Literature and the Culture of Elections and Electioneering in Eighteenth-Century England
Literature and the Culture of Elections and Electioneering in Eighteenth-Century England
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十八世纪英国的文学与选举和竞选文化
DOI：
10.1093/res/hgaa049
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发表时间：
2021
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Packham K
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Packham K
17世纪和18世纪见证了竞争选举的兴起，成为政治生活的一个重要方面，以及有关代表和干预选举进程的文学文本的涌现。本文恢复了这一丰富、广泛和意识形态多样的体裁，并认为文学与其他形式的互动和重叠，既反映了选举文化，也帮助塑造了选举文化。流行的文学形式(从民谣歌剧到模拟英雄诗)被重新修改，以服务于热门的选举目的。这些文献对选举文化作出了贡献，提供了具体的、笼统的表述，并可能增加选举参与和党派之争的形式。与选举仪式和其他形式一样，文学文本鼓励选民和非选民参与选举。事实上，文学文本通过其正式的性质和传播方式，本可以显示出吸引不同受众的力量，并助长一种竞争选举的文化，即使在许多席位没有竞争、许多席位无法投票的情况下也是如此。选举杂志社突出了选举文学与地区印刷、政治和文学文化之间的联系，以及这种写作市场的增长。与此同时，选举文学的作者身份为不同的个人提供了一种政治表达和参与的形式。此外，文章考虑了候选人、选举和特定群体的选举活动的不同的、普遍反映的观点的意义--对于更广泛的政治文化以及具体的选举。它提出，从激动人心的民谣到生动的批判性讽刺文章，这些文本激发了敌对选举文化的关键分歧，并可能发挥不同的改革呼声。
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed the rise of contested elections as an important aspect of political life, and an outpouring of literary texts concerned to represent, and intervene in, the electoral process. This article recovers this rich, wide-ranging, and ideologically diverse genre, and argues that, interacting and overlapping with other forms, literature both reflected and helped to shape electoral culture. Popular literary varieties (from ballad opera to mock-heroic verse) were reworked to serve topical electoral purposes. This literature contributed to the culture of elections, making available particular, generically shaped representations and potentially increasing forms of electoral participation and partisanship. Like election rituals and other forms, literary texts encouraged engagement with elections among voters and non-voters. Indeed, through their formal qualities and modes of dissemination, literary texts could have pronounced power to engage varied audiences, and fuel a culture of contested elections, even when many seats were not contested and many could not vote. The election miscellany highlights links between election literature and regional printing, political, and literary cultures, and the growth of a market for this writing. At the same time, the authorship of election literature afforded diverse individuals a form of political expression and participation. Furthermore, the article considers the significance of the divergent, generically inflected views of candidates, elections, and the electoral activity of particular groups such literature advanced—for wider political culture, as well as specific elections. It proposes that texts from rousing ballads to vividly critical satires energized the divisions key to adversarial electoral culture, and could play into different calls for ‘reform’.