| Description |
1 online resource. |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Series |
Edinburgh critical studies in Renaissance culture
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Edinburgh critical studies in Renaissance culture.
|
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Summary |
This book investigates rhetorical and representational practices that were used to monitor English law at the turn of the seventeenth century. The late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean surge in the policies and enforcement of the reformation of manners has been well-documented. What has gone unnoticed, however, is the degree to which the law itself was the focus of reform for legislators, the judiciary, preachers, and writers alike. While the majority of law and literature studies characterize the law as a force of coercion and subjugation, this book instead treats in greater depth the law's own vulnerability, both to corruption and to correction. In readings of Spenser's 'Faerie Queene', the 'Gesta Grayorum', Donne's 'Satyre V', and Shakespeare's 'Measure for Measure' and 'The Winter's Tale', Strain argues that the terms and techniques of legal reform provided modes of analysis through which legal authorities and literary writers alike imagined and evaluated form and character. Reevaluates canonical writers in light of developments in legal historical research, bringing an interdisciplinary perspective to works. Collects an extensive variety of legal, political, and literary sources to reconstruct the discourse on early modern legal reform, providing an introduction to a topic that is currently underrepresented in early modern legal cultural studiesAnalyses the laws own vulnerability to individual agency. |
| Contents |
Intro; Legal Reform in English Renaissance Literature; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgements; Series Editor's Preface; Introduction; 1 'Perpetuall Reformation' in Spenser's Faerie Queene 'Perpetuall Reformation' in Book V of Spenser's Faerie Queene; Part I Perfection; 2 Snaring Statutes and the General Pardon in the Gesta Grayorum; 3 Legal Excess in John Donne's 'Satyre V'; Part II Execution; 4 The Assize Circuitry of Measure for Measure; 5 The Winter's Tale and the Oracle of the Law; Bibliography; Index. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Law and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 16th century.
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Law and literature. |
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Great Britain. |
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History. |
| Chronological Term |
16th century |
| Subject |
Law and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century.
|
| Chronological Term |
17th century |
| Subject |
English literature -- 17th century -- History and criticism.
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English literature. |
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Law reform -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century.
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Law reform. |
| Chronological Term |
1500-1699 |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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History.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Strain, Virginia Lee. Legal Reform in English Renaissance Literature. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, ©2017 9781474416290 |
| ISBN |
1474416306 |
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9781474416306 (electronic book) |
|
9781474416290 |
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1474416292 |
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