Sententiousness and the Novel: Laying Down the Law in Eighteenth-Century French Fiction.

Initially, Oliver Twist (1839) might seem representative of the archetypal male social plot, following an orphan and finding him a place by discovering the father and settling the boy within his inheritance. But Agnes Fleming haunts this narrative, undoing its neat, linear transmission. This reconsideration of maternal inheritance and plot in the novel occurs against the backdrop of legal and social change. I extend the critical consideration of the novel's relationship to the New Poor Law by thinking about its reflection on the bastardy clauses. And here, of course, is where the mother enters. Under the bastardy clauses, the responsibility for economic maintenance of bastard children was, for the first time, legally assigned to the mother, relieving the father of any and all obligation. Oliver Twist manages to critique the bastardy clauses for their release of the father, while simultaneously embracing the placement of the mother at the head of the family line. Both Oliver and the novel thus suggest that it is the mother's story that matters, her name through which we find our own. And by containing both plots – that of the father and the mother – Oliver Twist reveals the violence implicit in traditional modes of inheritance in the novel and under the law.

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"Those Eyes Are Made So Killing": Eighteenth-Century Murderesses and the Law

The Princeton University Library Chronicle ◽

10.2307/26402261 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 46 (1) ◽

pp. 49

Author(s):

DOODY

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

The Law

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The Laws of Hammurabi

10.1093/oso/9780197525401.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Pamela Barmash

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Roman Law ◽

Intellectual Culture ◽

Biblical Law ◽

Intellectual Tradition ◽

Legal Principles ◽

Copernican Revolution ◽

The Subject ◽

The Law

The Laws of Hammurabi is one of the earliest law codes, dating from the eighteenth century BCE Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq). It is the culmination of a tradition in which scribes would demonstrate their legal flair by composing statutes on a repertoire of traditional cases, articulating what they deemed just and fair. The book describes how the scribe of the Laws of Hammurabi advanced beyond earlier scribes in composing statutes that manifest systematization and implicit legal principles. The scribe inserted the statutes into the structure of a royal inscription, skillfully reshaping the genre. This approach allowed the king to use the law code to demonstrate that Hammurabi had fulfilled the mandate to guarantee justice enjoined upon him by the gods, affirming his authority as king. This tradition of scribal improvisation on a set of traditional cases continued outside of Mesopotamia, influencing biblical law and the law of the Hittite Empire and perhaps shaping Greek and Roman law. The Laws of Hammurabi is also a witness to the start of another stream of intellectual tradition. It became a classic text and the subject of formal commentaries, marking a Copernican revolution in intellectual culture.

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Slavery and Ransom

10.1093/oso/9780198785415.003.0003 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Will Smiley

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Ottoman Empire ◽

Young Men ◽

Individual Characteristics ◽

The State ◽

Customary Law ◽

Late Eighteenth Century ◽

Late Eighteenth ◽

The Law

This chapter explores captives’ fates after their capture, all along the Ottoman land and maritime frontiers, arguing that this was largely determined by individuals’ value for ransom or sale. First this was a matter of localized customary law; then it became a matter of inter-imperial rules, the “Law of Ransom.” The chapter discusses the nature of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, emphasizing the role of elite households, and the varying prices for captives based on their individual characteristics. It shows that the Ottoman state participated in ransoming, buying, exploiting, and sometimes selling both female and male captives. The state particularly needed young men to row on its galleys, but this changed in the late eighteenth century as the fleet moved from oars to sails. The chapter then turns to ransom, showing that a captive’s ability to be ransomed, and value, depended on a variety of individualized factors.

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Restoration Theatre and the Novel

10.1093/oso/9780199580033.003.0026 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jenny Davidson

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Literary Form ◽

The Novel ◽

Cultural Transition ◽

Strong Affinity ◽

History Of ◽

Restoration Theatre ◽

Restoration Comedy ◽

London Stage

This chapter explores the broad cultural transition from drama to novel during the Restoration period, which triggered one of the most productive periods in the history of the London stage. However, when it comes to the eighteenth century proper, the novel is more likely to be identified as the century's most significant and appealing popular genre. The chapter considers why the novel has largely superseded drama as the literary form to which ambitious and imaginative literary types without a strong affinity for verse writing would by default have turned their attention and energies by the middle of the eighteenth century. Something important may have been lost in the broad cultural transition from drama to novel. This chapter, however, contends that many things were preserved: that the novel was able to absorb many of the functions and techniques not just of Restoration comedy but of the theatre more generally.

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The Female Quixote

10.1093/owc/9780199540242.001.0001 ◽

2008 ◽

Author(s):

Charlotte Lennox ◽

Margaret Anne Doody

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Women's Literature ◽

Samuel Johnson ◽

The Novel ◽

Charlotte Lennox

The Female Quixote (1752), a vivacious and ironical novel parodying the style of Cervantes, portrays the beautiful and aristocratic Arabella, whose passion for reading romances leads her into all manner of misunderstandings. Praised by Fielding, Richardson and Samuel Johnson, the book quickly established Charlotte Lennox as a foremost writer of the Novel of Sentiment. With an excellent introduction and full explanatory notes, this edition will be of particular interest to students of women's literature, and of the eighteenth-century novel.

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