The essays collected here have been contributed by both established and emerging international scholars in the field, and are drawn from a variety of subject areas including continental philosophy, ethics, critical theory, psychoanalysis, feminist theory, post-colonial theory, literary theory and personal memoir. Addressing a varied but overlapping set of concerns that speak of desire, friendship, obsession, destructiveness, sympathy and loss, the writers here bring a shared commitment to the theme of love in the face of its denial and destruction in so many quarters so much of the time. In such ‘dark times’, it is work such as this that, perhaps, can restore our faith in the power of thinking.
This volume will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as researchers in the field, but, most of all, is intended for all readers, whether specialist or non-specialist, who wish to give some serious thought to the most human of human feelings: love.
Fiona Peters has a PhD in English, and is currently Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies at Bath Spa University. Her research interests are in psychoanalysis, discourses of evil, anxiety and love, and crime fiction. She is the author of Anxiety and Evil in the Writings of Patricia Highsmith (Ashgate, 2011) and has published book chapters and journal articles on a wide range of topics. Her current research includes pieces on suicide and a forthcoming volume on crime fiction and the Gothic to be published by Edinburgh University Press.