Readers have noticed that the fifteenth century saw a remarkable flourishing of poems written in conditions of physical captivity or on the subject of imprisonment. The largest body of this poetry is from the pen of Charles of Valois, duke of Orleans, who was captured by the English at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 and not released until 1440. The longest single poem on the subject is James I of Scotland's The Kingis Quair, purportedly written at the time of his release from an eighteen-year imprisonment in England .This volume reflects the wide scope of these prison poems by bringing together a new edition of The Kingis Quair, a selection from Charles d'Orleans' Fortunes Stabilnes, a poem by George Ashby, who was imprisoned in London's Fleet prison, and the poems of two other poets, both anonymous, who wrote about physical and/or emotional imprisonment.

Boethius' reputation as a poet is reestablished in these fresh and thoughtful versions.

CONTENTS PS INTRODUCTION, 5 MOURN NOT THE DEAD, 1 3 TAPS, 14 NIGHT IN THE CELL HOUSE, 15 PRISON SHADOWS, 16 PRISON REVEILLE, 1 7 PRISON NOCTURNE, 18 THE WARRIOR WIND, 19 To FREEDOM, 21 THE VISION MAKER, 22 DISTANCES, 23 PHANTOMS, 24 SEVEN LITTLE SPARROWS, 25 SALAAM, 26 THE WEST is DEAD, 29 UP FROM YOUR KNEES, 30 THE EUNUCH, 31 I. W. W. PRISON SONG, 33 To FRANCE, 34 VlLLANELLE, 35 WESLEY EVEREST, 36 THE INDUSTRIAL HERETICS, 37 BLOOD AND WINE, 38 THE RED GUARD, 40 THE RED FEAST, 41 THE GIRLS WHO SANG FOR Us, 43 To EDITH, 44 SONG OF SEPARATION, 45 To MY LITTLE SON, 46 ESCAPED, 47 RETROSPECT, 48 LIBRARY INTRODUCTION I. Ralph Chaplin is serving a twenty year sentence in the Federal Penitentiary, not as a punishment for any act of violence against person or property, but solely for the ex pression of his opinions. Chaplin, together with a number of fellow prisoners who were sentenced at the same time, was accused of taking part in a conspiracy with intent to obstruct the prosecution of the war. To be sure the Government did not produce a single witness to show that the war had been obstructed by their activities but it was argued that the agitation which they had carried on by means of speeches, articles, pamphlets, meetings and organizing campaigns, would quite naturally hamper the country in its war work. On the face of their indictments these men were accused of interfering with the conduct of the war in reality they were sent to jail because they held and expressed certain beliefs. As a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, Ralph Chaplin did his part to make the organization a suc cess. He wrote songs and poems he made speeches he edited the official paper, quotSolidarityquot. He looked about him saw poverty, wretchedness and suffering among the work ers contrasted it with the luxury of those who owned the land and the machinery of production studied the problem of distribution and decided that it was possible, through the organization of the producers, to establish a more scientific, juster, more humane system of society. All this he felt, intensely. With him and his fellow-workers the task of free ing humanity from economic bondage took on the aspect of a faith, a religion. They held their meetings wrote their literature made their speeches and sang their songs with zealous devotion. They had seen a vision they had heard a call to duty they were giving their lives to a cause the emancipation of the human race. When the war broke out in Europe, with millions of working-men flinging death and misery at one another, men like Chaplin, the world over, regarded it as the last straw. Was it not bad enough that these exploited creatures should be used as factory-fodder Must they be cannon-fodder too Why should they fight to increase the economic power of German traders of British manufacturers The war was a capitalist war between capitalist nations. What interest had the workers in these nations in their winnings or in their losses So ran the argument. The I. W. W. was not primarily an anti-war organization. In theory it had abandoned political activity to devote itself exclusively to agitation and organization on the field of in dustry. Practically its funds and its energies were expended upon industrial struggles. Long before the war, the I. W. W. had made itself known and feared for its conduct of strikes its free speech fights, and its ability to put the sore spots of American industrial life on the front page of the daily press and to keep them there until the people had become aroused to the wrongs that were being perpetrated. It was in the domain of industry that the I. W. W...

The Roman philosopher Boethius (c. 480-524) is best known for the Consolation of Philosophy, one of the most frequently cited texts in medieval literature. In the Consolation, an unnamed Boethius sits in prison awaiting execution when his muse Philosophy appears to him. Her offer to teach him who he truly is and to lead him to his heavenly home becomes a debate about how to come to terms with evil, freedom, and providence. The conventional reading of the Consolation is that it is a defense of pagan philosophy; nevertheless, many readers who accept this basic argument find that the ending is ambiguous and that Philosophy has not, finally, given the prisoner the comfort she had promised. In The Prisoner's Philosophy, Joel C. Relihan delivers a genuinely new reading of the Consolation. He argues that it is a Christian work dramatizing not the truths of philosophy as a whole, but the limits of pagan philosophy in particular. He views it as one of a number of literary experiments of late antiquity, taking its place alongside Augustine's Confessions and Soliloquies as a spiritual meditation, as an attempt by Boethius to speak objectively about the life of the mind and its relation to God. Relihan discerns three fundamental stories intertwined in the Consolation an ironic retelling of Plato's Crito, an adaptation of Lucian's Jupiter Confutatus, and a sober reduction of Job to a quiet dialogue in which the wounded innocent ultimately learns wisdom in silence. Relihan's claim that Boethius's text was written as a Menippean satire does not rest merely on identifying a mixture of disparate literary influences on the text, or on the combination of verse and prose or of fantasy and morality. More important, Relihan argues, Boethius deliberately dramatizes the act of writing about systematic knowledge in a way that calls into question the value of that knowledge. Philosophy's attempt to lead an exile to God's heaven is rejected; the exile comes to accept the value of the phenomenal world, and theology replaces philosophy to explain the place of human beings in the order of the world. Boethius Christianizes the genre of Menippean satire, and his Consolation is a work about humility and prayer. "Acknowledging that the Consolation of Philosophy is 'over-familiar and under-read, ' Joel Relihan puts to the side old bromides about the work and instead pays careful attention to the narrative(s) Boethius constructs, grounding his readings in the contexts the work cultivates, especially its Menippean elements. The result is perhaps the first satisfying reading of the Consolation to be produced, a satisfaction felt also in the ways Relihan mirrors Boethius himself in the thoroughness of his scholarship and the elegance of his exposition. No one who studies Boethius will be able to ignore this book." --Joseph Pucci, Brown University "Anyone who has been fascinated, intrigued, or perhaps puzzled by the meaning, structure, or argument of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy will find Joel Relihan's new book a welcome addition to the study of this core text of the early medieval world whose influence extends to the present time. Relihan's study is a tour de force that belongs in the library of all those who appreciate Boethius's depth and subtlety. Fortune's wheel has indeed turned in the favor of those who wish to explore with Relihan the intricacies and brilliance of the Consolation." --Fr. John Fortin, O.S.B., Saint Anselm College

Undeniably iconoclastic, and doggedly practical where others were abstract, the late Richard Rorty was described by some as a philosopher with no philosophy. Rorty was skeptical of systems claiming to have answers, seeing scientific and aesthetic schools as vocabularies rather than as indispensable paths to truth. But his work displays a profound awareness of philosophical tradition and an urgent concern for how we create a society. As Michael Bérubé writes in his introduction to this new volume, Rorty looked upon philosophy as "a creative enterprise of dreaming up new and more humane ways to live." Drawn from Rorty’s acclaimed 2004 Page-Barbour lectures, Philosophy as Poetry distills many of the central ideas in his work. Rorty begins by addressing poetry and philosophy, which are often seen as contradictory pursuits. He offers a view of philosophy as a poem, beginning with the ancient Greeks and rewritten by succeeding generations of philosophers seeking to improve it. He goes on to examine analytic philosophy and the rejection by some philosophers, notably Wittgenstein, of the notion of philosophical problems that have solutions. The book concludes with an invigorating suspension of intellectual borders as Rorty focuses on the romantic tradition and relates it to philosophic thought. This book makes an ideal starting place for anyone looking for an introduction to Rorty’s thought and his contribution to our sense of an American pragmatism, as well as an understanding of his influence and the controversy that attended his work. Page-Barbour Lectures

Ralph Chaplin is serving a twenty year sentence in the Federal Penitentiary, not as a punishment for any act of violence against person or property, but solely for the expression of his opinions. Chaplin, together with a number of fellow prisoners who were sentenced at the same time, was accused of taking part in a conspiracy with intent to obstruct the prosecution of the war. To be sure the Government did not produce a single witness to show that the war had been obstructed by their activities; but it was argued that the agitation which they had carried on by means of speeches, articles, pamphlets, meetings and organizing campaigns, would quite naturally hamper the country in its war work. On the face of their indictments these men were accused of interfering with the conduct of the war; in reality they were sent to jail because they held and expressed certain beliefs.