• About
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   Institutional Repository Home
    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   Institutional Repository Home
    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of Institutional RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsDepartmentThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsDepartment

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Neither Lye Nor Romance: Narrativity in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers

    Cosner, Jr., Charles Kinian
    : https://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/etd-05302007-132704
    http://hdl.handle.net/1803/12426
    : 2007-07-26

    Abstract

    ENGLISH “NEITHER LYE NOR ROMANCE”: NARRATIVITY IN THE OLD BAILEY SESSIONS PAPERS CHARLES KINIAN COSNER, JR. Dissertation under the direction of Professor John Halperin This study examines the ways in which the Old Bailey Sessions Papers operate as narrative and are given meaning through specific intertextual relationships with a variety of factual, fictional, and legal texts of the seventh and eighteenth centuries. The Sessions Papers are journalistic accounts of common felony trials (as set down and compiled by shorthand reporters), before there was any official report of such cases. The study shows ways in which the Sessions Papers can be read as literature and particular instances where legal reports are incorporated into literature itself. The Sessions Papers as “stories for sale” are situated in the context of what has been traditionally termed the rise of the eighteenth-century British novel. Specific literary texts and novels discussed in detail include John Bunyan’s The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1747-48), and Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751). Specific relationships of these texts to contemporary Sessions Papers are explored. This study contains an extensive analysis of the Sessions Papers from July 1742 of the murder trial of James Annesley and Joseph Redding for the homicide of Thomas Egglestone. Contemporary press coverage and other popular accounts dealing with the inheritance claim of James Annesley are examined to explicate the expectations of contemporary readers of the Sessions Reports. The incorporation of the trial narrative into Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle indicates ways in which these legal texts were (mis)read by contemporary novelists. Through an examination of the ways in which factual legal reportage and literary discourse share tropes and rhetorical strategies, the traditional boundary between “fact” and “fiction” is shown to be both fluid and amorphous. By showing the provisionality of these basic narrative classifications, the study challenges traditional assumptions concerning the rise of the novel in Britain.
    Show full item record

    Files in this item

    Icon
    Name:
    thesis.pdf
    Size:
    1.165Mb
    Format:
    PDF
    View/Open

    This item appears in the following collection(s):

    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations

    Connect with Vanderbilt Libraries

    Your Vanderbilt

    • Alumni
    • Current Students
    • Faculty & Staff
    • International Students
    • Media
    • Parents & Family
    • Prospective Students
    • Researchers
    • Sports Fans
    • Visitors & Neighbors

    Support the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries

    Support the Library...Give Now

    Gifts to the Libraries support the learning and research needs of the entire Vanderbilt community. Learn more about giving to the Libraries.

    Become a Friend of the Libraries

    Quick Links

    • Hours
    • About
    • Employment
    • Staff Directory
    • Accessibility Services
    • Contact
    • Vanderbilt Home
    • Privacy Policy