Traces the meanings and inflections of the term 'pity' as it has run through Western culture to the present day Although 'pity' is a term we use all the time, it has not been dealt with in a transhistorical literary context before. Sharply distinguishable from such apparently similar terms as 'compassion' and 'sympathy', it is a peculiarly apposite term for contemporary investigation, living as we do in a world where pity is both widely required and simultaneously condemned as a kind of self-indulgence. Major writers addressed in the book include Aristotle, Shakespeare, Fielding, Blake, Austen, Chekhov, Brecht, Wilfred Owen, David Jones, Primo Levi, Jean Rhys, Stevie Smith, Derek Walcott and Bob Dylan. David Punter is Professor of English at the University of Bristol. His most recent publications include Metaphor (2007); Modernity (2007); Rapture: Literature, Addiction, Secrecy (2009); and A New Companion to the Gothic (ed., 2012). He has also published five volumes of poetry. Cover image: Pietà, Michelangelo, 1498-1499 Cover design: [EUP logo] www.euppublishing.com