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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... conduct and arbitrate in the disputes of his audience were not to be found in Holy Scripture, as they might still have been for less comfortable Augustans, but in the statute book. This was by no means an eccentric or idiosyncratic ...
... conduct business unhindered, and at the same time instructing them in their future duties as administrators, magistrates and even members of parliament. Furthermore, he was offering the promise that, while the laws of conveyancing, for ...
... conduct his business smoothly and legitimately, the criminal statutes seemed to Blackstone to be rather rough and ready: The criminal law is in every country of Europe more rude and imperfect than the civil ... Even with us in England ...
... conduct which the civil law enshrined and which the tone of his lectures tried to reproduce. Whereas the civil code seemed to weave a fabric of cultured civilisation, the criminal codes could look like the flagrant exercise of power and ...
... conducted themselves, about what punishments were meted out, about what proportion of those indicted were acquitted, and on what grounds. These sources might also yield valuable information about who prosecuted whom, and with what ...
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 |