Discussing the diverse relationships between law and the artistic image, this book includes coverage of the history of the relationship between art and law, and the ways in which the visual is made subject to the force of the law.

This book examines scriptural authority and its textual and visual instruments, asking how words and images interacted to represent and by representing to constitute authority, both sacred and secular, in Northern Europe between 1400 and 1700.

Starting from the premise that supreme authority requires justification, and pointing out that from medieval times the authority of both Church and State has been deemed as delegated from God, Mr. Cameron investigates the relation between secular and religious authority and the role of the individual moral agent. If the highest authority derives from God, how are we to evaluate the claims of popes, kings, and the State? The individual, through witness of the Spirit and his own moral perceptions, has the right and obligation to evaluate the institutions and commands of authority; Mr. Cameron finds validity in use of the concept of "nature" as a moral criterion. Moral precepts are not, he argues, simply a matter of convention. It makes neither logical nor moral sense to set up a system that condones, for example, lying and murder, and he points to the Nuremberg trials as an illustration of the belief that man may not justify his wrongdoing as obedience to the State. In his final chapter, the author examines parochial education. As a philosopher and Catholic layman, he approves of the increasing secularization of social life. Separate schooling, an idea totally foreign to the early Church, is not in principle a Catholic requirement. Terry Lectures. Mr. Cameron hold the Chair of Philosophy and is head of the Department at the University of Leeds.

"This collection of essays is the result of a multi-year exchange program between medievalists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and research teams of France Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique."

From one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time, a beloved professor who has taught the Bard for over half a century—an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of Lear, arguably Shakespeare’s most tragic and compelling character, the third in a series of five short books hailed as Harold Bloom’s “last love letter to the shaping spirit of his imagination” (The New York Times Book Review). King Lear is one of the most famous and compelling characters in literature. The aged, abused monarch—a man in his eighties, like Bloom himself—is at once the consummate figure of authority and the classic example of the fall from grace and widely agreed to be Shakespeare’s most moving, tragic hero. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom writes about Lear with wisdom, joy, exuberance, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are seventeen and another when we are forty, Bloom writes about his shifting understanding—over the course of his own lifetime—of this endlessly compelling figure, so that the book also becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity. Bloom is mesmerizing in the classroom, wrestling with the often tragic choices Shakespeare’s characters make. Now he brings that insight to his “measured, thoughtful assessment of a key play in the Shakespeare canon” (Kirkus Reviews). “Lear is a “short, superb book that has a depth of observation acquired from a lifetime of study” (Publishers Weekly).

The quest to escape authority has been a persistent feature of the modern world, animating liberals and Marxists, Westerners and non-Westerners alike. Yet what if it turns out that authority is intrinsic to humanity? What if authority is characteristic of everything we are and do as those created in God's image, even when we claim to be free of it? What if kings and commoners, teachers and students, employers and employees all possess authority? This book argues that authority cannot be identified with mere power, is not to be played off against freedom, and is not a mere social construction. Rather it is resident in an office given us by God himself at creation. This central office is in turn dispersed into a variety of offices relevant to our different life activities in a wide array of communal settings. Far from being a conservative bromide, the call to respect authority is foundational to respect for humanity itself.