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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... 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 as my succour extends, so far have I promoted the ...
... humanity, the principles of civic organisation, and the possibilities of a rational, just society. In this chorus of commentary, cries for reform vie with cries for consolidation, pleas for mercy alternate with demands for increased ...
... human behaviour, sometimes overlapping, sometimes competing, progressively overtaking the church as the most widely-heeded guides to conduct. The body of statute can be seen as a sustained and elaborate commentary on human activity ...
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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 |