Identity, Crime and Legal Responsibility in Eighteenth-Century England

During the eighteenth century English defendants, victims, witnesses, judges, and jurors spoke a language of the mind. With their reputations or lives at stake, men and women presented their complex emotions and passions as grounds for acquittal or mitigation of punishment. Inside the courtroom the language of excuse reshaped crimes and punishments, signalling a shift in the age-old negotiation of mitigation. Outside the courtroom the language of the mind reflected society's preoccupation with questions of sensibility, responsibility, and the self.

Author: D. Rabin
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: 01/01/2004
Pages: 234
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.56d
ISBN: 9781349517169

About the Author
DANA RABIN is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She specializes in the history of early modern Britain with an emphasis on law, gender, emotion, and identity and is the author of "Searching for the Self in Eighteenth-Century English Criminal Trials, 1730-1800".