Samuel Richardson, Comedic Narrative and the Culture of Domestic Violence

Samuel Richardson, Comedic Narrative and the Culture of Domestic Violence

Author: Christopher D. Johnson

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2023-04-26

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1527502465

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This book provides a comprehensive reading of Samuel Richardson's novels. Using a combination of literary theory and criminology, Christopher D. Johnson demonstrates that Richardson not only understood the horrific dynamics of domestic violence, but also recognized the degree to which his first novel, Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) could inadvertently normalize abusive relationships. This recognition informed Richardson's subsequent novels and fueled his distrust of novelistic fiction, especially those comedic works that depend on sudden transformations. It also caused him to draw careful delineations between the practical instruction he hoped to provide and the ideals of his Christian faith, particularly as they pertain to earthly suffering and self-sacrifice. The Richardson who emerges from the study becomes both a staunch defender of what he saw as a benevolent patriarchy and a fierce advocate for women's subjectivity, happiness and safety.


1650-1850

1650-1850

Author: Kevin L. Cope

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2024-08-16

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 168448524X

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Exploratory, investigative, and energetically analytical, 1650–1850 covers the full expanse of long eighteenth-century thought, writing, and art while delivering abundant revelatory detail. Essays on well-known cultural figures combine with studies of emerging topics to unveil a vivid rendering of a dynamic period, simultaneously committed to singular genius and universal improvement. Welcoming research on all nations and language traditions, 1650–1850 invites readers into a truly global Enlightenment. Topics in volume 29 include Samuel Johnson’s notions about the education of women and a refreshing account of Sir Joseph Banks’s globetrotting. A guest-edited, illustration-rich, interdisciplinary special feature explores the cultural implications of water. As always, 1650–1850 culminates in a bevy of full-length book reviews critiquing the latest scholarship on long-established specialties, unusual subjects, and broad reevaluations of the period. Published by Bucknell University Press, distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.


An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews

An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews

Author: Henry Fielding

Publisher:

Published: 1926

Total Pages: 106

ISBN-13:

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A burlesque of Richardson's "Pamela", which was generally ascribed to Fielding at the time of its appearance and held by most authorities to be by him.--Cf. W.L. Cross' "The history of Henry Fielding", v. 1, p. 23, 303-308: Notes & queries, 12th ser. v. 1, p. 24-26.


Cruelty and Laughter

Cruelty and Laughter

Author: Simon Dickie

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-12

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 0226146189

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A rollicking review of popular culture in 18th century Britain this text turns away from sentimental and polite literature to focus instead on the jestbooks, farces, comic periodicals variety shows and minor comic novels that portray a society in which no subject was taboo and political correctness unimagined.


Law, Culture and the Figure of the Girl

Law, Culture and the Figure of the Girl

Author: Honni van Rijswijk

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-11-18

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 0429558708

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This book argues for the critical potential of locating the girl as the subject-position and voice of legal critique. Law’s imaginary is notoriously limited in its ways of thinking through and adjudicating gender violence. This book argues that ‘the girl’ is a key figure through which to understand, theorise, and challenge law’s relation to this violence. Law, Culture and the Figure of the Girl explains the meaning and significance of the figure of the girl to legal, political, and critical projects centred on trauma and responsibility. The book offers new readings of exemplary cultural texts that thematically deal with law’s adjudication of violence against girls, emphasising the ways these texts challenge dominant ways of thinking and doing law, jurisdiction, violence, race, and gender. The book also explores radical cultural figurations of the girl in fiction, films, and TV series and demonstrates the critical potential of these works in understanding and providing counter-narratives to dominant legal and cultural imaginaries. These works provide ways not only to critique existing law but to theorise emergent forms of law-making. This book will be of interest to scholars in the areas of cultural legal studies, law and literature, feminist legal studies, and cultural studies. It will also be suitable as a prescribed text for upper undergraduate classes and graduate studies in the disciplines of law, legal studies, cultural studies, and criminology.


Domestic Affairs

Domestic Affairs

Author: Kristina Straub

Publisher: JHUP

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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From Daniel Defoe's Family Instructor to William Godwin's political novel Caleb Williams, literature written for and about servants tells a hitherto untold story about the development of sexual and gender ideologies in the early modern period. This original study explores the complicated relationships between domestic servants and their masters through close readings of such literary and nonliterary eighteenth-century texts. The early modern family was not biologically defined. It included domestic servants who often had strong emotional and intimate ties to their masters and mistresses. Kristina Straub argues that many modern assumptions about sexuality and gender identity have their roots in these affective relationships of the eighteenth-century family. By analyzing a range of popular and literary works -- from plays and novels to newspapers and conduct manuals -- Straub uncovers the economic, social, and erotic dynamics that influenced the development of these modern identities and ideologies. Highlighting themes important in eighteenth-century studies -- gender and sexuality; class, labor, and markets; family relationships; and violence -- Straub explores how the common aspects of human experience often intersected within the domestic sphere of master and servant. In examining the interpersonal relationships between the different classes, she offers new ways in which to understand sexuality and gender in the eighteenth century. -- Catherine Keohane


Comedy and Distinction

Comedy and Distinction

Author: Sam Friedman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-04-24

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1135009015

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This book was shortlisted for the 2015 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize. Comedy is currently enjoying unprecedented growth within the British culture industries. Defying the recent economic downturn, it has exploded into a booming billion-pound industry both on TV and on the live circuit. Despite this, academia has either ignored comedy or focused solely on analysing comedians or comic texts. This scholarship tends to assume that through analysing an artist’s intentions or techniques, we can somehow understand what is and what isn’t funny. But this poses a fundamental question – funny to whom? How can we definitively discern how audiences react to comedy? Comedy and Distinction shifts the focus to provide the first ever empirical examination of British comedy taste. Drawing on a large-scale survey and in-depth interviews carried out at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the book explores what types of comedy people like (and dislike), what their preferences reveal about their sense of humour, how comedy taste lubricates everyday interaction, and how issues of social class, gender, ethnicity and geographical location interact with patterns of comic taste. Friedman asks: Are some types of comedy valued higher than others in British society? Does more ‘legitimate’ comedy taste act as a tangible resource in social life – a form of cultural capital? What role does humour play in policing class boundaries in contemporary Britain? This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, social class, social theory, cultural studies and comedy studies.