Compassion's Edge

Book at Lunchtime: Compassion's Edge, Winner of the 2018
Society for Renaissance Studies Book Prize. Compassion's
Edge examines the language of fellow-feeling—pity, compassion,
and charitable care—that flourished in France in the period from
the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which established some degree of
religious toleration, to the official breakdown of that toleration
with the Revocation of the Edict in 1685. This is not, however, a
story about compassion overcoming difference but one of compassion
reinforcing division: the seventeenth-century texts of
fellow-feeling led not to communal concerns but to paralysis,
misreading, and isolation. Early modern fellow-feeling drew
distinctions, policed its borders, and far from reaching out to
others, kept the other at arm's length. It became a central feature
in the debates about the place of religious minorities after the
Wars of Religion, and according to Katherine Ibbett, continues to
shape the way we think about difference today. Compassion's
Edge ranges widely over genres, contexts, and geographies.
Ibbett reads epic poetry, novels, moral treatises, dramatic theory,
and theological disputes. She takes up major figures such as
D'Aubigné, Montaigne, Lafayette, Corneille, and Racine, as well as
less familiar Jesuit theologians, Huguenot ministers, and nuns from
a Montreal hospital. Although firmly rooted in early modern
studies, she reflects on the ways in which the language of
compassion figures in contemporary conversations about national and
religious communities. Investigating the affective undertow of
religious toleration, Compassion's Edge provides a robust
corrective to today's hope that fellow-feeling draws us inexorably
and usefully together. About the panel Katherine Ibbett is
Professor of French in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages
and Caroline de Jager Fellow and Tutor in French at Trinity
College. Katherine’s research focuses on early modern literature,
culture and political thought. Previous publications have included
a book on tragedy (especially Pierre Corneille) and theories of
political action; and a coedited volume thinking through Walter
Benjamin’s concept of the Trauerspiel and its relevance to a French
corpus. Katherine is currently working on a book on the writing of
water in early modern France and its territories, from the lyric
poets of the sixteenth century to the Mississippi settlements of
the 1700s. Lorna Hutson is Merton Professor of English
Literature and a Fellow of Merton College. Her research centres on
the literature of the early modern period in England and the
complex interrelations of literary form and other forms of cultural
practice. Lorna’s books include The Usurer’s
Daughter (1994); Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern
Europe (2000); The Invention of Suspicion (2007)
and Circumstantial Shakespeare (2015). Recently, she
edited The Oxford Handbook of English Law and
Literature (2017), which won the Roland Bainton Award for the
best early modern reference book. Lorna is also a Fellow of
the British Academy and the Director of the Centre for Early Modern
Studies at Oxford. Teresa Bejan is Associate Professor of Political
Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations
and Tutorial Fellow in Politics at Oriel College. Teresa’s research
brings perspectives from early modern English and American
political thought to bear on questions in contemporary political
theory and practice. Her book, Mere Civility: Disagreement and
the Limits of Toleration, examines contemporary calls for civility
in light of seventeenth-century debates about religious toleration.
Teresa is currently working on her second book, Acknowledging
Equality. Emma Claussen is Career Development Fellow at New
College. Emma works on literature and thought in the early modern
period, with a particular interest in politics and moral
philosophy. She is currently writing a book on sixteenth-century
uses of the word politique and attendant conceptions of
politics, political behaviour, and correct political action. Her
next project will explore the intersection between moral and
biological conceptions of life c. 1550-1650.