British Romanticism and Prison Reform Cope Hardback John Wiley & Sons

British Romanticism and Prison ReformAuthor(s): Jonas Cope\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Bucknell University Press,U.S., United States\nImprint: Bucknell University Press,U.S.\nISBN-13: 9781684485369, 978-1684485369\nSynopsis\nIn eighteenth-century Britain, criminals were routinely whipped, branded, hanged, or transported to America. Only in the last quarter of the century-with the War of American Independence and legal and sociopolitical challenges to capital punishment-did the criminal justice system change, resulting in the reformed prison, or penitentiary, meant to educate, rehabilitate, and spiritualize even hardened felons. This volume is the first to explore the relationship between historical penal reform and Romantic-era literary texts by luminaries such as Godwin, Keats, Byron, and Austen. The works examined here treat incarceration as ambiguous: prison walls oppress and reinforce the arbitrary power of legal structures but can also heighten meditation, intensify the imagin.