Journal Article

Legal and Illegal Moneymaking: Colonial American Counterfeiters and the Novelization of Eighteenth-Century Crime Literature

BAROSKY, TODD

2012

Overview

According to Daniel E. Williams, Daniel A. Cohen, and others who have studied the subject, as crime literature divorced itself from its original theological context around the turn of the eighteenth century, it began to feature criminals who were no longer conceived as archetypal sinners engaged in allegorized spiritual struggles with their souls wavering between damnation and salvation, but rather as distinct personalities defined by unique psychologies, shaped by historical circumstances, and embroiled in conflicts that hinged on deference to or defiance of various forms of worldly authority. For the most part, this generic shiftfrom an allegorical to a novelistic treatment of criminal behavior has been attributed to broader cultural transformations occurring at the time: the decline of clerical influence over the printing press; the rise of the modern newspaper after the expiration of the Licensing Act in 1695; the growth and diversification of the colonial readership; and most importantly, the secularizing influence of Enlightenment ideas, especially those that challenged the concept of natural depravity and instead located the origins of criminal behavior in psychological motivations and social conditions.\\n Does this mean we ought not consider his account an autobiography?

• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press,The University of North Carolina Press
• Subject: 18th century / Analysis / Autobiographies / Beliefs, opinions and attitudes / Coinage / Colonial literature / Counterfeiters / Counterfeiting / Counterfeiting (Money) / Crime / Crime novels / Criminals / Cultural factors / Currency / Franklin, Benjamin (American statesman) / Media coverage / Money / Narratives / Paper money / Printers / Silver / Social aspects / Statesmen / Williams, Daniel / Works