Symbolic interactions : social problems and literary interventions in the works of Baillie, Scott, and Landor
"Taking literally Joanna Baillie's claim that drama can promote social justice, Symbolic Interactions explores how plays by Baillie, novels by Walter Scott, and Imaginary Conversations by Walter Savage Landor address problems of capital punishment, poverty, and political participation. Baillie's and Scott's preoccupation with affective responses to criminals and beggars takes on new significance when situated next to nationalist efforts to use legal differences to promulgate an image of Scotland as a more compassionate society than England and when contrasted with Landor's confidence in political claims-making to meet social needs." "Regina Hewitt enlists analogies between the "symbolic interactions" prompted by the selected writers and the concepts of "symbolic interaction" still evolving from the sociology of Jane Addams, George Herbert Mead, and others. These practitioners recover a belief in the social efficacy of literature that was accepted during the predisciplinary Romantic Era but contested throughout much of the twentieth century. Hewitt's revisionist readings advocate the renewal of literary interventionism in our post-disciplinary age, and demonstrate the active involvement of Baillie, Scott and Landor in contemporary social and legal reform."--Jacket
Criticism, interpretation, etc
280 pages ; 24 cm.
9780838756393, 0838756395
61362110
Introduction : conceptualizing symbolic interaction
The problem of criminal justice
Baillie's interventions
The problem of poverty
Impoverished social relations
Landor and the solution of political contention
Baillie, Scott and the problem of political contention
The problem of disciplinarity