Culture Matters: London Society & Underworlds before Jack the Ripper | EIU 4114G, T & Th 3:30—4:45, Coleman Hall 3609, Newton Key & Jad Smith |
The astonishing growth of London - virtually the largest city in Europe by 1700 - brought luxuries and benefits. London’s growth also brought vices and raised modern questions about morality, poverty, and order. How did Londoners identify and try to solve conspiracy, clubbing, gang, and crime problems then, and how might we use our expertise drawn from any major or discipline to use or revise their ideas about urban issues now? This humanities senior seminar introduces the intellectual, cultural, economic, and especially social development in this metropolis a century before Jack the Ripper and before a unified police force, with a particular emphasis on crime in the 1600s and 1700s. The course is inter- or cross-disciplinary both in the sources used - literary, legal, visual - and in the methods of analysis - literary, historical. (see also, requirements, papers, and exams) |
Available from Textbook Services:
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Unit I Mapping the Metropolis
How do we envision a city? How did pre-modern Londoners envision their city? How does the historian map London? How does literature map London? |
John Collet, May Morning (1760) |
week 1. Introducing London
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Wenceslaus Hollar, Royal Exchange (1644) |
week 2. Mapping London
| Claes Van Visscher, London panorama (1616, detail) |
week 3. Visualizing London
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Old Bailey Sessions House (c. 1680, print from 1750) |
Unit II The Drama of Urban Crime How does law enforcement differ between the early 18th and the early 21st centuries? What specific issues do crime and the “dark figure” (criminals for which we have no record) have for the student of an early modern metropolis such as London? What does literature tell us? What does art? |
William Hogarth, Morning (1738) |
week 4. Visualizing Crime
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William Hogarth, A Scene from The Beggar's Opera (1731) |
week 5. The Drama of the Court and the Gallows (OD)
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The Fortunate Transport (1741) |
week 6. Private Vices, Public Benefits?
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William Hogarth, from Hudibras (1725/26) |
week 7. Thieves and Thief-taking
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Jonathan Wild and angry Londoners on the way to his execution (1725)
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week 8. Drama in the Long-18th Century
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Daniel Defoe in the pillory |
Unit III – London Criminal and Poor Underworlds
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gallows ticket (1725) |
week 9. Being Poor in London
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Cries of London (18th cent. playing cards) |
week 10. Narrating the London Poor
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Charity girl and boy, Wall of St. John's School, Wapping (est. 1695) |
week 11. Londoners and Non-Londoners
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William Hogarth, Moll Hackabout arrives in London (1731/32) |
week 12. London Drinking, London Commensality, London Crime
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Ned Ward, The CoffeeHous Mob (1710) |
week 13. Gendered Spaces
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William Hogarth, The Fellow 'Prentices at their Looms (1747) |
Unit IV - Final Projects |
Manner of Execution at Tyburn (17th century) |
week 14. Past & Present; the Literary & the Historical
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week 15. Getting Out the Word
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London Bundlr (links) | |
requirements, papers, and exams | office hours |
back | last modified on March 24, 2015 |