We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Biting the Biter: Sex, Scatology, and Satirical Inversion in Augustan Highwayman "Lives".
- Authors
McKenzie, Andrea
- Abstract
In this essay, AndreaMcKenzie argues that the scatological and bawdy humor for which early eighteenth-century highwayman lives were so notorious functioned as a particularly pungent form of social and political commen- tary. The invocation of both blackguard protagonists and authors reinforced the element of social shaming and inversion, while the common trope of the "biting the biter" (implying that it is no crime to con, outwit, or despoil those who prey on others) was readily adaptable to a Tory or "Country" satirical program. She also aims to shed new light on an old and vexed question: to what degree were representations of social inversion normative or subversive?
- Subjects
BRIGANDS &; robbers in literature; SCATOLOGY; SATIRE; SOCIAL commentary; TORY Party (Great Britain); 18TH century English literature
- Publication
Huntington Library Quarterly, 2013, Vol 76, Issue 2, p235
- ISSN
0018-7895
- Publication type
Essay
- DOI
10.1525/hlq.2013.76.2.235