British Romanticism and Prison Reform
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 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.
1145007582
British Romanticism and Prison Reform
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 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.
49.95 In Stock
British Romanticism and Prison Reform

British Romanticism and Prison Reform

by Jonas Cope
British Romanticism and Prison Reform
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British Romanticism and Prison Reform

British Romanticism and Prison Reform

by Jonas Cope

Overview

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 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781684485352
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Publication date: 12/13/2024
Series: Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850
Pages: 242
Product dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

JONAS COPE is an associate professor of English at California State University, Sacramento. He is the author of The Dissolution of Character in Late Romanticism, 1820-1839.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1          Solitary Confinement: “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”
2          William Godwin, “Mild Coercion,” and the Happy Prison Tradition
3          The Descent of Liberty: Leigh Hunt in Surrey Gaol
4          Keats, Byron, and the Idea of Transformative Confinement
5          John Clare: The Romantic Ascent
6          Jane Austen and Penitential Space
Coda
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
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Literature
Literary Criticism
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Literature, Modern->19th century->History and criticism
Literature
Literary Criticism
General & Miscellaneous Literary Criticism
Literary Criticism - General & Miscellaneous
Modern Literature
Literature, Modern->19th century->History and criticism

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