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 interdisciplinary scholarship.

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.

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