Engaging Violence

Civility has returned to prominence as a way of confronting violence that many now see as woven into ordinary life. Many accept that civility opposes violence and that literature nurtures civility and tolerance. Others argue that civility can conceal violence in another form, and that literature, which has seldom tried to wield violence itself, has often been blamed for encouraging it.

This book examines how the three terms, violence, literature and civility, along with the concepts they call up, have become entangled with one another, and how those entanglements have been put to use. Its approach is broadly historical, moving from the Renaissance to the present, and it draws on historians, political scientists, literary scholars and philosophers. The author develops a new argument about the intricate and frequently obscured connections among literature, civility and violence within the anglophone Atlantic world.

The book asks what we expect from civility and from literature, both separately and in combination, and how these familiar but loosely defined ideas hold up under the pressures of the modern world. Its central claim is that, despite and perhaps because of their imprecise conceptual foundations, both remain important tools for criticizing violence.