First published in 1989, this collection of essays brings into focus the history of a specific form of violence - that of representation. The essays bring together a wide range of literary and historical work to show how writing became an increasingly important mode of domination during the modern period as ruling ideas became a form of violence in their own right. This reissue will be of particular value to literature students with an interest in the concept of violence, and the boundaries and capacity of discourse.

Introduction, Nancy Armstrong, Leonard Tennenhouse; Part One Early Modern Culture: Putting the Politics Back into Poetics; Chapter 1 The scene of tyranny, Stephanie Jed; Chapter 2 "Drunk with the Cup of Liberty", Peter Stallybrass; Chapter 3 Violence done to women on the Renaissance stage, Leonard Tennenhouse; Chapter 4 The other Quixote, George Mariscal; Part Two Modern Culture: The Triumph of Depth; Chapter 5 Idleness in South Africa, J. M. Coetzee; Chapter 6 Punishing violence, sentencing crime, Randall McGowen; Chapter 7 Hysteria and the end of carnival, Allon White; Chapter 8 Violence and the liberal imagination, Vassilis Lambropoulos; Part Three Contemporary Culture: The Art of Politics; Chapter 9 "Bringing it all back home", John Carlos Rowe; Chapter 10 Figures of violence, Lucia Folena; Chapter 11 The violence of rhetoric, Teresa de Lauretis;

Nancy Armstrong, Leonard Tennenhouse,