ABSTRACT

Romantic culture was fascinated with criminality, its occurrences, its deterrents, its consequences, and the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed a period of transition and change in the culture's attitudes about and responses to crime. As the political, industrial, and socio-religious revolutions of the period destabilized aristocratic power, generated population growth and urban migration, and fostered economic and spiritual meliorations, criminal activity soared. Conversely, Romantic drama made spectacles of crime and its consequences. Joanna Baillie directly connects her theater theory with public executions in the 'Introductory Discourse' to the 1798 Plays on the Passions when she points to both as pedagogical devices that feature 'parts of a criminal's behavior'. The psychology and pathology of criminality became the focus of journalism and literature during the Romantic period. Bentham's treatises, The State of Prisons and Panopticon: On the Inspection House, include studies on the problem of criminal behavior.