The Bookshelf

Books by JMU faculty

Descartes and Method: A Search for a Method in Meditations
Routledge Press, 1999
ISBN 0-415-19250-1
By Daniel E. Flage and Clarence A. Bonnen

René Descartes credited his success in philosophy, mathematics and physics to the discovery of a universal method of inquiry - but he provided no systematic description of his method. Through a rigorous examination of Descartes' scattered remarks on his method and its application in his scientific and mathematical works, Daniel E. Flage and Clarence A. Bonnen develop a systematic account of his method and its role in the Meditations. Flage and Bonnen boldly and convincingly argue against the orthodox conception that Descartes had no method and explain the role of the method of analysis in the Meditations.

Descartes and Method has been called a groundbreaking book sure to make a considerable impact on the philosophical community and anyone wishing to gain a new understanding of Descartes' Meditations. The book was published as part of Routledge's series on 17th-century philosophy.

Daniel Flage is associate professor of philosophy and author of several books, including David Hume's Theory of Mind. Co-author Clarence Bonnen taught philosophy at Penn State Erie.

Idol of Suburbia: Marie Corelli and Late-Victorian Literary Culture
University Press of Virginia, 2000
ISBN 0-8139-1915-0
By Annette R. Federico

Idol of Suburbia is not only a discerning study of Marie Corelli - the most widely popular British novelist of the late-Victorian and Edwardian years - but also a model of readable and intelligent cultural criticism," writes Sally Mitchell of Temple University. Idol of Suburbia (part of University Press' Victorian Literature and Culture Series) returns Corelli to conversations about the late-Victorian and Edwardian literary world. Author Annette Federico points out that Corelli's participation in the cultural life of her time was highly creative, combative and contradictory. Her ongoing war with highbrow literary critics and her management of her own image illuminate continuing debates about literary value, class hegemony and gender politics. Federico's work is the first full-length analysis of Corelli's participation in literary decadence, celebrity, feminism and New Woman fiction. Federico is an associate professor of English and has also published Masculine Identity in Hardy and Gissing.