Libel and Lampoon

Libel and Lampoon will change the way we think about satireboth its literary history and its generic ambiguitywhile revising our understanding of the history of libel law and the freedom of the press more generally. This well-researched, well-written, rigorous and witty book on the complex and symbiotic relationship between satire and the law makes important and original contributions to the study of satire and the field of law and literature. Bricker convincingly demonstrates that satire and the law mutually influenced and shaped one another through a series of thorny skirmishes around questions of meaning and authorial ownership at the heart of Enlightenment thought.

Auteur
Andrew Benjamin Bricker is an Assistant Professor of English Literature in the Department of Literary Studies at Ghent University and a Senior Fellow at the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. He received his BA and MA from the University of Toronto and his PhD from Stanford University. Before joining UGent, he was a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at McGill University and a Killam Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia.

Texte du rabat

Explores the mutually shaping influences of legal developments over the eighteenth century and the expression and form of satire in the period, from satirical literature to non-verbal forms including caricature.

Contenu

• Introduction: The Perils of Satire

• 1: Keeping out of Court I: Libel and Lampoon after Hale and Dryden

• 2: Keeping out of Court II: Swift and the Illicit Book Trade

• 3: Irony in the Courts: Defoe and the Law of Seditious Libel

• 4: Naming in the Courts: Pope and the Dunciad

• 5: Allegory in the Courts: Satire and the Problem of 'Libellous Parallels'

• 6: Keeping out of Court III: Caricature, Mimicry, and the Deverbalization of Satire

• Epilogue: A Shandean History of the Press