Literature and Crime in Augustan EnglandRoutledge, 2020 M01 8 - 260 pages Eighteenth-century England saw an explosion of writings about deviance. In literature, in the law, and in the press, writers returned again and again to the question of crime and criminals. While the extension of the legal system formalised the power of the state to categorise and punish ‘deviance’, writers repeatedly confronted the problematic nature of legal authority and the unstable idea of ‘the criminal’. Some of this commentary was supportive, some was subversive and resistant, uncovering the complexity of issues the law sought to ignore. Originally published in 1991, Ian Bell’s masterly investigation of the diverse representations of crime and legality in the Augustan period ranges widely across the contemporary press, involving court reports, philosophical writings, periodicals, biographies, pornography and polemics. Re-assessing the canonical texts of eighteenth-century ‘Literature’, Bell situates the work of Defoe, Hogarth, Gay, Swift, Pope, Richardson and Fielding in its social and political context. |
From inside the book
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... argument, and be dealt with where appropriate. However, as a starting point, the broad sweep of Sharpe's definition will suffice. Perhaps, after all these reservations about the identifiability of the subject and the concern with ...
... argument, however intelligently or fastidiously, Blackstone had to maintain a discreet silence on the subject of those less generously treated by the laws – the poor, slaves, women, children – and there could be no place whatsoever in ...
... argument draws attention to those paradoxes in the operation and purpose of law which many eighteenth-century commentators exploited. On the one hand, it looks as though it was possible to present the institution of law as the public ...
... argument about changes in 'penal style' and 'the disappearance of torture as a public spectacle'.11 I have no wish to quarrel with this version of events -indeed, I am much indebted to it – but I feel that both Ignatieff and Foucault ...
... argument. There were, he claimed, at least 8,000 'thieves, pilferers and embezzlers' and 2,000 'Professional Thieves, Burglars, Highway Robbers, Pickpockets and River Pirates'. These are very dramatic figures, made much starker and ...
Contents
Representing the criminal | |
The harlots progress | |
Satires rough music | |
Fielding and the discipline of fiction | |
Buttock and File | |
Other editions - View all
Literature and Crime in Augustan England Ian a Bell,Taylor & Francis Group No preview available - 2022 |