Law and literature

Kieran Dolin0521807433, 9780521807432, 9780511275036

Kieran Dolin introduces the interdisciplinary study of law and literature and 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 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.

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Table of contents :
Cover……Page 1
Half-title……Page 3
Title……Page 5
Copyright……Page 6
Contents……Page 7
Preface……Page 9
Introduction to law and literature: walking the boundary with Robert Frost and the Supreme Court……Page 11
PART I Eminent domains: the text of the law and the law of the text……Page 27
CHAPTER 1 Law’s language……Page 29
Rhetoric and law……Page 31
Law as literature……Page 35
Linguistic studies of law……Page 38
Narrative jurisprudence……Page 39
Concluding examples……Page 43
CHAPTER 2 Literature under the law……Page 51
Literature and the criminal law……Page 53
Defamation……Page 65
Copyright……Page 72
PART II Law and literature in history……Page 83
CHAPTER 3 Renaissance humanism and the new culture of contract……Page 85
The Inns of Court……Page 87
Equity in court and on stage……Page 92
Slade’s Case and the culture of contract……Page 94
CHAPTER 4 Crime and punishment in the eighteenth century……Page 106
Literature and crime in the 1720s……Page 108
Fielding and the 1740s……Page 113
Law and reason……Page 117
Samuel Johnson, LL.D…….Page 120
Romanticism and the new prison……Page 124
CHAPTER 5 The woman question in Victorian England……Page 130
Caroline Norton, victim and campaigner……Page 132
Literary women and law reform……Page 136
The Norton case in fiction……Page 140
Charles Dickens, reformist writer……Page 143
Conclusion: breaking the seal……Page 150
CHAPTER 6 The common law and the ache of modernism……Page 153
Modern law’s medievalist romance……Page 156
Oliver Wendell Holmes……Page 159
The literature of sympathy and the tort of negligence……Page 162
Modernist critiques of law……Page 170
CHAPTER 7 Rumpole in Africa: law and literature in post-colonial society……Page 176
Rumpole and Mortimer for the defence……Page 177
The golden thread of intertextuality……Page 181
Black faces, white wigs……Page 185
CHAPTER 8 Race and representation in contemporary America……Page 192
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka……Page 193
Writing civil rights……Page 195
Revolution and liberation……Page 201
Equal rights for a multicultural society……Page 204
Bakke-lash……Page 208
Towards a beloved community……Page 211
Conclusion……Page 217
Introduction……Page 223
1 Law’s Language……Page 224
2 Literature under the law……Page 227
3 Renaissance humanism and contract……Page 230
4 Crime and punishment in the eighteenth century……Page 233
5 The Woman question in Victorian England……Page 236
6 The common law and the ache of modernism……Page 237
7 Law and Literature in Post-colonial Society……Page 240
8 Race and representation in contemporary America……Page 241
Conclusion……Page 243
Bibliography……Page 245
Index……Page 270