Abstract
Françoise du Sorbier : English criminal biographies. In the 18th Century, criminals were the subject of a large number of writings aimed at a very wide readership. This study takes two typical examples, a real-life criminal, James Hind, and Moll Flanders, the heroine of Defoe's autobiographical fiction ; it follows the careers of these two characters, from press accounts to novel, via chap literature. We discover that the stories of criminals to be found in the chapbooks tend to be conformist, while the accounts aimed at a better-soff readership are more subversive. Nevertheless the relations existing between classical and popular literature and their influence on each other show that the traditional distinction made between ' popular 'and' classical ' is purely arbitrary.
Published Version
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