Theaters of Pardoning

Theaters of Pardoning
Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Total Pages : 411
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781501739408
ISBN-13 : 1501739409
Rating : 4/5 (409 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Theaters of Pardoning by : Bernadette Meyler

Download or read book Theaters of Pardoning written by Bernadette Meyler and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-15 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Gerald Ford's preemptive pardon of Richard Nixon and Donald Trump's claims that as president he could pardon himself to the posthumous royal pardon of Alan Turing, the power of the pardon has a powerful hold on the political and cultural imagination. In Theaters of Pardoning, Bernadette Meyler traces the roots of contemporary understandings of pardoning to tragicomic "theaters of pardoning" in the drama and politics of seventeenth-century England. Shifts in how pardoning was represented on the stage and discussed in political tracts and in Parliament reflected the transition from a more monarchical and judgment-focused form of the concept to an increasingly parliamentary and legislative vision of sovereignty. Meyler shows that on the English stage, individual pardons of revenge subtly transformed into more sweeping pardons of revolution, from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, where a series of final pardons interrupts what might otherwise have been a cycle of revenge, to later works like John Ford's The Laws of Candy and Philip Massinger's The Bondman, in which the exercise of mercy prevents the overturn of the state itself. In the political arena, the pardon as a right of kingship evolved into a legal concept, culminating in the idea of a general amnesty, the "Act of Oblivion," for actions taken during the English Civil War. Reconceiving pardoning as law-giving effectively displaced sovereignty from king to legislature, a shift that continues to attract suspicion about the exercise of pardoning. Only by breaking the connection between pardoning and sovereignty that was cemented in seventeenth-century England, Meyler concludes, can we reinvigorate the pardon as a democratic practice.

Theaters of Pardoning Related Books

Theaters of Pardoning
Language: en
Pages: 411
Authors: Bernadette Meyler
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-09-15 - Publisher: Cornell University Press

GET EBOOK

From Gerald Ford's preemptive pardon of Richard Nixon and Donald Trump's claims that as president he could pardon himself to the posthumous royal pardon of Alan
Embodied Cognition and Cinema
Language: en
Pages: 383
Authors: Peter Kravanja
Categories: Performing Arts
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-07-31 - Publisher: Leuven University Press

GET EBOOK

The impact of the embodied cognition thesis on the scientific study of film The embodied cognition thesis claims that cognitive functions cannot be understood w
Dionysus Reborn
Language: en
Pages: 337
Authors: Mihai Spariosu
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-06-30 - Publisher: Cornell University Press

GET EBOOK

Mihai Spariosu here explores the significance of the closely linked concepts of play and aestheticism in philosophical and scientific discourse since the end of
The Battle of the Books
Language: en
Pages: 452
Authors: Joseph M. Levine
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 1991 - Publisher: Cornell University Press

GET EBOOK

1. Wotton vs. Temple -- 2. Bentley vs. Christ Church -- 3. Stroke and Counterstroke -- 4. The Querelle -- 5. Ancient Greece and Modern Scholarship -- 6. Pope's
The Presidential Pardon Power
Language: en
Pages: 216
Authors: Jeffrey Crouch
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2009-05-26 - Publisher: University Press of Kansas

GET EBOOK

Until President Gerald Ford pardoned former president Richard Nixon for the Watergate scandal, most members of the public probably paid little attention to the