David Punter is Professor of English at the University of Bristol. His previous books include The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day (1980; revised 2 volume edition 1996); Romanticism and Ideology: Studies in English Writing 1765-1830 (with David Aers and Jonathan Cook, 1981); Blake, Hegel and Dialectic (1982) and The Hidden Script: Writing and the Unconscious (1985).

• Chapter 1 The Passions; Chapter 2 Towards a Passional History; Chapter 3 Boundaries of Passion in the Renaissance; Chapter 4 Adoration and Abjection; Chapter 5 Dread and Disgust, Fascination and the Exotic; Chapter 6 The Contemporary Passional; Chapter 7 The ‘Rich in Lustre’ and the Narrative of Melancholy; Chapter 8 Passion, Shame and Irony; Chapter 9 The Barbarian, the Dark Station and the Passion of the Text; Chapter 10 Mysteries of the Passions;

'This is a book that dazzles by its commitment as well as by its range, and that puts the blinkered and finicky projects of most university criticism in the shade. It calls to mind the historical reach of Kermode's Genesis of Secrecy, and before that Praz's The Romantic Agony and Auberbach's Mimesis while being, in itself, contemporary, and bravely so'. - Professor Geoff Ward, University of Dundee

David Punter is Professor of English at the University of Bristol. His previous books include The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day (1980; revised 2 volume edition 1996); Romanticism and Ideology: Studies in English Writing 1765-1830 (with David Aers and Jonathan Cook, 1981); Blake, Hegel and Dialectic (1982) and The Hidden Script: Writing and the Unconscious (1985).

• Chapter 1 The Passions; Chapter 2 Towards a Passional History; Chapter 3 Boundaries of Passion in the Renaissance; Chapter 4 Adoration and Abjection; Chapter 5 Dread and Disgust, Fascination and the Exotic; Chapter 6 The Contemporary Passional; Chapter 7 The ‘Rich in Lustre’ and the Narrative of Melancholy; Chapter 8 Passion, Shame and Irony; Chapter 9 The Barbarian, the Dark Station and the Passion of the Text; Chapter 10 Mysteries of the Passions;

'This is a book that dazzles by its commitment as well as by its range, and that puts the blinkered and finicky projects of most university criticism in the shade. It calls to mind the historical reach of Kermode's Genesis of Secrecy, and before that Praz's The Romantic Agony and Auberbach's Mimesis while being, in itself, contemporary, and bravely so'. - Professor Geoff Ward, University of Dundee

David Punter is Professor of English at the University of Bristol. His previous books include The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day (1980; revised 2 volume edition 1996); Romanticism and Ideology: Studies in English Writing 1765-1830 (with David Aers and Jonathan Cook, 1981); Blake, Hegel and Dialectic (1982) and The Hidden Script: Writing and the Unconscious (1985).

• Chapter 1 The Passions; Chapter 2 Towards a Passional History; Chapter 3 Boundaries of Passion in the Renaissance; Chapter 4 Adoration and Abjection; Chapter 5 Dread and Disgust, Fascination and the Exotic; Chapter 6 The Contemporary Passional; Chapter 7 The ‘Rich in Lustre’ and the Narrative of Melancholy; Chapter 8 Passion, Shame and Irony; Chapter 9 The Barbarian, the Dark Station and the Passion of the Text; Chapter 10 Mysteries of the Passions;

'This is a book that dazzles by its commitment as well as by its range, and that puts the blinkered and finicky projects of most university criticism in the shade. It calls to mind the historical reach of Kermode's Genesis of Secrecy, and before that Praz's The Romantic Agony and Auberbach's Mimesis while being, in itself, contemporary, and bravely so'. - Professor Geoff Ward, University of Dundee