RT Article
T1 The cultural rhetoric of capital punishment in Colonial America through the early Republic, 1641-1792
JF The Elgar companion to capital punishment and society
SP 32
OP 48
A1 Barton, John Cyril 1971-
LA English
YR 2024
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1936234378
AB Once a worldwide leader in the movement to abolish the death penalty, the United States now stands virtually alone among leading nations in its use of the ultimate punishment. Focusing on the Colonial period through the Revolutionary era, this chapter examines the early history of capital punishment in America in terms of law, culture, and literature. It gives particular attention to what the author calls the cultural rhetoric of capital punishment: that is, the prominent arguments, tropes, and narratives through which the death penalty has been legitimated and supported, challenged, and contested, during this formative-and transformative-period in the institution’s development. The essay emphasizes the peculiarities of capital punishment as practiced in America and concludes with a brief discussion of death-penalty abolitionism in post-Revolutionary period through the antebellum era.
NO Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 47-48
SN 9781803929149
K1 Capital Punishment
K1 death penalty
K1 Early US history
K1 Gallows literature
K1 Execution sermons
K1 Race
K1 Puritanism
K1 Enlightenment
K1 Cultural Studies
K1 Legal studies
DO 10.4337/9781803929156.00009