| Naval impressment was unpopular and widespread in eighteenth-century Britain. On the one hand, most Britons recognized the need for a strong navy to defend their overseas possessions, protect trade and prevent foreign invasion. On the other, impressment involved coercing—sometimes even kidnapping—men to serve in the Royal Navy. As the British nation's military needs increased between the Restoration and Waterloo, so too did impressment, and what was once an occasional practice became a controversial presence in the lives of eighteenth-century Britons.; In this dissertation, I examine the ways impressment was represented in literature in order to illuminate the complex relationship between genre, class and the state. Because impressment was so visible and controversial, it inspired pamphleteers, novelists, playwrights, poets and even ordinary citizens to record their impressions of the practice. I divide these impressions into categories (novels, plays, autobiographical writings and ballads) and consider the ways genre choices affect, and were affected by, representations of impressment. I tie these generic distinctions to larger issues of individual rights and state necessity, and attempt to show how the particular controversy surrounding impressment actually illuminates much larger tensions in eighteenth-century British society.; Ultimately, I argue that representations of impressment offer insight not only into a particular government policy, but also that they lay bare some of the class distinctions that defined life in eighteenth-century Britain. Writers envisioning the press for their readers do more than simply perform exercises in mimesis—they often show how individuals negotiated their relationship with the repressive state apparatus, and even how the press, paradoxically, allowed some to transcend class and gender roles. |
