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. |
From inside the book
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... practices of eighteenth-century crime has been as useful to me in preparing this volume as it will prove to be to him in the furtherance of his academic career. But my most profound gratitude must go to my wife and family, who have put ...
... practices were portrayed, and on the significance of such representations for their producers and consumers. It is, I ... practice. By investigating the kind of information the Augustan public received from its press about deviance and ...
... practices of the eighteenth century.2 So although the best-known novels and poems and the like will inevitably be prominent in the following discussion, and the names of the most revered authors will appear frequently, the real focus of ...
... as the 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.
... practice by the most drastic of means, and even, now and then, defending the weak against the strong. But yet to the modern commentator there seem to be far too many occasions when the mask of impartiality slipped, and the criminal law ...
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 |