Overview

Traces the ways in which changing ideas about criminal sanction were reflected in and engaged with in early modern English society Broadens the scope of current law and literature debate into the area of consequence Offers analysis of both major and lesser-known literary texts, including Shakespeare Explores new primary resources on early modern criminal sanction Provides a new entry point for a wider examination of early modern culture Will appeal to students, academic specialists and to a more general audience with an interest in history of crime In a period in which some three hundred crimes were designated as felonies and punishable by death, a consideration of crime must inevitably lead to a preoccupation with consequences. Crime and Consequence in Early Modern Literature and Law analyses contemporary literary and legal texts, including drama, poetry and commentaries on the law, and considers how 'proportionable' punishment was imagined in the early modern period and how the possibility of justice miscarried might influence that imagining.

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9781474454360

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"""A probing study of criminal law, punishment, and the narratives that seek to justify or challenge them. Hudson considers crimes such as perjury and counterfeiting, which raise questions about invention and imagination, and examines them in relation to a wide range of legal, literary, and theological works that pose similar questions."" -Simon Stern, University of Toronto"

Author Information

Judith Hudson is an Associate Lecturer in the Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her articles have appeared in The Seventeenth Century and Textual Practice, as well as in several edited volumes. Her research focuses on early modern literature and law.

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