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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... figure in their midst while I was thinking this project through, and who were unfailingly positive and supportive throughout. To them, and to all the others mentioned, my heartfelt thanks. Remaining errors or inconsistencies are ...
... figures for crime and its perpetrators. But at the moment it is important to address an even more basic difficulty: what is crime? Anyone presently asked to give a list of crimes is likely to mention uncontentiously illegal violent acts ...
... figures down into separate categories, the coolness of his statistical procedure contrasting sharply with the sensationalist pitch of his argument. There were, he claimed, at least 8,000 'thieves, pilferers and embezzlers' and 2,000 ...
... figure' must always disable the accurate computation of illegal behaviour. A recent study suggests that even today ... figures about criminal or illegal activities at any time are thus extremely difficult. For the period in question ...
... figures even of prosecutions in Britain at this time are unavailable – prosecutions were privately instigated and might not always be scrupulously recorded -there are assize records from specific parishes which can be used to ...
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 |