Poetics of the pillory English literature and seditious libel, 1660-1820 Keymer, Thomas 1962- creator author. text bibliography Electronic books. History enk 2019 2019 First edition. monographic eng remote 1 online resource (xiii, 323 pages) : illustrations On the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695, Thomas Macaulay wrote in his History of England, 'English literature was emancipated, and emancipated for ever, from the control of the government'. It's certainly true that the system of prior restraint enshrined in this Restoration measure was now at an end, at least for print. Yet the same cannot be said of government control, which came to operate instead by means of post-publication retribution, not pre-publication licensing, notably for the common-law offence of seditious libel. For many of the authors affected, from Defoe to Cobbett, this new regime was a greater constraint on expression than the old, not least for its alarming unpredictability, and for the spectacular punishment-the pillory-that was sometimes entailed. Yet we may also see the constraint as an energizing force. Throughout the eighteenth century and into the Romantic period, writers developed and refined ingenious techniques for communicating dissident or otherwise contentious meanings while rendering the meanings deniable. 0As a work of both history and criticism, this book traces the rise and fall of seditious libel prosecution, and with it the theatre of the pillory, while arguing that the period's characteristic forms of literary complexity-ambiguity, ellipsis, indirection, irony-may be traced to the persistence of censorship in the post-licensing world. The argument proceeds through case studies of major poets and prose writers including Dryden, Defoe, Pope, Fielding, Johnson, and Southey, and also calls attention to numerous little-known satires and libels across the extended period. Cover -- Poetics of the Pillory: English Literature and Seditious Libel, 1660-1820 -- Copyright -- Dedicatiion -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1: 1660-1700 Faint Meaning: Dryden and Restoration Censorship -- Strange elegy: Lachrymae musarum, Heroic Stanzas -- Panegyric in print and script, Astraea Redux to Mac Flecknoe -- Plays and parallels: Exclusion Crisis libel and the licensing lapse -- Fable, history, translation: scourging by proxy -- 2: 1700-1740 Libels in Hieroglyphics: Pope, Defoe -- Earless in Grubstreet Wit, and punishment, and Pope: The Dunciad and after -- Irony, intention, interpretation: The Shortest Way with the Dissenters -- Defoe in the pillory -- Allegoric histories: Windsor Forest, Robinson Crusoe -- 3: 1730-1780 The Trade of Libelling: Fielding, Johnson -- Defeating the pillory: Mist, Curll, Shebbeare, Wilkes -- Performance and print under Walpole -- Fielding and Walpole: the art of thriving -- Lives of the opposition poets -- Johnsonian sedition: London, Marmor Norfolciense -- 4: 1780-1820 Southey's New Star Chamber: Literature, Revolution, and Romantic-Era Libel Allegories, parodies, polemics: Walter Cox, William Hone, and others -- The 'King Chaunticlere' trial: arbitrary innuendo and necessary sense -- Trumpets of sedition? -- Censorship, copyright, and Wat Tyler -- The most seditious book that was ever written -- Conclusion: England in 1820 -- Select Bibliography -- Index Thomas Keymer. Includes bibliographical references and index. e-uk-en Law and literature England History 18th century Law and literature England History 17th century Law and literature England History 19th century Seditious libel England History 18th century Seditious libel England History 17th century Seditious libel England History 19th century Droit et littérature Angleterre Histoire 18e siècle Droit et littérature Angleterre Histoire 17e siècle Droit et littérature Angleterre Histoire 19e siècle Libelles séditieux Angleterre Histoire 18e siècle Libelles séditieux Angleterre Histoire 17e siècle Libelles séditieux Angleterre Histoire 19e siècle Defamation LAW LITERARY CRITICISM 18th Century Modern Censorship POLITICAL SCIENCE Law and literature Seditious libel England 1600-1899 fast PR441 .K49 2019 820.9005 Poetics of the pillory Keymer, Thomas. Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019 First edition. (OCoLC)1104046766 Clarendon lectures in English 9780191070914 0191070912 9780191816314 0191816310 9780191070921 0191070920 0198744498 9780198744498 http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=https://academic.oup.com/book/35325 YDX 191213 20260319181735.9 in00005718187 eng