Law, Equity and Romantic Writing: Seeking Justice in the Age of Revolutions - Couverture souple

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1399500384 ISBN 13 : 9781399500388

Editeur : Edinburgh University Press, 2026

Synopsis

Explores the pursuit of justice through the processes of writing, reading and interpreting in Enlightenment and Romantic-period literature

• Examines perceptions of justice in British society, including refractions from Scottish and Irish points of view, in case studies involving Jacobites and Jews, West Indian slaves and colonial Indian government, members of Parliament and inmates in prisons
• Treats personal and individual acts of conscience aroused through poems, fiction and dramas as equitable supplements to the rule of law; illustrates such uses of literature to find justice outside of legal systems with works by Robert Burns, John Clare, Maria Edgeworth, Christian Isobel Johnstone, Percy Bysshe Shelley and others
• Presents Enlightenment and Romantic-era experiences as relevant to present-day concerns with expressing remorse for the injustices of history, redistributing tangible and intangible goods and questioning the value of retribution as a response to social injury

This provocative and timely volume examines the activity of seeking justice through literature during the ‘age of revolutions’ from 1750 to 1850 – a period which was marked by efforts to expand political and human rights and to rethink attitudes towards poverty and criminality. While the chapters revolve around legal topics, they concentrate on literary engagements with the experience of the law, revealing how people perceived the fairness of a given legal order and worked with and against regulations to adjust the rule of law to the demands of conscience. The volume updates analysis of this conflict between law and equity by drawing on the concept of ‘epistemic injustice’ to describe the harm done to personal identity and collective flourishing by the uneven distribution of resources and the wish to punish breaches of order. It shows how writing and reading can foment inquiries into the meanings of ‘justice’ and ‘equity’ and aid efforts to humanise the rule of law.

A propos du livre

À propos des auteurs

Michael Demson is Professor of English at Sam Houston State University. He coedited, with Christopher Clason, Romantic Automata: Exhibitions, Figures, Organisms (2020) and, with Regina Hewitt, Commemorating Peterloo: Violence, Resilience and Claim-making during the Romantic Era (2019). He has published articles in European Romantic Review, Romanticism, Romantic Circles, The Keats-Shelley Journal, The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, among others. His graphic novel, Masks of Anarchy: From Percy Shelley to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, was published in 2013.

Regina Hewitt is Professor of English at the University of South Florida. Her most recent publications include Commemorating Peterloo: Violence, Resilience and Claim-Making during the Romantic Era, co-edited with Michael Demson (2019), and an edition of Lawrie Todd for the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of John Galt (2023). Formerly Co-Editor of the European Romantic Review, she now serves as a Consulting Editor for that journal.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Edinburgh University Press
• Date d'édition: 2026
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1399500384
• ISBN 13: 9781399500388
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 312
• Éditeur: Demson Michael, Hewitt Regina
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible