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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... various constituent performers in these cultural practices were portrayed, and on the significance of such representations for their producers and consumers. It is, I hope, an exercise in literary criticism at the service of wider ...
... various relevant texts as The London Bawd, The London Jilt, The London Spy, The London Merchant and The Whore's Rhetorick Calculated to the Meridian of London. The metropolis then functioned as a complex cultural sign for contemporary ...
... 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 defining crime as ...
... various more recent studies of the period. Whereas Radzinowicz seems assured that 'the criminal law of England has always been sensitive to the needs and aspirations of the English people',7 more recent commentators have seen the ...
... various violent corporal punishments. Throughout the century, more and more offences, including apparently trivial ones, could be punished by death, although a certain amount of discretion could be exercised in sentencing. The most ...
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 |