This project uncovers the role of the emotions in driving social and legal-political change. To approach this large topic, the work focuses on how representations of the family in the eighteenth-century British press both displayed and promoted particular emotions in its readership, which then constructed ‘public opinion’ around particular litigation and legislative outcomes and encouraged the legislature and judiciary to act accordingly.
Achieving the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’ was for the philosopher Jeremy Bentham the goal of governance, and pain and pleasure were the measures through which governments should determine the utility of their legislation and the success of their actions. Similarly, the importance of emotion to social change has been implicit in many histories of the long eighteenth century, as scholars seek to find the ‘triggers’, as well as the causes, for riots, revolutions and moral panics, imagined as emotional events that need to be ‘sparked’. Yet, while emotion is often in the background of such histories, what it is doing is rarely analysed. Emotion is viewed as a mechanism that causes people to act, but which is often perceived as so ‘natural’, perhaps so universal, that it needs no explanation in itself. This project seeks to interrogate what emotions were doing during processes of social change, exploring what emotions were thought to be involved and the role they played in informing, inspiring and directing human motivation and action. It does so through a study of how representations of the family attached to high-profile court cases in the British press between 1660 and 1830 promoted and reflected particular emotions in its readership, helping to construct ‘public opinion’ around family life, morality and justice, and shaping legislative and policy outcomes. The project also considers the constitution of emotional communities around ideal and disordered families in printed sermons that commented discursively on domestic relations.
Publications
Barclay, K. ‘Emotions, the Law and the Press in Britain: Seduction and Breach of Promise Suits, 1780‒1830’. Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies 39.2 (2016): 267‒84.
Governing Emotions: the Affective Family, the Press and the Law in Early Modern Britain (Monograph forthcoming)
Barclay, K. ‘Natural Affection, Children and Family Inheritance Practices in the Long-Eighteenth-Century’. In Children and Youth in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland, edited by Elizabeth Ewan and Janey Nugent. Boydell and Brewer: 2014.
Barclay, K. Love Intimacy and Power: Marriage and Patriarchy in Scotland, 1650-1850. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014.
Barclay, K., and S. Richardson (eds). Performing the Self: Women's Lives in Historical Perspective. London: Routledge, 2014.
Barclay, K. ‘From Rape to Marriage: Questions of Consent in the Eighteenth-Century United Kingdom’. In Interpreting Sexual Violence: 1660-1800, edited by Anne Greenfield, pp. 35‒44. Pickering and Chatto, 2013.
Papers Delivered
Katie Barclay: ‘Oral Arguments: Speech-making, Sentimentality and Manliness in the Irish Court, c.1800‒1845’
David Lemmings: ‘Thomas Erskine and the Performance of Moral Sentiments: The Emotional Reportage of Trials for “criminal conversation” and Treason in the 1790s’
Katie Barclay, 2013, 25–26 Oct, ‘Law and Governance in Britain’, University of Western Ontario, London, ON. Paper: ‘Playing on Emotion: the Family, the Law and the Press in the Eighteenth Century’
Katie Barclay, 2013, 9‒10 Sep, ‘A History of Heritage: Emotions in Blood, Stone,
Land’, ARC Centre for the History of Emotions Collaboratory, Hobart, Tasmania. Paper: ‘“He is Only Heir who Succeeds by Right of Blood”: Thinking about Family in Early Modern Scotland’
Katie Barclay, 2013, 27‒29 Jun, ‘Sourcing Emotions in the Medieval and Early Modern World’, ARC Centre for Excellence in the History of Emotions Bi-annual Conference, University of Western Australia, Perth. Paper: ‘Greed, Gambling and Family Ties: Eighteenth-Century Inheritance Disputes’
Katie Barclay, 2012, 9–11 Nov, North American Conference on British Studies, Montreal, Quebec. Paper: ‘Of Greed, Loyalty and Blood: Emotions within Eighteenth-Century Inheritance Disputes’
Katie Barclay, 2012, 9–13 Jul, ‘Connections’, Australian Historical Association Conference, Adelaide. Paper: ‘Disgust and Desire, Shame and the Voyeur: the Crim Con Trial and the Eighteenth-Century Family’
Katie Barclay, 2012, 3–5 Apr, Social History Conference, Brighton, UK. Paper: ‘Representing the Emotional Family: the Eighteenth Century Press’
David Lemmings, 2013, 27‒29 Jun, ‘Sourcing Emotions in the Medieval and Early Modern World’, ARC Centre for Excellence in the History of Emotions Bi-annual Conference, University of Western Australia, Perth. Paper: ‘Compassion, Authenticity and the Offender: Emotional Representations of the Family in Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trials’
David Lemmings, 2012, 9–11 Nov, North American Conference on British Studies, Montreal, Quebec. Paper: ‘Compassion and the Offender: Emotional Representations of the Family in Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trials’
Claire Walker, ‘”Craving appetites, impetuous lusts and headstrong passions”: Emotion and Justice in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Assize Sermons’, paper presented in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions ‘Emotions in Socio-legal Contexts: Medieval to Early Modern’ Panel at the 9th Biennial ANZAMEMS conference, Monash University, Melbourne, 14 February 2013.
