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The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868 de V. A. C. Gatrell

The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868

V. A. C. Gatrell
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 17 oct 1996

Scrisă de V. A. C. Gatrell, un istoric de marcă și lector la Universitatea Cambridge, The Hanging Tree reprezintă o lucrare fundamentală în istoria mentalităților, fundamentată pe o cercetare riguroasă a arhivelor britanice. Apreciem modul în care Gatrell reușește să depășească simpla analiză a politicilor penale pentru a investiga reacțiile umane profunde în fața eșafodului. Autorul nu se limitează la discursul oficial, ci recuperează vocile celor care au asistat la execuții, folosind documente inedite precum cereri de grațiere și jurnale personale.

Lucrarea extinde cadrul propus de Execution, State and Society in England, 1660-1900 de Simon Devereaux cu date noi din perioada 1770-1830, când „Bloody Penal Code” a atins apogeul activității sale. În timp ce alte studii se concentrează pe mecanismele statului, Gatrell analizează „sensibilitatea” și „simpatia” clasei politice și a intelectualilor precum Dickens sau Byron, punându-le în oglindă cu reacțiile mulțimilor care se adunau la Tyburn sau Newgate.

Considerăm că forța acestui volum rezidă în argumentul său central: abandonarea execuțiilor publice în 1868 nu a fost neapărat un triumf al umanismului, ci mai degrabă un rezultat al temerii elitelor față de comportamentul impredictibil al martorilor și al noilor metode de control social. Stilul narativ este precis și sobru, oferind o perspectivă panoramică asupra modului în care moartea ca spectacol a modelat societatea engleză modernă. Este o lectură densă, esențială pentru înțelegerea proceselor de „civilizare” a pedepsei în Europa.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780192853325
ISBN-10: 0192853325
Pagini: 656
Ilustrații: halftones
Dimensiuni: 155 x 234 x 34 mm
Greutate: 0.94 kg
Ediția:Revised
Editura: OUP OXFORD
Colecția OUP Oxford
Locul publicării:Oxford, United Kingdom

De ce să citești această carte

Recomandăm această carte oricărui pasionat de istorie socială sau criminologie care dorește să înțeleagă rădăcinile sistemului penal modern. Veți câștiga o perspectivă unică asupra modului în care frica, empatia și controlul social s-au intersectat în epoca victoriană. Este un studiu magistral care demonstrează că istoria nu este doar despre legi, ci despre emoțiile colective care le-au generat.

Despre autor

V. A. C. Gatrell este un distins istoric britanic, Fellow al Gonville and Caius College și lector în cadrul Facultății de Istorie de la Universitatea Cambridge. Expertiza sa în istoria socială și culturală a secolelor XVIII și XIX este recunoscută la nivel internațional, fiind specializat în studiul atitudinilor colective față de violență, justiție și moralitate. Opera sa se distinge prin utilizarea creativă a surselor primare și prin capacitatea de a aduce la lumină experiențele oamenilor obișnuiți în contextul marilor transformări instituționale ale Marii Britanii.

Descriere

Hanging people for small crimes as well as grave, the Bloody Penal Code was at its most active between 1770 and 1830. In those years some 7,000 men and women were executed on public scaffolds, watched by thousands. Hanging was confined to murderers thereafter, but these were still killed in public until 1868. Clearly the gallows loomed over much of social life in this period. But how did those who watched, read about, or ordered these strangulations feel about the terror and suffering inflicted in the law's name? What kind of justice was delivered, and how did it change? This book is the first to explore what a wide range of people felt about these ceremonies (rather than what a few famous men thought and wrote about them). A history of mentalities, emotions, and attitudes rather than of policies and ideas, it analyses responses to the scaffold at all social levels: among the crowds which gathered to watch executions; among 'polite' commentators from Boswell and Byron on to Fry, Thackeray, and Dickens; and among the judges, home secretary, and monarch who decided who should hang and who should be reprieved. Drawing on letters, diaries, ballads, broadsides, and images, as well as on poignant appeals for mercy which historians until now have barely explored, the book surveys changing attitudes to death and suffering, 'sensibility' and 'sympathy', and demonstrates that the long retreat from public hanging owed less to the growth of a humane sensibility than it did to the development of new methods of punishment and law enforcement, and to polite classes' deepening squeamishness and fear of the scaffold crowd. This gripping study is essential reading for anyone interested in the processes which have 'civilized' our social life. Challenging many conventional understandings of the period, V. A. C. Gatrell sets new agendas for all students of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century culture and society, while reflecting uncompromisingly on the origins and limits of our modern attitudes to other people's misfortunes. Panoramic in range, scholarly in method, and compelling in argument, this is one of those rare histories which both shift our sense of the past and speak powerfully to the present.

Recenzii

`a mammoth study, penetrating and poignant...a vast panorama, expertly interweaving history high and low, politics and passions, judges, jurors and journalists'New Statesman and Society
`brilliant account ... magnificent book ... beautifully produced, well-illustrated and relatively inexpensive'Guardian
`quite outstanding ...book'Observer
`magnificent new study ... a book of extraordinary quality ... the monumental scale of his achievement, and subtlety and richness of the argument.'Sunday Telegraph
'brilliant book'Richard Gott, The Guardian
'This is a powerful, committed and well-written book with a problematic theme ... much of his fascinating book was more redolent of the 1960s than of the Victorian era ... this is a continually interesting book, by the standards of modern scholarly publishing excellent value for money, and a study that ably bridges modern and historical concerns.'Jeremy Black, Financial Times
'Its strengths are originality of research and force of statement. Above all, no praise can be too high for the author and publisher in the choice, appositeness, captioning and reproduction of the illustrations. They are so closely interwoven with the argument that they form a brilliant summary of it.'Richard Ollard, The Independent
`a richly imaginative evocation of what public executions meant to onlookers - and to those struggling from the rope.'Independent on Sunday
`There is plenty to incite horror, but the cleverness of the book is the way it puts the English way of execution into a political context.'Jeremy Paxman, The Independent
`this massive study of public executions in England during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century ... Gatrell's sensitive and elaborate reconstructions of criminal cases, appeals to mercy, and executions are the strength of this important and provocative study.'Times Literary Supplement
`This is an unusual book, in that it approaches history from the viewpoint of emotion ... not a book for the squeamish. The descriptions of hangings, gibbeting, anatomising and the behaviour of the crowds and prisoners make almost unbearable reading ... this is a work of meticulous scholarship and extensive research which, in concentrating on emotion, brings the history of the period vividly to life.'The Friend
'An excellent secondary source; recommended for academic and larger public library history collections.'Nancy L Whitfield, Library Journal, October 1994
'magnificent though grim and haunting book ... Some may find it, as the telly news puts it, "disturbing" or even "distressing".'Colin Welch, The Times
'As is often the case, all that gets in the way of this cosy explanation is one or two facts, and the author of this book has done a magnificent job in bringing quite a few to our attention.'Jack Robertson, Socialist Review, February 1995
passionately argued book...Gatrell makes much use of a source hitherto scarcely touched by historians, namely the appeals of pardon from those sentenced to suffer the supreme penalty...There is clearly much more to be gleaned from this source...Gatrell has a string of similarly painful and shocking stories. This is a rich, powerful and stimulating volume which deserves an audience far beyond specialists in the topic and period.
impressive, distasteful, prize-winning study
Gatrell's prize-winning investigation into the phenomenon tries to focus on how the 'entertainment' affected the thousands who turned up to watch, but is never shy of elaborating in gruesome detail on the savagery of the deed.
massive in size, formidable in scholarship, yet compelling and highly readable
A. C. Gatrell takes us down a bone-chilling journey into an age seldom fully explored and not so long ago in our nation's history.
Gatrell's scholarship combines with his passion to produce an excellent study

Notă biografică

V. A. C. Gatrell is University Lecturer and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. He is editor of Robert Owen: A New View of Society (Pelican, 1971) and Crime and Law: The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500 (Europa, 1980), and a well-known author of numerous articles in social and economic history. He lives in Cambridge.