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No description available.

One of the most momentous events in English theatre history was the passing in 1737 of the Theatres Act, re-imposing censorship and a limit of two playhouses in London. The decade which precipitated this measure, commencing with John Gay's splendid The Beggar's Opera (1728), falls between two periods of acknowledged dramatic and theatrical interest - the Restoration and the Garrick era - but has not been very much examined for itself. This study sets the decade in the context of the years preceding Gay's triumph and those following the 1737 legislation - periods in stark contrast with the interim. The drama was characterized by satire, burlesque, and song, and is best remembered for the work of Henry Fielding in comedy, George Lillo in 'domestic tragedy,' Gay and others in ballad opera, and for the outburst of ferocious political - as well as social and literary - lampoon. The theatre world, too, was characterized by proliferation and disturbance, with up to six houses competing, managerial insecurity, frequent claques, and governmental unease. Other indications of vitality included the appearance of the first real theatre periodical the Prompter, and a short-lived but serious venture into 'English Opera.' These ventures did not completely succeed, but many features of the experimental vigour foreshadowed later developments in English drama. It was a neurotic decade, deliberately shedding convention, and the results were both lively and unhappy, inquisitive and suicidal. The 'play about the theatre' was another characteristic product of a theatre deeply self-obsessed. Few aspects recurred after the legislation, and humour and satire gradually gave way to limpness and sentiment: Fielding was forced away, ballad opera burnt itself out, domestic tragedy had no strength, and exuberance was only rarely to be found.

The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the centrality to Fielding’s novels of matters and questions pertaining to the law. Being a barrister and justice, Fielding regarded himself as in the conservative tradition of the common law, and spoke in defence of his motherland’s legal heritage and wisdom. His admiring attitude towards English law did not, however, lead him to ignore its imperfections. The English Revolution seemed to have established civil liberty and rule of law, but in the age of Fielding the honourable reputation of the rule of law as an abstract principle found itself opposed to problematic practices of the English legal system, for which a corrupt part of the legal profession was partly to blame. Fielding was too keen an observer of the legal crisis not to represent it in his novels. Legal matters are much more than a mere ornament for the novels; they are central to Fielding’s novelistic plans. The first part of the thesis discusses the history of the English legal system and the legal profession up to Fielding’s time. The second part discusses the variety of ways in which the law is represented in Fielding’s four novels. <i>Joseph Andrews </i>casts doubt upon the soundness of the law of evidence and satirises popular attitudes towards evidence; <i>Jonathan Wild</i> gives a caustic picture of society not ruled by law, with the eponymous hero dismantling legal order; <i>Tom Jones </i>poses a legal dilemma of whether or not to obey what conscience dictates when the law seems unable to find effectual measures; <i>Amelia </i>expresses a deep apprehension about the English legal system and its constitution, both seeming to work in such blind and capricious ways that it is difficult for one living under their control to feel that the rule of law protects them.

Ann Radcliffe's concept of the role of the gentlewoman as creative artist determined the nature and length of her literary career. A survey is made of the attitudes of other writers to their work and their status as writers in order to provide a context for discussion of Ann Radcliffe's role as a female writer. The biographical evidence, and the portrait of the gentlewoman as creative artist in Radcliffe's romances, show that she believed that the familial and social duties of the gentlewoman took precedence over her performance as a creative artist. Indeed, the creative activity should only be used to make her more effective in the performance of her duties as a gentlewoman. History and unreality are used in the romances to comment on the present while distancing the narratives, and avoiding the masculine appearance of overt commentary on current events. Some of the elements which are usually read as unreal Gothic sensationalism are based on everyday realities, or the findings of what then passed for historical scholarship. There is biographical evidence of Radcliffe's interest in politics. The narratives' function as political and religious romances is explained with reference to events and writings of their period. Religious and political events of Radcliffe's own time, like the Regency Crisis, Pitt's 'Reign of Terror', Wesley's encouragement of superstitious credulity, and the disestablishment of the Gallican Church, are related to the aristocratic worldview presented in the romance. Radcliffe's decision to cease publication was the result of the conflict between her literary career and her duties as a gentlewoman. Radcliffe's acceptance of the limited role of the gentlewoman led her to make a response to current events which abstracted the essence of the social changes of the period. As a result she achieved a considerable and enduring influence.

My thesis considers the way in which the liminal female libertine or rake interrogates and actively disrupts narrative and tender scenes of literature of the mid-to-late eighteenth century. I argue that by unmasking the volatility of tenderness this metaphorically cross-dressed figure negotiates a further exploration of female possibilities, and of representative discourses in the eighteenth-century 'sentimental' romance and novel of sensibility. My consideration of the female rake's evolution as something other than the moral redundant character featured in early eighteenth-century romantic fiction begins with a detailed discussion of Fielding's <I>Amelia</I>. In Chapter one I suggest it is possible to explore a relationship between the obscured vitality of the tender scene and the actual dynamic potential of the relationship between articulations of tenderness, and between the idealised, virtuous heroine and her ostensibly bi-polarised Other. I prove that the very fine line which divides the ethereal object of her affection from her eroticised opposite in fact contravenes other attempts to underline hegemonic discourse in the novel. The subordination of female authority is challenged. My analysis extends from the murky vitality of Fielding's Newsgate scenes to the works of female authors and dramatists of the 1760s. My discussion of Frances Sheridan's <I>Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph</I> in Chapter Two incorporates a study of Oliver Goldsmith's <I>The Vicar of Wakefield</I>. In my third chapter, I consider three novels by Frances Brooke which register the ambivalence of female sensibility and the associated shift in representative terms. I continue my analysis of narrative dissipation with a consideration of the sentimental travelogue and exotic, or oriental, tale. In these novels the female rake emerges as an agent, rather than as a displacement, of the potentially disruptive energies which are also registered in the novels of Sterne and Mackenzie. An analysis of their 'sentimental' narratives concludes my study of the way in which the rake illuminates the contradictions evident in representative discourses of feeling, passion, and desire. By incorporating a study of works by lesser known writers of the 1750s and 1760s, both male and female, I demonstrate that those fissures which appear in the narratives of respected authors can be discerned in a number of novels in this period - novels which celebrate the female libertine's dynamic textual revolution.

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This thesis is arranged in three parts, dealing in turn with the Philosophical and Religious background to <i>The Fable of the Bees</i>, the Social Background, and the Debate about the Nature of Society that concerned Mandeville. In the first part there is an account of the early editions of <i>The Fable of the Bees</i> together with a discussion of its intellectual antecedents. This is followed by a survey of religious and philosophical arguments as they concerned Mandeville in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The second part comprises an examination of Reformation Societies in this period together with an account of the Charity-school movement, and concludes with a middle-class, Dissenting view of society as presented in the 1715-16 diary of Dudley Ryder. The third part consists of a discussion of how Mandeville's ideas related to the distinctive society of his times and how his analysis of the way it functioned led him to propose in his peculiarly abrasive way his novel thesis about the real source of its dynamism.

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No description available.