Published by De Gruyter

Law & Literature

Edited by: Klaus Stierstorfer and Daniela Carpi

ISSN: 2191-8457

e-ISSN 2191-8465

Overview
Volumes

The interdisciplinary series “Law & Literature” takes a systematic look at the correlation between literature and the law. The studies presented in this series analyze the complex interrelation between two cultural spheres which are not only at the basis of Western Culture and Society, but share in a common focus on texts. Bringing together contributions by jurists, historians of law, legal philosophers, and specialists in literary and cultural studies, this series reflects a trend in current inter- and transdisciplinary research which has recently shown rapid growth both in Europe and the United States.

Author / Editor information

Klaus Stierstorfer, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany; Daniela Carpi, University of Verona, Italy.

Supplementary Materials

Stylesheet_Law-and-Literature

Topics

Book 2022

Law and Culture in the Age of Technology

Daniela Carpi

Volume 22 in this series

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Scientific experiments and medical improvements in recent years have augmented our bodies, made them manipulable; our personal data have been downloaded, stored, sold, analyzed; and the pandemic has given new meaning to the idea of ‘virtual presence’. Such phenomena are often thought to belong to the era of the ‘posthuman’, an era that both promises and threatens to redefine the notion of the human: what does it mean to be human? Can technological advances impact the way we define ourselves as a species? What will the future of humankind look like? These questions have gained urgency in recent years, and continue to preoccupy cultural and legal practitioners alike. How can the law respond and adapt to a world shaped by technology and AI? How can it ensure that technological developments remain inclusive, while simultaneously enforcing ethical limits to its reach?

The volume explores how fictional texts, whether on the page or on screen, negotiate the legal dilemmas posed by the increasing infiltration of technology into modern life.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110788051
ISBN:: 9783110788051
ISBN:: 9783110788204
ISBN:: 9783110786859
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Topics in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Other Topics
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

The Origins of the Law in Homer

Shulamit Almog

Volume 21 in this series

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The book aims to introduce the Homeric oeuvre into the law and literature canon. It argues for a reading of Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey as primordial narratives on the significance of the rule of law. The book delineates moments of correspondence between the transition from myth to tragedy and the gradual transition from a social existence lacking formal law to an institutionalized legal system as practiced in the polis. It suggests the Homeric epics are a significant milestone in the way justice and injustice were conceptualized, and testify to a growing awareness in Homer’s time that mechanisms that protect both individuals and the collective from acts of unbridled rage are necessary for the continued existence of communities. The book fills a considerable gap in research on ancient Greek drama as well as in discourses about the intersections of law and literature and by doing so, offers new insights into two of the foundational texts of Western culture.Jetzt als Broschur

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110766110
ISBN:: 9783110766110
ISBN:: 9783111357959
ISBN:: 9783110766172
ISBN:: 9783110765939
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Islands in Geography, Law, and Literature

A Cross-Disciplinary Journey

Chiara Battisti, Sidia Fiorato, Matteo Nicolini, Thomas Perrin

Volume 20 in this series

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This collection explores the heterogeneous places we have traditionally been taught to term ‘islands.’ It stages a conversation on the very idea of ‘island-ness’, thus contributing to a new field of research at the crossroads of law, geography, literature, urban planning, politics, arts, and cultural studies.

The contributions to this volume discuss the notion of island-ness as a device triggering the imagination, triggering narratives and representations in different creative fields; they explore the interactions between legal, socio-political, and fictional approaches to remoteness and the ‘state of insularity,’ policy responses to both remoteness and boundaries on different scales, and the insular legal framing of geographical remoteness.

The product of a cross-disciplinary exchange on islands, this edited volume will be of great interest to those working in the fields of Island Studies, as well as literary studies scholars, geographers, and legal scholars.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770162
ISBN:: 9783110770162
ISBN:: 9783110770339
ISBN:: 9783110769692
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Individual Motifs, Motif Research
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Citizenship, Law and Literature

Caroline Koegler, Jesper Reddig, Klaus Stierstorfer

Volume 19 in this series

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This edited volume is the first to focus on how concepts of citizenship diversify and stimulate the long-standing field of law and literature, and vice versa. Building on existing research in law and literature as well as literature and citizenship studies, the collection approaches the triangular relationship between citizenship, law and literature from a variety of disciplinary, conceptual and political perspectives, with particular emphasis on the performative aspect inherent in any type of social expression and cultural artefact. The sixteen chapters in this volume present literature as carrying multifarious, at times opposing energies and impulses in relation to citizenship. These range from providing discursive arenas for consolidating, challenging and re-negotiating citizenship to directly interfering with or inspiring processes of law-making and governance. The volume opens up new possibilities for the scholarly understanding of citizenship along two axes: Citizenship-as-Literature: Enacting Citizenship and Citizenship-in-Literature: Conceptualising Citizenship.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110749830
ISBN:: 9783110749830
ISBN:: 9783110749632
ISBN:: 9783110749915
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

The Lawyer in Dickens

Franziska Quabeck

Volume 18 in this series

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The Lawyer in Dickens takes a closer look at the construction of his types of lawyers. While Dickens’s critique of the legal system and its representatives is almost proverbial, a closer look at his lawyers uncovers a complex and ambiguous construction that questions their status as Victorian gentlemen. These characters offer a complex psychology that often surpasses their minor or stereotypical role within various Dickens novels, for they act not only as alter egos for different protagonists, but also exhibit behaviour that reveals their abusive attitude towards women.
This book argues that Uriah Heep lays the groundwork for Dickens’s conception of the lawyer in his later works. The close analysis identifies a strong anxiety about the uncertain social status of professionals in the law, but also unfolds a deeply troubled attitude towards women. The novels express admiration for the lawyer’s professional power, yet the individual characters are simultaneously exposed as ungentlemanly. This discussion shows that the lawyer in Dickens is a difficult creature not only because of his professional ambition and social transgression, but also because of his intrusion into the domestic space and into the lives of others, especially women.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110754506
ISBN:: 9783110754506
ISBN:: 9783110754599
ISBN:: 9783110752700
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: 19th Century
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Law and the Humanities: Cultural Perspectives

Chiara Battisti, Sidia Fiorato

Volume 17 in this series

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This volume investigates interdisciplinary intersections between law and the humanities from the Renaissance to the present day. It allows for fruitful encounters between different disciplines: from literature to science, from the visual arts to the post-human, from the postmodern novel’s experimentation to most recent approaches towards the legal interpretation of literary texts. This productive dialogue fosters original perspectives in the interpretation of and reﬂection upon identity, justice, power and human rights and values, thus underlining the role of literature in the articulation of relevant cultural issues pertaining to speciﬁc periods.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670226
ISBN:: 9783110670226
ISBN:: 9783110670264
ISBN:: 9783110669633
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Monsters and Monstrosity

From the Canon to the Anti-Canon: Literary and Juridical Subversions

Daniela Carpi

Volume 16 in this series

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Every culture knows the phenomenon of monsters, terrifying creatures that represent complete alterity and challenge every basic notion of self and identity within a cultural paradigm. In Latin and Greek culture, the monster was created as a marvel, appearing as something which, like transgression itself, did not belong to the assumed natural order of things. Therefore, it could only be created by a divinity responsible for its creation, composition, goals and stability, but it was triggered by some in- or non-human action performed by humans. The identification of something as monstrous denotes its place outside and beyond social norms and values. The monster-evoking transgression is most often indistinguishable from reactions to the experience of otherness, merging the limits of humanity with the limits of a given culture. The topic entails a large intersection among the cultural domains of law, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and technology. Monstrosity has indeed become a necessary condition of our existence in the 21st century: it serves as a representation of change itself. In the process of analysis there are three theoretical approaches: psychoanalytical, representational, ontological. The volume therefore aims at examining the concept of monstrosity from three main perspectives: technophobic, xenophobic, superdiversity. Today’s globalized world is shaped in the unprecedented phenomenon of international migration. The resistance to this phenomenon causes the demonization of the Other, seen as the antagonist and the monster. The monster becomes therefore the ethnic Other, the alien. To reach this new perspective on monstrosity we must start by examining the many facets of monstrosity, also diachronically: from the philological origin of the term to the Roman and classical viewpoint, from the Renaissance medical perspective to the religious background, from the new filmic exploitations in the 20th and 21st centuries to the very recent ethnological and anthropological points of view, to the latest technological perspective , dealing with artificial intelligence.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110654615
ISBN:: 9783110654615
ISBN:: 9783110652192
ISBN:: 9783110653588
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Individual Motifs, Motif Research
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2018

As You Law It - Negotiating Shakespeare

Daniela Carpi, François Ost, Knowledge Unlatched

Volume 15 in this series

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Shakespeare was fascinated by law, which permeated Elizabethan everyday life. The general impression one derives from the analysis of many plays by Shakespeare is that of a legal situation in transformation and of a dynamically changing relation between law and society, law and the jurisdiction of Renaissance times. Shakespeare provides the kind of literary supplement that can better illustrate the legal texts of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. There was a strong popular participation in the system of justice, and late sixteenth-century playwrights often made use of forensic models of narrative. Uncertainty about legal issues represented a rich potential for causing strong reactions in the public, especially feelings concerning the resistance to tyranny. The volume aims at highlighting some of the many legal perspectives and debates emplotted in Shakespearean plays, also taking into consideration the many texts that have been produced during the latest years on law and literature in the Renaissance.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110591514
ISBN:: 9783110591514
ISBN:: 9783110590821
ISBN:: 9783110590890
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: 16th-17th Century
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Spacing (in) Diaspora

Law, Literature and the Roma

Emma Patchett

Volume 14 in this series

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This work attempts to counteract the essentialism of originary thinking in the contemporary era by providing a new reading of a relatively understudied corpus of literature from a ambivalently stereotyped diasporic group, in order to rethink and problematise the concept of diaspora as a spatial concept. As work situated in the Law-in-Literature movement, beyond the disciplinary boundaries of scholarship, this book aims to construct a ‘literary jurisprudence’ of diaspora space, deconstructing space in order to question what it means to be ‘settled’ in literary refractions of the lawscape by drawing on refractions of case law in a corpus of texts by Romani authors. These texts are used as hermeutic framings to draw unique spatio-temporal landscapes through which the reader can explore the refractive, reflective, interpretative conditions of legality as a crucible in which to theorise law.The radical intent of this work, therefore, is to deconstruct jurisprudential spatial order in order to theorize diaspora space, in the context of the Roma Diaspora. This work will offer readers new possibilities to re-imagine diaspora through law and literature and provides an innovative critical interdisciplinary analysis of the shaping of space.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110544251
ISBN:: 9783110544251
ISBN:: 9783110543636
ISBN:: 9783110543698
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Exile Literature
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

Fables of the Law

Fairy Tales in a Legal Context

Daniela Carpi, Marett Leiboff

Volume 13 in this series

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The latest development concerning the metaphorical use of the fairy tale is the legal perspective. The law had and has recourse to fairy tales in order to speak of the nomos and its subversion, of the politically correct and of the various means that have been used to enforce the law. Fairy tales are a fundamental tool to examine legal procedures and structures in their many failings and errors. Therefore, we have privileged the term "fables" of the law just to stress the ethical perspective: they are moral parables that often speak of justice miscarried and justice sought.
Law and jurists are creators of "fables" on the view that law is born out of the facts (ex facto ius oritur) so that there is a need for narrative coherence both on the level of the case and the level of legislation (or turned the other way around: what does it mean if no such coherence is found?). This is especially of interest given the influx of all kinds of new technologies that are "fabulous" in themselves and hard to incorporate in traditional doctrinal schemes and thus in the construction of a new reality.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110496680
ISBN:: 9783110496680
ISBN:: 9783110493504
ISBN:: 9783110494723
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Mythology and Folk Literature
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2017

Diaspora, Law and Literature

Klaus Stierstorfer, Daniela Carpi

Volume 12 in this series

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The well-known challenges of international migration have triggered new departures in academic approaches, with 'diaspora studies' evolving as an interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary field of study. Its emerging methodology shares concerns with another interdisciplinary field, the study of the relations between law and literature, which focuses on the ways in which the two cultural practices of law and literature mutually negotiate each other and on the question after the ontological commensurability of the domains. This volume offers, for the first time, an attempt to provide an interface between these overlapping interdisciplinary endeavours of literary studies, legal studies, and diaspora studies. In doing so, it explores new approaches and invites new perspectives on diasporas, migration and the disciplines that study them, hopefull also adding to the cultural resources of coping with a swiftly changing social landscape in a globalizing world.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110489255
ISBN:: 9783110489255
ISBN:: 9783110485417
ISBN:: 9783110488210
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

Performing the Renaissance Body

Essays on Drama, Law, and Representation

Sidia Fiorato, John Drakakis

Volume 11 in this series

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In the Renaissance period the body emerges as the repository of social and cultural forces and a privileged metaphor for political practices and legal codification. Due to its ambivalent expressive force, it represents the seat and the means for the performance of normative identity and at the same time of alterity. The essays of the collection address the manifold articulations of this topic, demonstrating how the inscription of the body within the discursive spheres of gender identity, sexuality, law, and politics align its materiality with discourses whose effects are themselves material. The aesthetic and performative dimension of law inform the debates on the juridical constitution of authority, as well as its reflection on the formation and the moulding of individual subjectivity. Moreover, the inherently theatrical elements of the law find an analogy in the popular theatre, where juridical practices are represented, challenged, occasionally subverted or created. The works analyzed in the volume, in their ample spectre of topics and contexts aim at demonstrating how in the Renaissance period the body was the privileged focus of the social, legal and cultural imagination.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110464818
ISBN:: 9783110464818
ISBN:: 9783110464481
ISBN:: 9783110462593
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2015

Law and Ethics in Greek and Roman Declamation

Eugenio Amato, Francesco Citti, Bart Huelsenbeck

Volume 10 in this series

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Ancient declamation—the practice of delivering speeches on the basis of fictitious scenarios—defies easy categorization. It stands at the crossroads of several modern disciplines. It is only within the past few decades that the full complexity of declamation, and the promise inherent in its study, have come to be recognized. This volume, which contains thirteen essays from an international team of scholars, engages with the multidisciplinary nature of declamation, focusing in particular on the various interactions in declamation between rhetoric, literature, law, and ethics.

Contributions pursue a range of topics, but also complement each other. Separate essays by Brescia, Lentano, and Lupi explore social roles—their tensions and expectations—as defined through declamation. With similar emphasis on historical circumstances, Quiroga Puertas and Tomassi consider the adaptation of rhetorical material to frame contemporary realities. Schwartz draws attention to the sometimes hazy borderline between declamation and the courtroom. The relationship between laws and declamation, a topic of abiding importance, is examined in studies by Berti, Breij, and Johansson. Also with an eye to the complex interaction between laws and declamation, Pasetti offers a narratological analysis of cases of poisoning. Citti discovers the concept of natural law represented in declamatory material. While looking at a case of extreme cruelty, Huelsenbeck evaluates the nature of declamatory language, emphasizing its use as an integral instrument of performance events. Zinsmaier looks at discourse on the topic of torture in rhetorical and legal contexts.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110401882
ISBN:: 978-3-11-040178-3
ISBN:: 978-3-11-040188-2
ISBN:: 9783110402087
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Law
Subject:: History, Philosophy and Sociology of Law
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Poetics
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2015

Literature and Human Rights

The Law, the Language and the Limitations of Human Rights Discourse

Ian Ward

Volume 9 in this series

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The idea of human rights is not new. But the importance of taking rights seriously has never been more urgent. The eighteen essays which comprise Literature and Human Rights are written as a contribution to this vital debate. Each moreover is written in the spirit of interdisciplinarity, reaching across the myriad constitutive disciplines of law, literature and the humanities in order to present an array of alternative perspectives on the nature and meaning of human rights in the modern world. The taking of human rights seriously, it will be suggested, depends just as much on taking seriously the idea of the human as it does the idea of rights.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110368550
ISBN:: 978-3-11-037410-0
ISBN:: 978-3-11-036855-0
ISBN:: 9783110553024
ISBN:: 9783110392630
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Comparative Literary Studies
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2014

Criminals as Animals from Shakespeare to Lombroso

Greta Olson

Volume 8 in this series

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Criminals as Animals from Shakespeare to Lombroso demonstrates how animal metaphors have been used to denigrate persons identified as criminal in literature, law, and science. Its three-part history traces the popularization of the 'criminal beast' metaphor in late sixteenth-century England, the troubling of the trope during the long eighteenth century, and the late nineteenth-century discovery of criminal atavism. With chapters on rogue pamphlets, Shakespeare, Webster, Jonson, Defoe and Swift, Godwin, Dickens, and Lombroso, the book illustrates how ideologically inscribed metaphors foster transfers between law, penal practices, and literature. Criminals as Animals concludes that criminal-animal metaphors continue to negatively influence the treatment of prisoners, suspected terrorists, and the poor even today.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110339840
ISBN:: 978-3-11-033977-2
ISBN:: 978-3-11-033984-0
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Topics in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Human-Animal Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: 16th-17th Century
Subject:: 19th Century
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2013

Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare

Franziska Quabeck

Volume 7 in this series

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The concept of the just war poses one of the most important ethical questions to date. Can war ever be justified and, if so, how? When is a cause of war proportional to its costs and who must be held responsible? The monograph Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare demonstrates that the necessary moral evaluation of these questions is not restricted to the philosophical moral and political discourse. This analysis of Shakespeare's plays, which focuses on the histories, tragedies and Roman plays in chronological order, brings to light that the drama includes an elaborate and complex debate of the ethical issues of warfare. The plays that feature in this analysis range from Henry VI to Coriolanus and they are analysed according to the three Aquinian principles of legitimate authority, just cause and right intention. Also extending the principles of analysis to more modern notions of responsibility, proportionality and the jus in bello-presupposition, this monograph shows that just war theory constitutes a dominant theoretical approach to war in the Shakespearean canon.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110301113
ISBN:: 978-3-11-030105-2
ISBN:: 978-3-11-030111-3
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: 16th-17th Century
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Philosophy
Subject:: Ethics
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2013

Liminal Discourses

Subliminal Tensions in Law and Literature

Daniela Carpi, Jeanne Gaakeer

Volume 6 in this series

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The past few decades in legal and literary studies have challenged the boundaries raised by the different concepts of law and literature espoused by a great variety of theorists. Law's traditionally assumed disciplinary autonomy has been challenged by those who have pursued interdisciplinary methods of research. In particular, the concept of the sublime has moved out of the strictly philosophical and literary fields and crossed the borders between disciplines, finding an application also in the juridical field. On one hand, this volume proposes that the ethical aspect involved in the legal sublime is to contain the arrogance of the law. On the other hand, the volume draws attention to the "and" of interdisciplinary literary-legal studies and offers new daring comparisons between philosophical fields and between apparently distant historical periods.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110301137
ISBN:: 978-3-11-030106-9
ISBN:: 978-3-11-030113-7
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2013

Law and Justice in Literature, Film and Theater

Nordic Perspectives

Karen-Margrethe Simonsen

Volume 5 in this series

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This volume is a Nordic contribution to research on law and humanities. It treats the legal culture of the Nordic countries through intensive analyses of canonical Nordic artworks. Law and justice have always been important issues in Nordic literature, film and theater from the Icelandic sagas through Ludvig Holberg and Henrik Ibsen to Lars Noréns theatre and Lars von Trier's Dogme films of today. This book strives to answer two fundamental questions: Is there a special Nordic justice? And what does the legal and literary/aesthetic culture of the North mean for the concept of law and justice and for the understanding of the interdisciplinary exchange of law and humanities?

The concept of law and literature as a research area was originally developed in countries of common law. This book investigates law and humanities from a different legal tradition, and contributes thus both to the discussion of the general and the comparative studies of law and humanities.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110294521
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029442-2
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029452-1
Subject:: History
Subject:: Topics in History
Subject:: Constitutional and Legal History
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literature of other Nations and Languages
Subject:: Scandinavian Literature
Subject:: Literary Genres and Media
Subject:: Drama, Theater
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2013

Visualizing Law and Authority

Essays on Legal Aesthetics

Leif Dahlberg

Volume 4 in this series

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The volume "Visualizing Law and Authority. Essays on Legal Aesthetics" brings together revised papers from the international conference "Law and the Image", held in Stockholm, 24–25 September, 2010. The participants/contributors belong to the disciplines of Art history, Cultural studies, Literary and Media studies, and Law. The contributions discuss the complex relations between law, media and visual phenomena. The common theme of the essays consists in an examination of the scopic field and of regimes of visibility in phenomenological terms, arguing that law constitutes a cognitive and aesthetic field of normative world-making. Rather than merely inverting Shelley’s dictum that the "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world", the essays argue in different ways for the necessity to develop a legal aesthetics.

The most immediate way of pursuing such a legal aesthetics consists in examining law itself as an aesthetic object, for instance the power of law to produce icons, in the sense of unreadable texts or textiles (Martin Kayman, Gary Watt). Several essays focus on the way that visual art and media can be used to constitute and represent political power, but also to question it and to put it into question (Chiara Battisti, Leif Dahlberg, Elina Druker, Sidia Fiorato, Paul Raffield). Other essays investigate legal structures inherent in the artwork (and the artworld) itself (Ari Hirvonen, Max Liljefors, Christine Poggi, Karen-Margrethe Simonsen). Finally, there are two essays focusing on the use of images and imagery in the legal process, explicity arguing for the need of a legal aesthetics (Daniela Carpi, Richard Sherwin). Although diverse, the individual essays are interconnected with each other in fruitful and critical ways, making both explicit and implict references to each other.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110285444
ISBN:: 978-3-11-028537-6
ISBN:: 978-3-11-028544-4
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: General Cultural Studies
Subject:: Law
Subject:: History, Philosophy and Sociology of Law
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2012

Dialogues on Justice

European Perspectives on Law and Humanities

Helle Porsdam, Thomas Elholm

Volume 3 in this series

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The contributions presented in this volume are the result of research activities and interdisciplinary encounters organised by the Nordic Network of Law and Literature. They focus on current discussions on justice in a Nordic and European context. By expanding the focus to justice and humanities – beyond "law and literature" – the authors intend to not only cover law and literature in a traditional (narrow) sense, but to embrace different perspectives closely linked to the research and debate about law and literature, e.g., in cultural studies. The volume specifically deals with four main themes, each of which is described and analysed from different angles, by a scholar with a background in the humanities and a scholar with a legal background (or lawyer), respectively: Law and Humanities – the Road Ahead; History, Memory and Human Rights; Forgiveness and Law; Justice, Culture and Copyright.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110269383
ISBN:: 978-3-11-026898-0
ISBN:: 978-3-11-026938-3
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Comparative Literary Studies
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2011

Bioethics and Biolaw through Literature

Daniela Carpi

Volume 2 in this series

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In recent years, the well-established field of human anthropology has been put under scrutiny by the new data offered by science and technology. Scientific intervention into human life through organ transplants, euthanasia, genetic engineering, experiments connected to the genetic code and the genome, and varied other biotechnologies have placed ethical beliefs into question and created ethical dilemmas. These scientific inventions influence our views on birth and death, on the construction of the body and its technical reproducibility, and have problematized the concept of the human persona. The purpose of bioethics, the science of life, is to find new values and norms which will be valid for a multicultural society. Bioethics is, today, a well-respected topic of research that has brought together philosophers and experts to discuss the limits of science and medicine.

The aim of this book is to merge the two fields of bioethics and law (or biolaw) through the literary text, by taking into consideration the transformations of the concept of persona at which we have nowadays arrived. The new meaning of the term ‘persona’ represents in fact the final point of a long-standing quest for man's sense of his own being and human dignity, and of his capacity to live in social interrelations. The volume presents a wide range of perspectives, comprising methodological approaches, legal and literary aspects.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110252859
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025284-2
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025285-9
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Comparative Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Philosophy
Subject:: Ethics
Subject:: Applied Ethics
Subject:: Bio Ethics and Ethics of Medicine, Ethics of Science
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2011

Rhetoric and Evidence

Legal Conflict and Literary Representation in U.S. American Culture

Peter Schneck

Volume 1 in this series

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The book traces the changing relation and intense debates between law and literature in U.S. American culture, using examples from the 18th to the 20th century (including novels by Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, Harper Lee, and William Gaddis). Since the early American republic, the critical representation of legal matters in literary fictions and cultural narratives about the law served an important function for the cultural imagination and legitimation of law and justice in the United States. One of the most essential questions that literary representations of the law are concerned with, the study argues, is the unstable relation between language and truth, or, more specifically, between rhetoric and evidence. In examining the truth claims of legal language and rhetoric and the evidentiary procedures and protocols which are meant to stabilize these claims, literary fictions about the law aim to provide an alternative public discourse that translates the law's abstractions into exemplary stories of individual experience. Yet while literature may thus strive to institute itself as an ethical counter narrative to the law, in order to become, in Shelley’s famous phrase “the legislator of the world”, it has to face the instability of its own relation to truth. The critical investigation of legal rhetoric in literary fiction thus also and inevitably entails a negotiation of the intrinsic value of literary evidence.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110253771
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025376-4
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025377-1
Subject:: Law
Subject:: History, Philosophy and Sociology of Law
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Anglo-American Literature
Subject:: 19th Century
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Rhetoric
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Ahead of Publication 2025

Feminist Perspectives on Law and Literature

Hanna Luise Kroll, Laura Schmitz-Justen, Laura Christin Wittmann, Laura Anina Zander

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The interdisciplinary study of law and literature can help us better understand intersectionality, and vice versa: intersectional feminist perspectives are extremely valuable in the study of law and literature. Of course, neither feminist nor intersectional approaches are new in and of themselves: for decades, literary scholarship has studied the impact of particular constellations of gender, race, and class when it comes to representations of women in literary texts and has succeeded in shaking monolithic and stereotypical notions of womanhood. However, research at the intersection of law, literature and feminism has so far been limited and insular. Bringing together more than twenty international researchers from related disciplines, this volume is the first to bring questions of intersectional feminism to the forefront of law and literature scholarship. From reproductive and (trans-)gender justice in law and literature to feminist practices that intervene in judicial discourse, this volume brings into focus a wide range of cultural and legal phenomena in which gender and the law intersect in literary texts. The volume’s commitment to intersectionality fittingly extents to its very make up: the contributors were selected to represent a diverse range of positions in terms of their gender, career stage and nationality.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111302775
ISBN:: 9783111302775
ISBN:: 9783111302591
ISBN:: 9783111302034
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

The Law in Graphic Narratives

Legal Perspectives on Comics, Manga and Anime

Giuseppe Martinico, Gianpaolo Maria Ruotolo

Volume 25 in this series

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Comics, manga and anime can offer an interesting perspective from which to explore representations of the law in popular culture. This book offers a better understanding of the juridical subtexts of such cultural artefacts by bringing together scholars in legal theory and comparative and international law.

While the contributions in the first part of the volume unpack the relationships between normative systems (law and morality above all) in graphic narratives by Marvel (Daredevil) and DC heroes (Batman), the second part of the volume looks at the role played by law and lawyers in different legal systems through case studies such as She Hulk. Finally, the last part focusses on the role of international law in the comic (multi)universe and in Japanese animation movies such as Porco rosso).

This collection extends research into comics beyond Anglo-American culture, which is still hegemonic in this literature, and makes it possible to read the legal phenomena dealt with in the pop culture products analysed through a lens other than that of Anglo-American law.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111498683
ISBN:: 9783111498683
ISBN:: 9783111499246
ISBN:: 9783111497402
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

The Law and Comedy

Giuseppe Rossi, Paola Carbone

Volume 24 in this series

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Despite their inherent seriousness, the law and those who practice it, be it lawyers, judges, politicians, or bureaucrats, are amongst the most popular objects of comedy and humour. Sometimes even the mention of the law, or the mere use of legal vocabulary, can trigger laughter. This is deeply counterintuitive, but true across cultures and historical eras: while the law is there to prevent and remedy injustice, it often ends up becoming the butt of comedy. But laughter and comedy, too, are also infused with seriousness: as universal social phenomena, they are extremely complex objects of study. This book maps out the many intersections of the law and laughter, from classical Greece to the present day. Taking on well-known classical and modern works of literature and visual culture, from Aristophanes to Laurel and Hardy and from Nietzsche to Totò and Fernandel, laughter and comedy bring law back to the complexity of human soul and the unpredictability of life.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111286778
ISBN:: 9783111286778
ISBN:: 9783111285399
ISBN:: 9783111287768
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Genres and Media in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Film
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

Europe in Law and Literature

Transdisciplinary Voices in Conversation

Laura Anina Zander, Nicola Kramp-Seidel

Volume 23 in this series

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Europe is a broad and multifaceted construct, variously understood as a geographical, political, legal, institutional, social, or cultural formation. It is characterized by numerous conflicts and processes of negotiation that have accompanied or sustained the development of normative orders and divergent conceptions of law, both in relation to individual states and to Europe as a whole. The same applies to the field of literature, language, and aesthetics; numerous myths and ideologies have shaped today’s understanding of Europe and still support it today. This volume examines how such processes were legally structured, and literarily addressed, criticized, and complemented. Its interdisciplinary perspective and open and dynamic, both dialogical and dialectical format intends to replicate the fragmented, sometimes conflicting, but always productive mosaic of voices, ideas, and concepts that have constituted and still constitute Europe, whether in the past, present, or future. Instead of resolving any of the complexities and contradictions that frame discussions on law, literature, and Europe, it aims to induce further engagement and confrontations with new and alternative visions of Europe.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111075693
ISBN:: 9783111075693
ISBN:: 9783111076461
ISBN:: 9783111072029
Subject:: History
Subject:: Regional and National History
Subject:: Europe
Subject:: General European History
Subject:: Law
Subject:: Law, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter