A critical introduction to law and literature / Kieran Dolin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dolin, Kieran.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Law and literature.

Physical Description:

viii, 263 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Summary:

Despite their apparent separation, law and literature have been closely linked fields throughout history. Linguistic creativity is central to the law, with literary modes such as narrative and metaphor infiltrating legal texts. Equally, legal norms of good and bad conduct, of identity and human responsibility, are reflected or subverted in literature's engagement with questions of law and justice. Law seeks to regulate creative expression, while literary texts critique and sometimes openly resist the law. Kieran Dolin introduces this interdisciplinary field, focusing on the many-ways that law and literature have addressed and engaged with each other. He charts the history of the shifting relations between the two disciplines, from the open affiliation between literature and law in the sixteenth-century Inns of Court to the less visible links of contemporary culture. Each chapter is organised around close analysis of a famous trial or literary-legal encounter. The wide resonance of such trials illuminates the cultural centrality of law, and the social responsiveness of literature. This book provides an accessible guide to one of the most exciting areas of interdisciplinary scholarship today.

Contents:

Part I Eminent Domains: The Text of the Law and the Law of the Text 17

1 Law's language 19

2 Literature under the law 41

Part II Law and Literature in History 73

3 Renaissance humanism and the new culture of contract 75

4 Crime and punishment in the eighteenth century 96

5 The woman question in Victorian England 120

6 The common law and the ache of modernism 143

7 Rumpole in Africa: law and literature in post-colonial society 166

8 Race and representation in contemporary America 182.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780521807432

0521807433

OCLC:

76935896