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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... criminal Relentless ruffians Trials and Tyburn Newgate pastoral 3 The harlot's progress Double standards The whore's rhetorick Modest proposals Women of pleasure 4 Satire's rough music The grammar of punishment Shame, shame, shame A ...
... criminals like Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard, it was also the focus of most literary activity. This is obvious in the urbane setting of the developing periodicals like the Tatler and Spectator and in the declared allegiances of such ...
... criminal law. Far from demonstrating the felicities of the English constitution, and enabling a gentleman to conduct his business smoothly and legitimately, the criminal statutes seemed to Blackstone to be rather rough and ready: The ...
... criminal law, and question the necessity for the savage restraints it could impose. Whereas the earlier, more relaxed and informal system of judgemade law seemed to Blackstone to be well-nigh perfect, the newly developed criminal ...
... criminal codes could look like the flagrant exercise of power and violence to secure rights and property for a few. Of course, that was not the only function of the criminal law, nor the one that was most widely recognised. The ...
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 |