Law and literature have been two of the most powerful discourses in the construction of social reality. The relationship between the two has emerged as a vital area of study, as literary representation has proved immensely influential in framing popular understanding of law. In Fiction and the Law: Legal Discourse in Victorian and Modernist Literature Kieran Dolin examines the dialectical interplay between legal discourse and the novel in the century between Walter Scott and E. M. Forster, the period when the institution of the law was undergoing radical reform and the novel was at the peak of its cultural power. Dolin's comprehensive study argues that this cultural power is attributable in part to the novel's critical engagement with the law. His study draws on legal and literary theory to trace this important convergence of disciplines in a series of canonical Victorian and Modernist texts.
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. Originally published in 2007, this book provides an accessible guide to one of the most exciting areas of
Law and Literature presents an authoritative, fresh and accessible new overview of the many ways in which law and literature interact. Written by a team of international experts, it provides a multi-focused history of literary studies' critical interest in ideas of law and justice. It examines the effects of law on writers and their work, ranging from classical tragedy to comics, and from East Africa to Elizabethan England. Over twenty chapters, contributors reveal the intricate and multivalent historical interactions between law and literature, both past and present, and trace the intellectual genesis of the concept of law in literary studies, focusing on major developments in the history of the interdisciplinary project of law and literature, as well as the changing ideas of law, and the cultural contests in which it has figured. Law and Literature will appeal to graduates and scholars working on the intersection between law and literature and in key related areas such as literature
