Legal Fictions of the Enlightenment

Catalog description

Considers the centrality of law and lawlessness to eighteenth-century British fiction, while exploring the ways in which novels can help us understand the nature and consequences of illicit acts. Addresses questions concerning justice and judgment, crime and punishment, gender and marriage, and legal terror and popular violence. Authors may include Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen and Walter Scott.