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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... seem to be far too many occasions when the mask of impartiality slipped, and the criminal law seemed to be acting aggressively 'to sustain and legitimize the established social and economic and political arrangements of the society'.5.
Ian A. Bell. established social and economic and political arrangements of the society'.5 The traditional view of eighteenth-century English criminal legislation is that it represents a kind of Dark Age, lying in wait for the battalion ...
... politics of law. The feature which attracted most attention was that the criminal code in England, while in some respects less atavistic than others to be found in Europe, still relied on a mixture of ceremony and savagery in the form ...
... politicians, dramatists, novelists, and virtually everyone else with access to print. The legal system and the courts acted as stimuli to discussions of the nature of humanity, the principles of civic organisation, and the possibilities ...
... Political, as in the Natural Body, seldom fail going on to their Crisis, especially when nourished and encouraged by Faults in the Constitution. In fact, I make no Doubt, but that the Streets of this Town, and the Roads leading to it ...
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 |