The story of joy: from the Bible to late Romanticism

Abstract

Preface Introduction: what is a joy? 1. Religious joy: the ethics of oneness from the Bible to Aquinas 2. Erotic joy: the Troubadour tradition 3. The theology of joy and joylessness: Luther to Crusoe 4. Ethical joy in the Age of Enlightenment 5. The joys of doing and of being: Wordsworth and his Victorian legacy 6. Joy and aesthetics: Coleridge to Wilde 7. Post-Christian prophesies of forgiveness and exaltation 8. Tragic joy and the spirit of music: Wagner, Nietzsche, Yeats Conclusion: the career of joy in the twentieth century Bibliography Index.