Understanding Public Debates

By historicizing and contextualizing them through readings of carefully selected literary texts, literary studies can contribute to understanding and rationalizing key debates waged in many pluralist societies today – whether on different conceptions of liberty, identity politics, historical commemoration, challenges of globalization or responses to climate change. Understanding Public Debates presents case studies including Milton's Paradise Lost, P.B. Shelley's 1820 Reform essay, Philip Roth's