English Jacobin Novel on Rights, Property and the Law

NANCY E. JOHNSON is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at the State University of New York, New Paltz, where she teaches eighteenth-century English literature. In addition to working on the English Jacobin Novel and Law and Literature, she is editing a volume of Frances Burney's journals and letters (1790-91).

• Introduction Narrativizing a Critique of the Contract Debating Rights, Property and the Law Envisaging the New Citizen Acquiring Political Agency Bestowing the Mantle Bibliography Index

'Johnson's argument goes straight to the heart of novel studies: fiction privileged property as the basis of enfranchisement and so limited the democratizing process it envisioned. The genius of her book is to come at this paradox through the curious body of fiction written during the period following revolutions in North America and France for the expressed purpose of exposing the limits of the Lockean model of government. This strikingly fresh look at the Jacobin novel shows it embracing fiction as culture's most powerful political medium and challenging the premises of modern nation building. In focusing on these particular novels, she therefore deals with the very topics that preoccupy scholars who read and write about fiction in any epoch, namely, the gendered identity of citizenship, the restriction of political agency, and the difficulty of imagining a future of collective transformation.' - Nancy Armstrong, Nancy Duke Lewis Professor, Brown University, USA