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Family and the law in eighteenth-century fiction : the public conscience in the private sphere / John P. Zomchick.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Zomchick, John P., author.
- Series:
- Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; 15.
- Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; 15
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- English fiction--18th century--History and criticism.
- English fiction.
- Law and literature--History--18th century.
- Law and literature.
- Social problems in literature.
- Public opinion in literature.
- Individualism in literature.
- Privacy in literature.
- Families in literature.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (xviii, 210 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
- Other Title:
- Family & the Law in Eighteenth-Century Fiction
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1993.
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- Family and the Law in Eighteenth-Century Fiction offers challenging interpretations of the public and private faces of individualism in the eighteenth-century English novel. John P. Zomchick begins by surveying the social, historical and ideological functions of law and the family in England's developing market economy. He goes on to examine in detail their part in the fortunes and misfortunes of the protagonists in Defoe's Roxana, Richardson's Clarissa, Smollett's Roderick Random, Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield and Godwin's Caleb Williams. Zomchick reveals in these novels an attempt to produce a 'juridical subject': a representation of the individual identified with the principles and aims of the law, and motivated by an inherent need for affection and community fulfilled by the family. Their ambivalence towards that formulation indicates a nostalgia for less competitive social relations, and an emergent liberal critique of the law's operation in the service of society's elites.
- Notes:
- Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-206) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9781139085519
- 1139085514
- 9780511880339
- 0511880332
- 9780511553578
- 0511553579
- Publisher Number:
- 2027/heb07581 hdl
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