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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... eighteenth-century crime has been as useful to me in preparing this volume as it will prove to be to him in the furtherance of his academic career. But my most profound gratitude must go to my wife and family, who have put up with a ...
... eighteenthcentury England, on the ways in which the various constituent performers in these cultural practices were portrayed, and on the significance of such representations for their producers and consumers. It is, I hope, an exercise ...
... eighteenth-century writing, and I would not wish to have to keep apologising for the unwholesomeness or shabbiness of.
... eighteenth century.2 So although the best-known novels and poems and the like will inevitably be prominent in the following discussion, and the names of the most revered authors will appear frequently, the real focus of attention must ...
... eighteenth century is an unexciting period for the historian of road traffic offences. More interestingly, we no longer criminalise certain activities which were illegal in the earlier period, like the host of offences prosecuted by ...
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 |