This dissertation explores how literary criminal narratives reflected public anxieties over the increasing commercialization of England during the early eighteenth century. It accounts for the popularity of the criminal in literature as well as public concerns about commercialization and the individuality it encouraged, revealing how these concerns were expressed in the most popular form of criminal narrative in this era, the criminal biography. Chapters on the criminal narratives of John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe and John Gay reveal how the criminal narrative functioned as a means of critiquing a developing commercial society in England. Bunyan first employs the formula of the criminal biography to offer a prophetic critique of the burgeoning market society in England, while Defoe explores the triumphs and moral dilemmas of life in an age of commercialism. The conclusion reads Gays criminal narrative as the culmination of a nations early and ambivalent experience with the marketplace. Its implication is that in the modern age, commercialism makes us all in some sense criminals.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-0418102-024341 |
| Date | 18 April 2002 |
| Creators | Gonzalez, Daniel |
| Contributors | James Springer Borck, Elsie Michie, Anna Nardo, Sharon Weltman, Frederick Weil |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-0418102-024341/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University Libraries in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. |
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