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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... place where legal practice was most elaborately formalised. Elsewhere in Britain at this time, the ecclesiastical or church courts were still relatively more prominent, prosecuting 'moral' or spiritual offences like adultery.
Ian A. Bell. relatively more prominent, prosecuting 'moral' or spiritual offences like adultery or defamation, though even in rural districts they were beginning to lose much of their force and authority by the Augustan period.4 Also, in ...
... morality at various points in the ensuing pages. For the moment, the definition of crime which serves my purposes best is one which is historically relative and non-prescriptive. As a result, I am happy to follow J. A. Sharpe in ...
... morally complex and might not always be capable of a benign interpretation. Blackstone acknowledged these problems but did not investigate them thoroughly. Other commentators, of a more aggressively ironic temper, could see the ...
... morality of punishment, the role of the state, and the relationship between the law and ethics were widely and frequently discussed throughout the Augustan period, attracting the attention of theologians, philosophers, pamphleteers ...
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 |