04412nam 2200781 a 450 991045512980332120200520144314.01-282-08733-997866120873321-4008-2642-X10.1515/9781400826421(CKB)1000000000773392(EBL)445502(OCoLC)521224278(SSID)ssj0000344367(PQKBManifestationID)11251017(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000344367(PQKBWorkID)10307583(PQKB)10605663(MiAaPQ)EBC445502(MdBmJHUP)muse36340(DE-B1597)446352(OCoLC)979631683(DE-B1597)9781400826421(Au-PeEL)EBL445502(CaPaEBR)ebr10284094(CaONFJC)MIL208733(EXLCZ)99100000000077339220040121d2004 uy 0engur|n|---|||||txtccrWayward contracts[electronic resource] the crisis of political obligation in England, 1640-1674 /Victoria KahnCourse BookPrinceton, N.J. Princeton University Pressc20041 online resource (383 p.)Description based upon print version of record.0-691-17124-6 0-691-11773-X Includes bibliographical references (p. [285]-364) and index. Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- CHAPTER 1. Introduction -- PART ONE: An Anatomy of Contract, 1590-1640 -- CHAPTER 2. Language and the Bond of Conscience -- CHAPTER 3. The Passions and Voluntary Servitude -- PART TWO: A Poetics of Contract, 1640-1674 -- CHAPTER 4. Imagination -- CHAPTER 5. Violence -- CHAPTER 6. Metalanguage -- CHAPTER 7. Gender -- CHAPTER 8. Embodiment -- CHAPTER 9. Sympathy -- CHAPTER 10. Critique -- CHAPTER 11. Conclusion -- Notes -- IndexWhy 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.English literatureEarly modern, 1500-1700History and criticismPolitics and literatureGreat BritainHistory17th centuryContractsGreat BritainHistory17th centuryPolitical obligationHistory17th centurySocial contractHistory17th centuryContracts in literatureGreat BritainPolitics and government1642-1660Great BritainPolitics and government1660-1688Electronic books.English literatureHistory and criticism.Politics and literatureHistoryContractsHistoryPolitical obligationHistorySocial contractHistoryContracts in literature.820.9/358/094109033Kahn Victoria Ann614780MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9910455129803321Wayward contracts2468336UNINA