Productive Digression is a translation of the ancient term poetics: as a practice of theory. The products produced in the mode of poiesis are ‘digressive’ in that they operate off track; they resist the main stream of every day prose. They do so for various reasons and in various respects. Mostly, they are explained historically, relative to historical contexts and, that is, contrary to what they are meant to resist. Instead, this book investigates the modes of resistance, their epistemology of production, in short, the logic of digression. The method addresses the singular exemplarity of art and literature; it elucidates the impact of poiesis as an epistemological challenge and redefines the analysis of literature and art as branches of an Historical Epistemology. Proceeding from the state of affairs in 20th century criticism and aesthetics (Benjamin, Adorno, Blumenberg, Merleau-Ponty), the epistemology of representation (Whitehead, Canguilhem, Bachelard, Rheinberger) is revised in, and with respect to critical consequences (Derrida, Marin, de Man, Agamben). From literary criticism and critical legal studies to the scenario of the life sciences, the essays collected here redirect the logic of research towards the epistemological grounds of an aesthetics underneath the hermeneutics of every day life.

The first part provides some general guidelines on the organisation of successful task-centered activities. The second part consists of some fifty practical examples which have been tried and found effective in the classroom.

Digressions and the Human Imagination makes a significant contribution to our anthropological knowledge about human creativity. The creative force of the human imagination is widely considered as a key ingredient in understanding how social and cultural transformations occur. And yet, what we know about the nature of creative processes is surprisingly limited. Taking their cue from literary studies, the contributors to this volume explore digression as human creativity’s main impulse. They offer a series of experimental explorations of digression in different arenas of social life – literature, conversations, myths, humour, art, and wayfinding. In their examination of the relationship between creativity and digressive processes, the contributions challenge and eventually collapse conventional distinctions between ‘artistic’ and ‘scientific’ imaginaries. This book articulates with clarity the freedom and joy of wandering off in new directions, but also the potentially transgressive and even revolutionary character that digression has when it is put to work through the creativity of the human imagination. It will be relevant for anthropologists and other scholars from across the humanities and social sciences with an interest in creativity.

This Handbook triangulates the disciplines of history, legal history, and literature to produce a new, interdisciplinary framework for the study of early modern England. Scholars of early modern English literature and history have increasingly found that an understanding of how people in the past thought about and used the law is key to understanding early modern familial and social relations as well as important aspects of the political revolution and the emergence of capitalism. Judicial or forensic rhetoric has been shown to foster new habits of literary composition (poetry and drama) and new processes of fact-finding and evidence evaluation. In addition, the post-Reformation jurisdictional dominance of the common law produced new ways of drawing the boundaries between private conscience and public accountability. Accordingly, historians, critics, and legal historians come together in this Handbook to develop accounts of the past that are attentive to the legally purposeful or fictional shaping of events in the historical archive. They also contribute to a transformation of our understanding of the place of forensic modes of inquiry in the creation of imaginative fiction and drama. Chapters in the Handbook approach, from a diversity of perspectives, topics including forensic rhetoric, humanist and legal education, Inns of Court revels, drama, poetry, emblem books, marriage and divorce, witchcraft, contract, property, imagination, oaths, evidence, community, local government, legal reform, libel, censorship, authorship, torture, slavery, liberty, due process, the nation state, colonialism, and empire.

Resonant Gaps examines the ways in which Charles Baudelaire exploited certain powers of figurative language while writing on music, particularly that of Richard Wagner. Unlike many recent music/literature studies, Margaret Miner focuses less on the possible convergences of text and music than on their productive distances and divergences. At the heart of this study is Baudelaire's 1861 essay Richard Wagner et Tannhauser à Paris, which is included in this volume in the French text of the 1861 Dentu edition. Called a "long-meditated work of circumstance" by its author, Richard Wagner is the only piece of music criticism that Baudelaire ever attempted, despite the prominence of music as a theme and a metaphor throughout his writings. In the essay, says Miner, Baudelaire strove to erase the distinction between reading about Wagner's music and listening to it. Continually sidestepping expectations and evading classification, Baudelaire makes connections among musical understanding, concrete or spatial distance, and the abstract or conceptual distance between different arts. Miner discusses such topics related to Baudelaire's project as his repertoire of textual and rhetorical maneuvers, including italicization, quotation, personification, digression, and metaphor; his assessment of the music's seductive ability to surround and suffuse the listener; and the misunderstandings about and prejudices against Wagner and his music that hampered its critical reception in France. Throughout her study, Miner also refers to similar literary undertakings by Liszt, Nietzsche, Mallarmé, and Proust, which involved the music of Wagner and Debussy. Miner argues that Baudelaire's aim in attempting to lessen or suppress various distances that he discovers between his text and the music is not to freeze movement entirely but to inscribe his writing on Wagner's music so that the two might travel together over an aesthetic landscape that shelters rather than separates them.

This collection assembles essays on key words that link performance and philosophy in the works of Shakespeare.

Winner of the 2022 Commendation for Excellence by the International Association for Legal and Social Philosophy (IVR). What is the value of fictions, metaphors, figures and scenarios in adjudication? This book develops three models to help answer that question: inquiry, artefacts and imagination. Legal language, it is argued, contains artefacts – forms that signal their own artifice and call upon us to do things with them. To imagine, in turn, is to enter a distinctive epistemic frame where we temporarily suspend certain epistemic norms and commitments and participate actively along a spectrum of affective, sensory and kinesic involvement. The book argues that artefacts and related processes of imagination are valuable insofar as they enable inquiry in adjudication, ie the social (interactive and collective) process of making insight into what values, vulnerabilities and interests might be at stake in a case and in similar cases in the future. Artefacts of Legal Inquiry is structured in two parts, with the first offering an account of the three models of inquiry, artefacts and imagination, and the second examining four case studies (fictions, metaphors, figures and scenarios). Drawing on a broad range of theoretical traditions – including philosophy of imagination and emotion, the theory and history of rhetoric, and the cognitive humanities – this book offers an interdisciplinary defence of the importance of artefactual language and imagination in adjudication.

At Papercuts, “the tiny Boston icon” (The Guardian), we’re passionate about great books and we’re delighted to present our own. Inside you’ll find rare works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from the distinct authors we hosted in our first year. From New York Times bestselling to hometown treasures, this book of cutting-edge writing encapsulates what happened here. PAPERCUTS J.P. is an award-winning independent bookstore located in Boston, Massachusetts, established in 2014 by former publishing professional Kate Layte. Katie Eelman has been the media and events coordinator since the store opened.

With studies of, amongst others, Miguel de Cervantes, Anton Chekhov, Charles Baudelaire and Henry James, this landmark collection of essays is a unique and wide-ranging exploration and celebration of the many forms of digression in major works by fifteen of the finest European writers from the early modern period to the present day.