This accessible and jargon-free book features readings of over 20 key texts and authors in Western poetry and philosophy, including Homer, Plato, Beowulf , Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Rousseau. Simon Haines presents a thought-provoking and theoretically aware account of Western literature and philosophy, arguing that the history of both can be seen as a struggle between two different conceptions of the self: the 'romantic' (or dualist) vs the 'realist' or ('extended').

SIMON HAINES is a member of the English Department in the School of Humanities at the Australian National University, Australia. He has also been a banker, a diplomat and an intelligence analyst. He is the author of Shelley's Poetry: The Divided Self (Macmillan, 1997) and a number of articles on poetry (especially Romantic and post-Romantic), and the connections between poetry and philosophy (especially moral and political philosophy).