Criminality and the common law imagination in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries / Erin Sheley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sheley, Erin, author.

Series:

Edinburgh critical studies in law, literature and the humanities.

Edinburgh critical studies in law, literature and the humanities

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--18th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

Crime in literature.

Law in literature.

Crime--England--History--18th century.

Crime.

Crime--England--History--19th century.

Literature and society--England--18th century.

Literature and society.

Literature and society--England--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 251 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2020.

Summary:

Through interdisciplinary readings of a range of literary and legal texts across a 200-year period, this book uncovers how the cultural narrative affected the development of the law itself in the 18th and 19th centuries in three case studies: adultery, child criminality and rape testimony.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Tolbooth Door

Part I Adultery as Actus Reus

1 Adultery, Criminality, and the Myth of English Sovereignty

2 The Gothic Law of Marriage

Part II Child Criminality as Mens Rea

3 The “Faerie Court” of Child Punishment

Part III The Rape Victim as Evidence

4 The Rape Novel and Reputation Evidence

5 Literary Rape Trials and the Trauma of National Identity

Coda: Leaving Midlothian

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 07 Oct 2020).

ISBN:

1-4744-5012-1

OCLC:

1306541072