E-Books →Poetics of the Pillory English Literature and Seditious Libel, 1660–1820 (Clarendon Lectures in English)

Free Download Poetics of the Pillory: English Literature and Seditious Libel, 1660-1820 (Clarendon Lectures in English) by Thomas Keymer
English | December 24, 2019 | ISBN: 0198744498 | 342 pages | PDF | 3.89 Mb
On the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695, Thomas Macaulay wrote in his History of England, 'English literature was emancipated, and emancipated for ever, from the control of the government'. It's certainly true that the system of prior restraint enshrined in this Restoration measure was now at an end, at least for print. Yet the same cannot be said of government control, which came to operate instead by means of post-publication retribution, not pre-publication licensing, notably for the common-law offence of seditious libel. For many of the authors affected, from Defoe to Cobbett, this new regime was a greater constraint on expression than the old, not least for its alarming unpredictability, and for the spectacular punishment-the pillory-that was sometimes entailed. Yet we may also see the constraint as an energizing force. Throughout the eighteenth century and into the Romantic period, writers developed and refined ingenious techniques for communicating dissident or otherwise contentious meanings while rendering the meanings deniable.