Discourses of Suffering

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Category: Discourses of Suffering: About the Book

Discourses of suffering revisited: what was it all about?

I posted a reply to a question on Quora that has attracted quite a lot of attention. The question was, “Can you fail a Ph.D. thesis defence?” and, having failed mine twice, I felt I was in a good position to answer! Several people posted comments asking what the thesis was about so, instead of […]

What’s wrong with Pain, Pleasure and Perversity?

To say I wrote it in 9 months flat, not much. Two years after publication I’ve had enough feedback and enough time to think about it to be able to reflect on it and, while one or two flaws have been pointed out to me, nothing particularly damaging to my basic argument has come to […]

Damned if we do! Using the EEBO TCP Database

Can we use the EEBO TCP database? This looks like a no-brainer – what would be the use of the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership if we can’t use it? – but it’s actually something of a minefield. How often, I wonder, has work citing the database been met with a response like […]

Responding to criticism

To what extent should one respond to criticism of one’s work? Should one respond to it at all? Perhaps one should take a lofty attitude and simply let the critics make of one’s work what they will. Or perhaps one owes it to oneself and to scholarship to clarify things and explain oneself. I accept, […]

Review

Check out Jan Frans van Dijkhuisen’s review of Pain, Pleasure and Perversity here: You’ll need a JSTOR log-in to read the whole thing, but if anyone without one is particularly keen to read it, just e-mail me and I may be able to sort you out! Anyway, here’s the first paragraph, just to give you […]