tailieunhanh - Family and the law in eighteenth-century fiction

.Family and the law in eighteenth-centuryfictionoffers challenging new interpretations of the public and private faces of individualism in the eighteenth-century English novel. John P. Zomchick begins by surveying the social, historical and ideological function of law and family in eighteenth-century England's developing market economy. He goes on to examine in detail their part in the fortunes and misfortunes of the protagonists in Defoe's Roxana, Richardson's Clarissa, Smollett's Roderick Random, Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield and Godwin's Caleb Williams. Zomchick reveals in these novels an attempt to produce a "juridical subject": a representation of the individual identified with the principles and. | FAMILY AND THE LAW IN EICIITEENTIICENTIBT FICTION The public conscience in lhe private sphere JOHN p. ZOMCH1CK Family and the law in eighteenth-century fiction offers challenging new interpretations of the public and private faces of individualism in the eighteenth-century English novel. John p. Zomchick begins by surveying the social historical and ideological function of law and family in eighteenth-century England s developing market economy. He goes on to examine in detail their part in the fortunes and misfortunes of the protagonists in Defoe s Roxana Richardson s Clarissa Smollett s Roderick Random Goldsmith s The Vicar of Wakefield and Godwin s Caleb Williams. Zomchick reveals in these novels an attempt to produce a juridical subject a representation of the individual identified with the principles and the aims of the law especially its respect for property and motivated by an inherent need for affection and human community fulfilled by the family which offers a motive for internalizing the law. The different ways in which these novels express their ambivalence towards that formulation indicate a nostalgia for less competitive social relations and an emergent liberal critique of the law s operation in the service of society s .