Edited by Gemma Blok and Jan Oosterholt  

This volume analyses cultural perceptions of safety and security that have shaped modern European societies. The articles present a wide range of topics, from feelings of unsafety generated by early modern fake news to safety issues related to twentieth-century drug use in public space. The volume demonstrates how ‘safety’ is not just a social or biological condition to pursue but also a historical and cultural construct. In philosophical terms, safety can be interpreted in different ways, referring to security, certainty or trust. What does feeling safe and thinking about a safe society mean to various groups of people over time? The articles in this volume are bound by their joint effort to take a constructionist approach to emotional expressions, artistic representations, literary narratives and political discourses of (un)safety and their impact on modern European society.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024. 279p.

By Katrin Frisch

Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Wyndham Lewis have all, to varying degrees, been the subject of studies that explore their ideology. All too often, however, these studies have not tackled the issue adequately, limiting their analytical approach to fascism or other phenomena such as anti-Semitism. Frequently, they have also sought to exculpate these writers or to normalise their political tendencies in an effort to circumnavigate the dilemma of how to address the paradox of right-wing artists who are both harbingers and opponents of the imagined trajectory of progressive modernity. This interdisciplinary study analyses the connections between literary Modernism and right-wing ideology. Moreover, it is the first academic study to explore the reception of these Modernist authors by today's far right, seeking to understand in what ways they use strategic readings of Modernist texts to legitimise right-wing ideology. By raising fundamental questions about the relationship between aesthetics and politics, this study ultimately challenges its readers to see their cultural practices as political. It wants to make visible and problematize the interdependencies of right-wing ideology and cultural production as well as reception in order to explain the (far) Right as a phenomenon deeply rooted in European history and cultural development. It thus lays bare the misconceptions, the gaps as well as the complicity in the debate about right-wing ideology in literature.

Berlin: Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH , 2019. 378p.

By W. E. H. Lecky.

This is the second volume of Lecky’s huge works on the history of morals in Western Civilization. It’s a bit of a surprise that it took two volumes to do it. Looking back from the 21st century, one doubts that the West had enough morals to fill even one volume. This volume contains: Chapter IV. From Constantine To Charlemagne. Chapter V. The Position Of Women. Perhaps we can conclude from these contents that were is no place for men in the history of morals.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. London. Longmans. 1880. 440p.

By W. E. H. Lecky.

This is the first volume of Lecky’s huge works on the history of morals in Western Civilization. It’s a bit of a surprise that it took two volumes to do it. Looking back from the 21st century, one doubts that the West had enough morals to fill even one volume. This volume contains: ChapterI.The Natural History Of Morals. Chapter II. The Pagan Empire. Chapter III.The Conversion Of Rome.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. London, Longmans. 1890. 480p.