Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Imagining the King's Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, 1793-1796

3.6/5 ( ratings)

It is high treason in British law to imagine the king's death. But after the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, everyone in Britain must have found themselves imagining that the same fate might befall George III. How easy was it to distinguish between fantasising about the death of George and imagining it, in the legal sense of intending or designing? John Barrell examines this question in the context of the political trials of the mid-1790s and the controversies they generated. He shows how the law of treason was adapted in the years following Louis's death to punish what was acknowledged to be a modern form of treason unheard of when the law had been framed. The result, he argues, was the invention of a new and imaginary reading, a figurative treason, by which the question of who was imagining the king's death, the supposed traitors or those who charged them with treason, became inseparable.

Language: English

Pages: 760

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Release: June 01, 2000

ISBN: 0198112920

ISBN 13: 9780198112921

Imagining the King's Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, 1793-1796

3.6/5 ( ratings)

It is high treason in British law to imagine the king's death. But after the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, everyone in Britain must have found themselves imagining that the same fate might befall George III. How easy was it to distinguish between fantasising about the death of George and imagining it, in the legal sense of intending or designing? John Barrell examines this question in the context of the political trials of the mid-1790s and the controversies they generated. He shows how the law of treason was adapted in the years following Louis's death to punish what was acknowledged to be a modern form of treason unheard of when the law had been framed. The result, he argues, was the invention of a new and imaginary reading, a figurative treason, by which the question of who was imagining the king's death, the supposed traitors or those who charged them with treason, became inseparable.

Language: English

Pages: 760

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Release: June 01, 2000

ISBN: 0198112920

ISBN 13: 9780198112921

More books from John Barrell

Nation and Narration

3.9/5 ( ratings)

The Dark Side of the Landscape: The Rural Poor in English Painting 1730-1840

3.8/5 ( ratings)

The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place, 1730 - 1840: An Approach to the Poetry of John Clare

4.5/5 ( ratings)

The Infection of Thomas De Quincey: A Psychopathology of Imperialism

3.8/5 ( ratings)

The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt: "The Body of the Politic"

4.3/5 ( ratings)

The Spirit of Despotism: Invasions of Privacy in the 1790s

3.5/5 ( ratings)

Poetry, Politics and Language (Cultural Politics)

The Birth Of Pandora And The Division Of Knowledge

Trials for Treason and Sedition, 1792-1794, Part II vol 6

Trials for Treason and Sedition, 1792-1794, Part II vol 7

Representation, Heterodoxy, and Aesthetics: Essays in Honor of Ronald Paulson

Trials for Treason and Sedition, 1792-1794, Part I Vol 2

Arcadia (Words on Plays)

Trials for Treason and Sedition, 1792-1794, Part I Vol 3

Rate this book!

Write a review?