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book: Wayward Contracts
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Wayward Contracts

The Crisis of Political Obligation in England, 1640-1674
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Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2009

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Victoria Kahn is Professor of English and Bernie H. Williams Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Machiavellian Rhetoric (Princeton).

Reviews

"Winner of the 2006 Best Book Prize, Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies"

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    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    ix
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    Acknowledgments

    xi
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    Abbreviations

    xiii
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    CHAPTER 1. Introduction

    1
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  • PART ONE: An Anatomy of Contract, 1590–1640
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    CHAPTER 2. Language and the Bond of Conscience

    31
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    CHAPTER 3. The Passions and Voluntary Servitude

    57
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  • PART TWO: A Poetics of Contract, 1640–1674
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    CHAPTER 4. Imagination

    83
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    CHAPTER 5. Violence

    112
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    CHAPTER 6. Metalanguage

    134
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    CHAPTER 7. Gender

    171
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    CHAPTER 8. Embodiment

    196
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    CHAPTER 9. Sympathy

    223
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    CHAPTER 10. Critique

    252
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    CHAPTER 11. Conclusion

    279
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    Notes

    285
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    Index

    365
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
January 10, 2009
eBook ISBN:
9781400826421
Edition:
Course Book
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400826421
eBook ISBN: 9781400826421
Keywords for this book
Thomas Hobbes; Social contract; Conscience; Pity; Hugo Grotius; Self-interest; Obligation; Slavery; Narrative; Obedience (human behavior); Sovereignty; Treatise; Fiction; Precedent; State of nature; Casuistry; God; Consideration; Rhetoric; Natural and legal rights; Prerogative; Samson Agonistes; Divine law; Theory; Moral absolutism; Critique; Calculation; Metaphor; Morality; Political philosophy; Reason; Covenant theology; Contract theory; Antinomianism; Mimesis; Theology; Patriarchalism; Breach of contract; Politics; Literature; De jure belli ac pacis; Fallacy; Regicide; Deed; Allegory; Royal prerogative; Self-love; The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates; Parody; Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes); Common law; Natural law; Tax; De Cive; Early modern period; Protestantism; Prose; Thought; Positive law; Deliberation; De Officiis; Doctrine; Antinomy; Monarchy; Genre; Eikonoklastes; De facto; Sedition; Analogy; The Other Hand
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
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