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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... possible supportive and adversary roles of literature in their distribution. There are obviously a great many areas of uncertainty and trepidation in this endeavour and lest you feel that you have fallen among thieves and swindlers ...
... possible to write about this topic from within the traditional 'Eng. Lit.' perspective of the magical and universal powers of identifiable literary value. In such a case, great novels, plays and poems alone would provide the materials ...
... possible to present the institution of law as the public formalisation of a gentlemanly code of good practice, motivated largely by 'natural humanity', as Blackstone does. On the other hand, and with more persuasive support, it could be ...
... possible to use documents as selectively as Foucault does to present a very different version of the period. All commentaries on the law, of course, have to be commentaries on crime, and criminal activities in themselves attracted a ...
... possible, by the belief in the necessity of law. So in many other contemporary arguments the whole state apparatus of punishment and restraint is supported and legitimised by the creation of an elaborate scare about growing criminality ...
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 |