BASTARDS AND FOUNDLINGS: ILLEGITIMACY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND
The Ohio State University Press, 2005
eISBN: 978-0-8142-7298-5 | Paper: 978-0-8142-5455-4 | Cloth: 978-0-8142-0995-0
Library of Congress Classification PR448.I49Z86 2005
Dewey Decimal Classification 820.93552
eISBN: 978-0-8142-7298-5 | Paper: 978-0-8142-5455-4 | Cloth: 978-0-8142-0995-0
Library of Congress Classification PR448.I49Z86 2005
Dewey Decimal Classification 820.93552
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In this compelling interdisciplinary study of what has been called the "century of illegitimacy," Lisa Zunshine seeks to uncover the multiplicity of cultural meanings of illegitimacy in the English Enlightenment. Bastards and Foundlings pits the official legal views on illegitimacy against the actual everyday practices that frequently circumvented the law; it reconstructs the history of social institutions called upon to regulate illegitimacy, such as the London Foundling Hospital; and it examines a wide array of novels and plays written in response to the same concerns that informed the emergence and functioning of such institutions. By recreating the context of the national preoccupation with bastardy, with a special emphasis on the gender of the fictional bastard/foundling, Zunshine offers new readings of "canonical" texts, such as Steele's The Conscious Lovers, Defoe's Moll Flanders, Fielding's Tom Jones, Moore's The Foundling, Colman's The English Merchant, Richardson's Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison, Burney's Evelina, Smith's Emmeline, Edgewort's Belinda, and Austen's Emma, as well as of less well-known works, such as Haywood's The Fortunate Foundlings, Shebbeare's The Marriage Act, Bennett's The Beggar Girl and Her Benefactors, and Robinson's The Natural Daughter.
See other books on: Adultery in literature | Illegitimacy | Illegitimate children | Illegitimate children in literature | Parent and child in literature
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