Special Topic: Reconfiguring Authorship

Dying to be Read: Gallows Authorship in Late Seventeenth-Century England

Author
  • Margaret J.M. Ezell

Abstract

In her essay “Dying to be Read”, Margaret Ezell’s explores a media configuration of authorship that literally necessitates the “death of the author” as a condition sine qua non: the printed “dying words” of executed men and women in the Restoration period.  The essay examines this type of “gallows literature” of the 1670 and 1680s as a form of “performed narrative” that highlights “the complexity of seventeenth-century authorship practices”.

Keywords: Gallows authorship, broadsheets, early modern print culture, confession, crime, Margaret J.M. Ezell

How to Cite:

Ezell, M., (2014) “Dying to be Read: Gallows Authorship in Late Seventeenth-Century England”, Authorship 3(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/aj.v3i1.1068

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Published on
31 Mar 2014
Peer Reviewed
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