Dennis Potter (1935-94) was Britain’s leading television dramatist for almost thirty years and remains an inspiration to today’s programme makers as a result of such ground-breaking work as Pennies from Heaven, Blue Remembered Hills and The Singing Detective. But he also engaged with his audience through reviews, journalism, interviews, broadcasts and speeches. The Art of Invective, the first collection of its kind, brings together some of his finest non-fiction work. Published to mark 80 years since Potter’s birth, this book includes his merciless television columns, penetrating literary criticism and angry writings on class and politics, as well as his sketches for Sixties satire shows including That Was the Week That Was. From Frost-Nixon to Coronation Street, David Hare to Doctor Who, Orwell to Emu, this collection shows Potter’s distinctive voice at its entertaining, thought-provoking and uncompromising best.

Dante's Comedy and the Ethics of Invective in Medieval Italy proposes a new approach to invective and comic poetry in Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and opens the way for an innovative understanding of Dante’s masterpiece. The Middle Ages in Italy offer a wealth of vernacular poetic invectives—polemical verses aimed at blaming specific wrongdoings of an individual, group, city or institution— that are both understudied and rarely juxtaposed. No study has yet provided a scholarly examination of the connection between this medieval invective tradition, and its elements of humor, derision, and reprehension in Dante’s Comedy. This book argues that these comic texts are rooted in and actively engaged with the social, political, and religious conflicts of their time. Political invective has a dynamic ethical orientation that is mediated by a humor that disarms excessive hostility against its individual targets, providing an opening for dialogue. While exploring medieval comic poems by Rustico Filippi (from Florence), Cecco Angiolieri (from Siena), and Folgore da San Gimignano, this study unveils new biographical data about these poets retrieved from Italian state archives (most of these data are published here in English for the very first time), and ultimately shows what the medieval invective tradition can add to our understanding of Dante’s Comedy.

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), one of the greatest of Italian poets, was also the leading spirit in the Renaissance movement to revive ancient Roman language and literature. Just as Petrarch's Latin epic Africa imitated Virgil and his compendium On Illustrious Men was inspired by Livy, so Petrarch's four Invectives were intended to revive the eloquence of the great Roman orator Cicero. The Invectives are directed against the cultural idols of the Middle Ages--against scholastic philosophy and medicine and the dominance of French culture in general. They defend the value of literary culture against obscurantism and provide a clear statement of the values of Renaissance humanism. This volume provides a new critical edition of the Latin text based on the two autograph copies, and the first English translation of three of the four invectives. Table of Contents: Introduction Invectives against a Physician Invective against a Man of High Rank with No Knowledge or Virtue On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others Invective against a Detractor of Italy Note on the Texts and Translations Notes to the Text Notes to the Translation Bibliography Index

Although Francesco Petrarca (1304–74) is best known today for cementing the sonnet’s place in literary history, he was also a philosopher, historian, orator, and one of the foremost classical scholars of his age. Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works is the only comprehensive, single-volume source to which anyone—scholar, student, or general reader—can turn for information on each of Petrarch’s works, its place in the poet’s oeuvre, and a critical exposition of its defining features. A sophisticated but accessible handbook that illuminates Petrarch’s love of classical culture, his devout Christianity, his public celebrity, and his struggle for inner peace, this encyclopedic volume covers both Petrarch’s Italian and Latin writings and the various genres in which he excelled: poem, tract, dialogue, oration, and letter. A biographical introduction and chronology anchor the book, making Petrarch an invaluable resource for specialists in Italian, comparative literature, history, classics, religious studies, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.

If terms are associated with particular historical periods, then ’polemic’ is firmly rooted within early modern print culture, the apparently inevitable result of religious controversy and the rise of print media. Taking a broad European approach, this collection brings together specialists on medieval as well as early modern culture in order to challenge stubborn assumptions that medieval culture was homogenous and characterized by consensus; and that literary discourse is by nature ’eirenic’. Instead, the volume shows more clearly the continuities and discontinuities, especially how medieval discourse on the sins of the tongue continued into early modern discussion; how popular and influential medieval genres such as sermons and hagiography dealt with potentially heterodox positions; and the role of literary, especially fictional, debate in developing modes of articulating discord, as well as demonstrating polemic in action in political and ecclesiastical debate. Within this historical context, the position of early modern debates as part of a more general culture of articulating discord becomes more clearly visible. The structure of the volume moves from an internal textual focus, where the nature of polemic can be debated, through a middle section where these concerns are also played out in social practice, to a more historical group investigating applied polemic. In this way a more nuanced view is provided of the meaning, role, and effect of ’polemic’ both broadly across time and space, and more narrowly within specific circumstances.

A hilarious time-capsule of 1970s television, Visions Before Midnight is the first collection of Clive James's much-loved, inimitable columns skewering the entertainment of the day. 'One of the few columnists who makes you laugh aloud' – Melvyn Bragg, Sunday Times Clive James is the man who made TV criticism an entertainment in its own right, paving the way for writers like Charlie Brooker. His comic brilliance is on full display here, from the 1972 Olympics to the 1976 Olympics, from War and Peace to the fall of Richard Nixon, and from the election of Thatcher as Leader of the Opposition to the Eurovision Song Contest. In this volume is collected the brilliant, uniquely Jamesian humour that saw hundreds of thousands of devoted fans turn to his column each Sunday morning. Visions Before Midnight collects James's TV criticism published originally in the Observer between 1972 and 1976. Clive's TV criticism from 1976 onwards continues in The Crystal Bucket. Clive James (1939–2019) was a broadcaster, critic, poet, memoirist and novelist. His much-loved, influential and hilarious television criticism is available both in individual volumes, of which this is the first, and also collected in a single volume in Clive James On Television. Praise for Clive James: 'The perfect critic' – A.O. Scott, New York Times 'There can't be many writers of my generation who haven't been heavily influenced by Clive James' – Charlie Brooker 'A wonderfully witty and intelligent writer' – Verity Lambert