Terrorism and Literature

Peter C. Herman is Professor of English Literature at San Diego State University. His most recent publications are A Short History of Early Modern England: British Literature in Context (2011), Royal Poetrie: Monarchic Verse and the Political Imaginary of Early Modern England (2010), The New Milton Criticism (Cambridge, 2012), and Destabilizing Milton: Paradise Lost and the Poetics of Incertitude (2005).

• Introduction Peter C. Herman; Part I. Origins: The Varieties of Terrorism: 1. Savagery and the sacred: the rhetoric of terror and its consequences in the scriptural monotheisms Reuven Firestone; 2. Early modern terrorism Robert Appelbaum; 3. 'Carrying patriotism in their hearts': the terror in the French Revolution Lindsay Parker; 4. Methodology and martyrs: Irish American Republicanism in the late nineteenth century Gillian O'Brien; 5. 'Play's the thing': how governments in nineteenth and early twentieth century North America used 'terrorism to further their own ends Nathan Greenfield; 6. The nation-state's other: postcolonial terrorism in the Indian context Rini Bhattacharya Mehta; 7. Conflict and violence in the early Northern-Irish troubles Simon Prince; 8. Social-revolutionary violence in Western Europe: the case of the Red Brigades' trajectory, during the 1970s and early 1980s Lorenzo Bosi; 9. Terrorism in the Middle East David Cook; Part II. Development: Terrorism in Literature: 10. Terrorism in literature to 1642 Robert Appelbaum; 11. 'Terror in inquisition': terrorists and inquisitors in the British Gothic literature of the 1790s Joseph Crawford; 12. 'Parliament is burning': dynamite, terrorism and the English novel Deaglán Ó Donghaile; 13. Dostoevsky's terrorism trilogy Lynn Patyk; 14. Perils and pleasures of the bloody oath: the nihilist conspiracy in American popular fiction, 1881–1901 Ann Larabaee; 15. Staging the limit: Albert Camus's just assassins and the il/legitimacy of terrorism Ève Morisi; 16. Gillo Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers and terrorism on film Tony Shaw; 17. 'Something in the making': writing in the troubles and the singularity of Northern Irish literature Tom Walker; 18. No heroes in a cycle of violence: collaborators, perpetrators and the never-ending terror of the Arab-Israeli conflict Rachel S. Harris; 19. 'Why do they hate us?' Terrorists in American and British fiction of the mid-2000s Michael C. Frank; 20. Terrorism in theory David Simpson; Part III. Applications: Terrorism Today: 21. Sympathy for the devil: evil, taboo, and the terrorist figure in literature Richard Jackson; 22. War after war: terrorism and retaliation in Don DeLillo's Point Omega Linda Kauffman; 23. Conceptual confusion: the ambiguities of the war on terror in Roy-Bhattacharya's The Watch and O'Hagan's The Illuminations Tim Gauthier; 24. Terror, testament, and trial Ian Ward; 25. Global terror/global literature Daniel O'Gorman; 26. Recipient unknown: terrorism and the other in post-9/11 American poetry Ann Keniston; 27. Samson among the terrorologists Peter C. Herman; 28. Afterword Alex Houen.