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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... period from 1660 to 1760, from the restoration of Charles II to the accession of George III, and it is such a broad perspective I wish to adopt here. Very precise and narrow definitions can be sought and found, for instance in Oliver ...
... period in question, or informative about emergent or disappearing structures of feeling. I may also make use of subsequent writing, like the work of Jonas Hanway or Patrick Colquhoun, as it retrospectively discusses the past. For my ...
... period.4 Also, in the provinces there may have been more prolonged recourse to informal, communally recognised and accepted sanctions, like revenge, or the ritual humiliation variously known as 'rough music' or 'skimmington' or ...
... 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 church courts, including service ...
... period. These will arise in the body of the argument, and be dealt with where appropriate. However, as a starting point, the broad sweep of Sharpe's definition will suffice. Perhaps, after all these reservations about 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 |