A01=Rivkah Zim
Aeschylus
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Allegory
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Anne Frank
Antithesis
Apathy
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Author_Rivkah Zim
Autobiography
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Conscience
Consideration
Consolatio
Conversion narrative
COP=United States
Cultural memory
De Profundis (letter)
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Dialogic
Disgrace
Eloquence
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Evocation
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Gas chamber
Generosity
Good and evil
Hanging
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Humiliation
Imprisonment
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Irony
John Bunyan
Judaism
Lager
Language_English
Life writing
Literature
Madame Roland
Memoir
Metaphor
Misery (novel)
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Narrative
Oscar Wilde
Oxford University Press
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Penguin Books
Persecution
Persona
Personal narrative
Philosopher
Poetry
Precedent
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Primo Levi
Princeton University Press
Prison literature
Prose
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Publication
Rhetoric
Righteousness
S. (Dorst novel)
Self-awareness
Self-image
Simile
Slavery
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Spirituality
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
The Drowned and the Saved
Uncertainty
Understanding
Writer
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691176130
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 06 Jun 2017
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy as a prisoner condemned to death for treason, circumstances that are reflected in the themes and concerns of its evocative poetry and dialogue between the prisoner and his mentor, Lady Philosophy. This classic philosophical statement of late antiquity has had an enduring influence on Western thought. It is also the earliest example of what Rivkah Zim identifies as a distinctive and vitally important medium of literary resistance: writing in captivity by prisoners of conscience and persecuted minorities. The Consolations of Writing reveals why the great contributors to this tradition of prison writing are among the most crucial figures in Western literature. Zim pairs writers from different periods and cultural settings, carefully examining the rhetorical strategies they used in captivity, often under the threat of death. She looks at Boethius and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as philosophers and theologians writing in defense of their ideas, and Thomas More and Antonio Gramsci as politicians in dialogue with established concepts of church and state.
Different ideas of grace and disgrace occupied John Bunyan and Oscar Wilde in prison; Madame Roland and Anne Frank wrote themselves into history in various forms of memoir; and Jean Cassou and Irina Ratushinskaya voiced their resistance to totalitarianism through lyric poetry that saved their lives and inspired others. Finally, Primo Levi's writing after his release from Auschwitz recalls and decodes the obscenity of systematic genocide and its aftermath. A moving and powerful testament, The Consolations of Writing speaks to some of the most profound questions about life, enriching our understanding of what it is to be human.
Rivkah Zim teaches early modern English and comparative literature at King's College London. She is the author of English Metrical Psalms: Poetry as Praise and Prayer, 1535-1601.
