dystopian and apocalyptic works in contemporary American culture. Through its wide survey of dystopian works in numerous forms and genres, the book encourages readers to connect with these works of fiction and understand how the catastrophically grim or disquieting worlds they portray offer insights into our own current situation. In addition to providing more than 150 encyclopedia articles on a large and representative sample of dystopian/apocalyptic narratives in fiction, film, television, and video games (including popular works that often escape critical inquiry), Dystopian States of America features a suite of critical essays on five themes-war, pandemics, totalitarianism, environmental calamity, and technological overreach-that serve as the foundation for most dystopian worlds of the imagination. These offerings complement one another, enabling readers to explore dystopian conceptions of America and the world from multiple perspectives and vantage points.

The Humbug Murders

The Humbug Murders
Author: L. J. Oliver
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2015-10-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1476792399

Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol investigates a shocking murder—before he becomes the next victim—in this playful mystery in a new series from a New York Times bestselling author. Scrooge considers himself a rational man with a keen sense of deductive reasoning developed from years of business dealings. But that changes one night when he’s visited by the ghost of his former boss and friend, Fezziwig, who mysteriously warns him that three more will die, and ultimately Ebenezer himself—if he doesn’t get to the bottom of a vast conspiracy. When he wakes the next day, Scrooge discovers that not only is Fezziwig dead, but he’s under arrest as all evidence points toward himself: Scrooge’s calling card was found in the cold, dead hand of Fezziwig’s body, and someone scribbled “HUMBUG” in blood on the floor nearby. Now, Scrooge must race against the pocket watch to clear his name, protect his interests, and find out who killed his last true friend—before the “Humbug Killer” strikes again. Joining Scrooge in his adventures is a spunky sidekick named Adelaide, who matches his wits at every turn, plus the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Belle, Pickwick, and even Charles Dickens himself as a reporter dealing in the lurid details of London’s alleyway crimes. Full of action and wry humor, The Humbug Murders is a fun take on a classic character—Scrooge as you’ve never seen him before.