| Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Law of Property Contributor(s): Schmidgen, Wolfram (Author) |
|
 |
ISBN: 0521817021 ISBN-13: 9780521817028 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $114.00 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: November 2002 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh |
| Dewey: 823.609 |
| LCCN: 2002727281 |
| Lexile Measure: 1700 |
| Physical Information: 0.9" H x 6.3" W x 9.1" (1.25 lbs) 276 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 18th Century - Cultural Region - British Isles |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Law of Property, Wolfram Schmidgen draws on legal and economic writings to analyze the description of houses, landscapes, and commodities in eighteenth-century fiction. His study argues that such descriptions are important to the British imagination of community. By making visible what it means to own something, they illuminate how competing concepts of property define the boundaries of the individual, of social community, and of political systems. In this way, Schmidgen recovers description as a major feature of eighteenth-century prose, and he makes his case across a wide range of authors, including Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, William Blackstone, Adam Smith, and Ann Radcliffe. The book's most incisive theoretical contribution lies in its careful insistence on the unity of the human and the material: in Schmidgen's argument, persons and things are inescapably entangled. This approach produces fresh insights into the relationship between law, literature, and economics. |
Contributor Bio(s): Schmidgen, Wolfram: - Wolfram Schmidgen is Lecturer at the University of Leeds. His work has been published in ELH, Eighteenth-Century Studies, The Journal of British Studies and Studies in the Novel. |