"Law Enough to Set You Free": Contract, Community, and Consent in the Comedies of George Farquhar

IF 0.1 3区文学 0 LITERATURE

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LIFE Pub Date : 2022-04-01 DOI:10.1215/00982601-9664397

A. Feldman

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Abstract

Abstract:From his first play, Love and a Bottle (1698), to the masterpiece that crowned his career, The Beaux' Stratagem (1707), George Farquhar's oeuvre is traversed by legal motifs and legal scenarios, from satirical attacks upon the judiciary, to serious engagements with the law of contract, in contexts as varied as military impressment and spousal neglect. The period that followed the accession of William and Mary, in 1688, and the Bill of Rights to which they assented in 1689, is commonly regarded as being governed by contractual relationships between rational individuals, entering into reciprocal obligations, pursuing their interests, while recognizing their natural rights. But Farquhar's comedies exhibit a conspicuous distrust of the legal profession, and of contract as a means of ensuring ethical solutions either to domestic or political conflicts. Farquhar's engagements with the law, in general, and the law of contracts, in particular, reorient drama away from the rights of the liberal subject, autonomously imagined, toward renewed conceptions of the social good, and the ethics of the community, replacing regulatory frameworks with emancipatory dispensations, in the benevolent comic spirit that characterizes his works.

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“足以让你自由的法律”:乔治·法夸尔喜剧中的契约、共同体和同意

摘要:从他的第一部戏剧《爱与一瓶》(1698)到他职业生涯的巅峰之作《情人的谋略》(1707)，乔治·法夸尔的全部作品都贯穿着法律主题和法律场景，从对司法系统的讽刺攻击，到对合同法的严肃对待，背景从军事印象到配偶忽视等多种多样。威廉和玛丽于1688年即位，并于1689年签署了《权利法案》，这段时期通常被认为是由理性个人之间的契约关系所支配的，他们承担相互的义务，追求自己的利益，同时承认他们的自然权利。但法夸尔的喜剧表现出对法律职业的明显不信任，以及对合同作为确保国内或政治冲突的道德解决手段的不信任。法夸尔与法律的接触，一般来说，尤其是合同法，重新定位戏剧，使其远离自由主体的权利，自主想象，走向社会公益的新概念，以及社区伦理，用解放的豁免取代监管框架，以仁慈的喜剧精神为特征，他的作品。

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来源期刊

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LIFE LITERATURE-

CiteScore

0.20

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Committed to interdisciplinary exchange, Eighteenth-Century Life addresses all aspects of European and world culture during the long eighteenth century, 1660–1815. The most wide-ranging journal of eighteenth-century studies, it also encourages diverse methodologies—from close reading to cultural studies—and it always welcomes suggestions for review essays, special issues, and innovative approaches. Among Eighteenth-Century Life’s noteworthy regular features are its film forums, its review essays, its book-length special issues, and the longest and most eclectic lists of books received of any journal in the field.