ENGLISH
NEITHER LYE NOR ROMANCE: NARRATIVITY
IN THE OLD BAILEY SESSIONS PAPERS
CHARLES KINIAN COSNER, JR.
Dissertation under the direction of Professor John Halperin
This study examines the ways in which the Old Bailey Sessions Papers operate as narrative and are given meaning through specific intertextual relationships with a variety of factual, fictional, and legal texts of the seventh and eighteenth centuries. The Sessions Papers are journalistic accounts of common felony trials (as set down and compiled by shorthand reporters), before there was any official report of such cases. The study shows ways in which the Sessions Papers can be read as literature and particular instances where legal reports are incorporated into literature itself.
The Sessions Papers as stories for sale are situated in the context of what has been traditionally termed the rise of the eighteenth-century British novel. Specific literary texts and novels discussed in detail include John Bunyans The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), Samuel Richardsons Clarissa (1747-48), and Tobias Smolletts The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751). Specific relationships of these texts to contemporary Sessions Papers are explored.
This study contains an extensive analysis of the Sessions Papers from July 1742 of the murder trial of James Annesley and Joseph Redding for the homicide of Thomas Egglestone. Contemporary press coverage and other popular accounts dealing with the inheritance claim of James Annesley are examined to explicate the expectations of contemporary readers of the Sessions Reports. The incorporation of the trial narrative into Tobias Smolletts The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle indicates ways in which these legal texts were (mis)read by contemporary novelists.
Through an examination of the ways in which factual legal reportage and literary discourse share tropes and rhetorical strategies, the traditional boundary between fact and fiction is shown to be both fluid and amorphous. By showing the provisionality of these basic narrative classifications, the study challenges traditional assumptions concerning the rise of the novel in Britain.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-05302007-132704 |
| Date | 26 July 2007 |
| Creators | Cosner, Jr., Charles Kinian |
| Contributors | Professor John Halperin, Professor Margaret A. Doody, Professor Cecelia Tichi, Professor Leah S. Marcus |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-05302007-132704/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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