British Romanticism and Prison Reform.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cope, Jonas.

Series:

Transits: Literature, Thought and Culture, 1650-1850 Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

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

Prison reform in literature.

Prisons in literature.

Romanticism--Great Britain.

Romanticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (0 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick : Bucknell University Press, 2024.

Summary:

In eighteenth-century Britain, criminals were routinely whipped, branded, hanged, or transported to America. Only in the last quarter of the century—with the War of American Independence and legal and sociopolitical challenges to capital punishment—did the criminal justice system change, resulting in the reformed prison, or penitentiary, meant to educate, rehabilitate, and spiritualize even hardened felons. This volume is the first to explore the relationship between historical penal reform and Romantic-era literary texts by luminaries such as Godwin, Keats, Byron, and Austen. The works examined here treat incarceration as ambiguous: prison walls oppress and reinforce the arbitrary power of legal structures but can also heighten meditation, intensify the imagination, and awaken the conscience. Jonas Cope skillfully traces the important ideological work these texts attempt: to reconcile a culture devoted to freedom with the birth of the modern prison system that presents punishment as a form of rehabilitation. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Contents:

Cover

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Solitary Confinement: "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison

2. William Godwin, "Mild Coercion," and the Happy Prison Tradition

3. The Descent of Liberty: Leigh Hunt in Surrey Gaol

4. Keats, Byron, and the Idea of Transformative Confinement

5. John Clare: The Romantic Ascent

6. Jane Austen and Penitential Space

Coda

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781684485383

168448538X

OCLC:

1492980341