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. |
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... clearly. David Hume, for example, in his Treatise of Human Nature (1739), isolated the institutional complexity of the law, and sought to make sense of it: When I relieve persons in distress, my natural humanity is my motive; and so far ...
... involved in the venture are clearly illustrated by J. M. Beattie, who quotes the preamble to the 'Murder Act' of 1752 (25 Geo II c.37). This statute tried to increase the severity of the penalty for homicide, on the grounds.
... clearly misguided. The notion that literature can be impartial, non-partisan, or even simply referential cannot be sustained beyond the simplest inspection. Anyone who used, say, the eighteenth-century novel as a source of unproblematic ...
... clearly possible to find suitable stereotypes permeating the presentation of legal affairs in eighteenth-century writing, which may be taken as symptomatic of widely-held attitudes. In particular, the character of the lawyer is treated ...
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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 |