Literature and Legal Discourse: Equity and Ethics from Sterne to Conrad

ISBN-13: 9780521652513 / Angielski / Twarda / 1999 / 278 str.

Dieter Paul Polloczek

Opis

The intersection between law and literature is a developing area in literary studies. Recent work argues that literature provides an imaginary forum in which legal ideals and practices may be tested. Dieter Polloczek's study develops this idea to show how the novel, with its increasing social scope and formal sophistication provided a means of transmitting, questioning and refining society's traditions, values and modes of self-questioning. Polloczek's study is both theoretical and historical, extending from the eighteenth century to the modernist period, and covering texts from Sterne, Dickens, Bentham and Conrad.

Recenzje

"Polloczek's sophisticted study has much to offer graduate students and scholars interested in the cultural nexus of literature and law." Choice

Spis treści

Introduction; 1. Trappings of a transnational gaze: legal and sentimental confinement in Sterne's novels; 2. Reinstitutionalising the common law: Bentham on the security and flexibility of legal rules; 3. Aporias of retribution and questions of responsibility: classifying the legacy of incarceration in Dickens's Bleak House; 4. A curse gone recursive: the case and cause of solidarity in Conrad's The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'; 5. Conclusion.