The Transatlantic Gothic Novel and the Law, 1790–1860

Bridget M. Marshall (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

198 Seiten

2016
Routledge (Verlag)
978-1-138-25004-8 (ISBN)

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Tracing the use of legal themes in the gothic novel, Bridget M. Marshall shows these devices reflect an outpouring of anxiety about the nature of justice. On both sides of the Atlantic, novelists like William Godwin, Mary Shelley, Charles Brockden Brown, and Hannah Crafts question the foundations of the Anglo-American justice system through their portrayals of criminal and judicial procedures and their use of found documents and legal forms as key plot devices. As gothic villains, from Walpole's Manfred to Godwin's Tyrrell to Stoker's Dracula, manipulate the law and legal system to expand their power, readers are confronted with a legal system that is not merely ineffective at stopping villains but actually enables them to inflict ever greater harm on their victims. By invoking actual laws like the Black Act in England or the Fugitive Slave Act in America, gothic novels connect the fantastic horrors that constitute their primary appeal with much more shocking examples of terror and injustice. Finally, the gothic novel's preoccupation with injustice is just one element of many that connects the genre to slave narratives and to the horrors of American slavery.

Bridget M. Marshall is assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, USA.

Contents: Introduction: legal tangles and Gothic trappings; Things are not as they should be: the legal system in William Godwin's Caleb Williams; Questioning the evidence of bodies and texts in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; Reading unreadable texts and bodies: Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly; Slave narrative and the Gothic novel: Hannah Craft's The Bondwoman's Narrative; Closing arguments; Works cited; Index.

Erscheinungsdatum	07.09.2016
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	453 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Recht / Steuern ► EU / Internationales Recht
	Recht / Steuern ► Privatrecht / Bürgerliches Recht ► Sachenrecht
	Recht / Steuern ► Rechtsgeschichte
ISBN-10	1-138-25004-X / 113825004X
ISBN-13	978-1-138-25004-8 / 9781138250048
Zustand	Neuware