Wayward Contracts : The Crisis of Political Obligation in England, 1640-1674.

By: Kahn, VictoriaMaterial type: TextTextPublisher: Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2004Copyright date: ©2004Description: 1 online resource (330 pages)Content type: text Media type: computer Carrier type: online resourceISBN: 9781400826421Subject(s): Contracts -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century | Contracts in literature | English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism | Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1642-1660 | Political obligation -- History -- 17th century | Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century | Social contract -- History -- 17th centuryGenre/Form: Electronic books.Additional physical formats: Print version:: Wayward Contracts : The Crisis of Political Obligation in England, 1640-1674DDC classification: 820.93580941 LOC classification: PR438.P65K34 2004Online resources: Click to View
Contents:
Intro -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- CHAPTER 1 FROM VIRTUE TO CONTRACT -- PART I An Anatomy of Contract, 1590ߞ1640 -- CHAPTER 2 NATURAL RIGHTS THEORY: THE SOCIAL CONTRACT AND THE -- CHAPTER 3 THE SLAVE CONTRACT -- PART II A Poetics of Contract, 1640ߞ1674 -- CHAPTER 4 FIVE KNIGHTS: FROM PROMISE TO CONTRACT -- CHAPTER 5 PROPHESYING REVOLUTION -- CHAPTER 6 THE PROBLEM OF ESSEX -- CHAPTER 7 POLITICAL CONTRACT AND THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT -- CHAPTER 8 RESISTLESS LOVE AND HATE -- CHAPTER 9 WISE COMPLIANCE -- CHAPTER 10 REASON OF STATE -- CHAPTER 11 Conclusion.
Summary: Why did the language of contract become the dominant metaphor for the relationship between subject and sovereign in mid-seventeenth-century England? In Wayward Contracts, Victoria Kahn takes issue with the usual explanation for the emergence of contract theory in terms of the origins of liberalism, with its notions of autonomy, liberty, and equality before the law. Drawing on literature as well as political theory, state trials as well as religious debates, Kahn argues that the sudden prominence of contract theory was part of the linguistic turn of early modern culture, when government was imagined in terms of the poetic power to bring new artifacts into existence. But this new power also brought in its wake a tremendous anxiety about the contingency of obligation and the instability of the passions that induce individuals to consent to a sovereign power. In this wide-ranging analysis of the cultural significance of contract theory, the lover and the slave, the tyrant and the regicide, the fool and the liar emerge as some of the central, if wayward, protagonists of the new theory of political obligation. The result is must reading for students and scholars of early modern literature and early modern political theory, as well as historians of political thought and of liberalism.
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Intro -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- CHAPTER 1 FROM VIRTUE TO CONTRACT -- PART I An Anatomy of Contract, 1590ߞ1640 -- CHAPTER 2 NATURAL RIGHTS THEORY: THE SOCIAL CONTRACT AND THE -- CHAPTER 3 THE SLAVE CONTRACT -- PART II A Poetics of Contract, 1640ߞ1674 -- CHAPTER 4 FIVE KNIGHTS: FROM PROMISE TO CONTRACT -- CHAPTER 5 PROPHESYING REVOLUTION -- CHAPTER 6 THE PROBLEM OF ESSEX -- CHAPTER 7 POLITICAL CONTRACT AND THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT -- CHAPTER 8 RESISTLESS LOVE AND HATE -- CHAPTER 9 WISE COMPLIANCE -- CHAPTER 10 REASON OF STATE -- CHAPTER 11 Conclusion.

Why did the language of contract become the dominant metaphor for the relationship between subject and sovereign in mid-seventeenth-century England? In Wayward Contracts, Victoria Kahn takes issue with the usual explanation for the emergence of contract theory in terms of the origins of liberalism, with its notions of autonomy, liberty, and equality before the law. Drawing on literature as well as political theory, state trials as well as religious debates, Kahn argues that the sudden prominence of contract theory was part of the linguistic turn of early modern culture, when government was imagined in terms of the poetic power to bring new artifacts into existence. But this new power also brought in its wake a tremendous anxiety about the contingency of obligation and the instability of the passions that induce individuals to consent to a sovereign power. In this wide-ranging analysis of the cultural significance of contract theory, the lover and the slave, the tyrant and the regicide, the fool and the liar emerge as some of the central, if wayward, protagonists of the new theory of political obligation. The result is must reading for students and scholars of early modern literature and early modern political theory, as well as historians of political thought and of liberalism.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.

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