{"title":"Adam Potkay","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"hope-a-literary-history-book-adam-potkay-9781316513705","title":"Hope: A Literary History","description":"Hope for us has a positive connotation. Yet it was criticized in classical antiquity as a distraction from the present moment, as the occasion for irrational and self-destructive thinking, and as a presumption against the gods. To what extent do arguments against hope today remain useful? If hope sounds to us like a good thing, that reaction stems from a progressive political tradition grounded in the French Revolution, aspects of Romantic literature and the influence of the Abrahamic faiths. Ranging both wide and deep, Adam Potkay examines the cases for and against hope found in literature from antiquity to the present. Drawing imaginatively on several fields and creatively juxtaposing poetry, drama, and novels alongside philosophy, theology and political theory, the author brings continually fresh insights to a subject of perennial interest. This is a bold and illuminating new treatment of a long-running literary debate as complex as it is compelling.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49755278737681,"sku":"NGR9781316513705","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50653470851345,"sku":"GOR011990832","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51022955806993,"sku":"NIN9781316513705","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52821164458257,"sku":"NLS9781316513705","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/131651370X.jpg?v=1750712014"},{"product_id":"passion-for-happiness-book-adam-potkay-9780801437274","title":"The Passion for Happiness","description":"Although widely perceived as inhabiting different, even opposed, literary worlds, Samuel Johnson and David Hume shared a common ground as moralists. Adam Potkay traces their central concerns to Hellenistic philosophy, as conveyed by Cicero, and to earlier moderns such Addison and Mandeville. Johnson's and Hume's large and diverse bodies of writings, Potkay says, are unified by several key questions: what is happiness? What is the role of virtue in the happy life? What is the proper relationship between passion and reflection in the happy or flourishing individual? In their writings, Johnson and Hume largely agree upon what flourishing means for both human beings and the communities they inhabit. they also tell a common story about the history that led up to the enlightened age of 18th-century Europe. On the divisive topic of religion, these two great men of letters wrote with a decorum that characterizes the Enlightenment in Britain as compared to its French counterpart. In this text, Adam Potkay aims to illuminate much that philosophers and historians do not ordinarily appreciate about Hume and that literary scholars might not recognize about Johnson.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50366905516305,"sku":"CIN080143727XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51797529985297,"sku":"GOR010848310","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/080143727X.jpg?v=1751394928"},{"product_id":"wordsworth-s-ethics-book-adam-potkay-9781421417028","title":"Wordsworth's Ethics","description":"Why read Wordsworth's poetry - indeed, why read poetry at all? Beyond any pleasure it might give, can it make one a better or more flourishing person? These questions were never far from William Wordsworth's thoughts. He responded in rich and varied ways, in verse and in prose, in both well-known and more obscure writings. Wordsworth's Ethics is a comprehensive examination of the Romantic poet's work, delving into his desire to understand the source and scope of our ethical obligations. Adam Potkay finds that Wordsworth consistently rejects the kind of impersonal utilitarianism that was espoused by his contemporaries James Mill and Jeremy Bentham in favor of a view of ethics founded in relationships with particular persons and things. The discussion proceeds chronologically through Wordsworth's career as a writer-from his juvenilia through his poems of the 1830s and '40s-providing a valuable introduction to the poet's work. The book will appeal to readers interested in the vital connection between literature and moral philosophy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50468743446801,"sku":"GOR013790705","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51025252122897,"sku":"NIN9781421417028","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52429525680401,"sku":"NLS9781421417028","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1421417022.jpg?v=1751272485"},{"product_id":"story-of-joy-book-adam-potkay-9780521178419","title":"The Story of Joy","description":"Joy is an experience of reunion or fulfilment, of desire at least temporarily laid to rest, of a good thing that comes to pass or seems sure to happen soon. In this wide-ranging and highly original book Adam Potkay explores the concept of joy, distinguishing it from related concepts such as happiness and ecstasy. He goes on to trace the literary and intellectual history of joy in the Western tradition, from Aristotle, the Bible and Provencal troubadours through contemporary culture, centring on British and German works from the Reformation through Romanticism. Describing the complex interconnections between literary art, ethics, and religion, Potkay offers fresh readings of Spenser, Shakespeare, Fielding, Schiller, English Romantic poets, Wilde and Yeats. Winner of the 2009 Harry Levin prize, The Story of Joy will be of special interest to scholars of the Renaissance to the late Romantic period, but will also appeal to readers interested in the changing perceptions of joy over time.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51003052818705,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51003055669521,"sku":"NIN9780521178419","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52429608747281,"sku":"NLS9780521178419","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/052117841X.jpg?v=1750815599"},{"product_id":"story-of-joy-book-adam-potkay-9780521879118","title":"The Story of Joy","description":"Joy is an experience of reunion or fulfilment, of desire at least temporarily laid to rest, of a good thing that comes to pass or seems sure to happen soon. 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Winner of the 2009 Harry Levin prize, The Story of Joy will be of special interest to scholars of the Renaissance to the late Romantic period, but will also appeal to readers interested in the changing perceptions of joy over time.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52588582764817,"sku":"NLS9780521879118","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780521879118.jpg?v=1761058375"},{"product_id":"hope-a-literary-history-book-adam-potkay-9781009074674","title":"Hope: A Literary History","description":"Hope for us has a positive connotation. Yet it was criticized in classical antiquity as a distraction from the present moment, as the occasion for irrational and self-destructive thinking, and as a presumption against the gods. To what extent do arguments against hope today remain useful? 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