More Details

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 Jane 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"-- [Provided by publisher]

Table of Contents:

• Solidary confinement: "this lime-tree bower is my prison"
• William Goodwin, "mild coercion," and the happy prison tradition
• The descent of liberty: Leigh Hunt in Surry Gaol
• Keats, Byron, and the idea of transformative confinement
• John Clare: the Romantic ascent
• Jane Austen and penitential space.

Author/Creator:

Cope, Jonas , author

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

British romanticism and prison reform [by Cope, J.]

Related Series:

Transits: literature, thought & culture, 1650-1850

Subjects:

Romanticism — Great Britain

Prison reform in literature

Prisons in literature

English literature — 18th century — History and criticism

English literature — 19th century — History and criticism

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on print version record.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Call Numbers:

PR448.P685 C67 2024eb

ISBNs:

9781684485383 (electronic bk.)
168448538X (electronic bk.)
9781684485352 [Invalid]
1684485355 [Invalid]
9781684485369 [Invalid]
1684485363 [Invalid]

OCLC Numbers:

1462199452

Other Control Numbers:

4043937 (source: EbpS)
[Unknown Type]: ybp306730492