Law & Literature最新文献

{"title":"Fiat Lux/Fiat Lex: A Canticle for Leibowitz, Reason and Law","authors":"Mark Thomas, Kieran Tranter","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2022.2046900","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2022.2046900","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Walter M. Miller Jr’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) is an enigmatic text. It is a depressing tale of the evitability of technoscientific civilization ending in apocalypse, a comedic story of ignorant monks producing gold-embellished illuminated copies of electronic circuit blueprints and an ambiguous examination of the tensions between faith and science. This paper reads A Canticle for Leibowitz as an examination of legality. Drawing inspiration from Carl Schmitt’s observation that Catholicism has a “juridical logic,” this paper identifies that A Canticle for Leibowitz brings to life, and questions, the Thomist worldview of reason, reasonability and layered orders. It is a novel that brings to life, but also interrogates, Catholic intellectualism. It is tempting to conclude that Miller argues for a Thomist ethic of responsibility to temper technoscientific self-destruction. However, that is not where the novel ends. Its endings are hopeful, notwithstanding the nuclear holocaust in the final pages. There are suggestions of new nomoi: In the diasporic human extra-terrestrial colonies, ministered to by a nomadic Church, and a radiated Eden inherited by humanity’s prelapsarian successors anticipated in the coming to life of Rachel.","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131082841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Law of Frank Herbert’s Dune: Legal Culture between Cynicism, Earnestness and Futility","authors":"Björnstjern Baade","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2022.2026038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2022.2026038","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Frank Herbert’s Dune series has been analyzed with regard to various issues, such as politics, ecology and religion. Its legal aspects have been neglected so far. Contrary to the seemingly common perception that law does not play a significant role in Dune, this article will first show that law is indeed ubiquitous in Dune and shapes the narrative in important ways. Dune develops different legal cultures: a cynical rule by law in the Imperium and an earnest rule of law among the native Fremen. It reflects on the limits of law in a way that is heavily influenced by a type of collective determinism first developed in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, a source of inspiration that has not been noticed until now. Dune reflects a profound distrust of organized authority. Ultimately, it undervalues the fact that law can serve to prevent abuse of power. But to do so, the law needs independent guardians which are conspicuously absent in Dune.","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"116 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116747024","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Libertines and the Law: Subversive Authors and Criminal Justice in Early Seventeenth-Century France","authors":"Tom Hamilton","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2023.2207890","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2023.2207890","url":null,"abstract":"The starting point from which Adam Horsley has chosen to explore this fascinating period in France, when the works of various libertine writers were proliferating at the same time that judicial institutions were attempting to suppress them, is, as he describes it, in order to “bridge [the] gap between literary and legal historical disciplines” (p. 8). In fact, I would argue that this highly impressive book goes even further in covering the fields of literary studies, criminology, and political and religious history, displaying extraordinary new research and discoveries of previously unknown and unstudied manuscripts. In Part I, Horsley offers a punctilious and perceptive word history of the term “libertine,” giving its linguistic, historical, theological, literary and ideological contexts in the first chapter before moving in the second chapter to legal and political matters that inform the rest of the book, covering such crucial areas as censorship, regulation of the publishing industry, and criminal procedures in the law courts of the early seventeenth century. The primary focus of the book comes in Part II, with its detailed examination of three major trials for libertinage from the early years of the seventeenth century: those of the Italian philosopher Giulio Cesare Vanini, who was tried for blasphemy and sentenced to death in Toulouse; the scholar Jean Fontanier, a supposed Jewish convert who was tried and executed in Paris for teaching Judaism; and the poet Th eophile de Viau, who managed to overturn an initial condemnation to death but who died soon after the conclusion of his trial in Paris. While Vanini and to a much greater extent Th eophile have received wide scholarly coverage, the Fontanier trial has been seldom studied, especially by English-language scholars. In his analysis of all three trials, Horsley produces stunning new documentary evidence, taken from court transcripts, private notes, placards, and oral culture, to re-evaluate all three figures individually and to show how these three case studies paved the way for those writers who became known as libertins erudits later in the century and who were much more cautious in producing subversive literature. Perhaps one of the most original features of these three chapters is the way in which he looks closely through court documents at the judges in the trials and not simply at the three accused men. Space does not permit detailed analysis of each chapter, but it is worth giving examples of ways in which Horsley uses his ingenuity and expertise in many fields to illuminate his arguments. Although the Toulouse court records of Vanini’s trial have not been found, in Chapter 3 Horsley pays close attention to the larger corpus of extant documents made by Anglican authorities investigating Vanini while he was in England, thereby helping “to construct a picture of","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"132 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126162906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Truth, Goodness, and Beauty: Literary Policy in Xi Jinping’s China","authors":"Michel Hockx","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2022.2026039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2022.2026039","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article traces recent formulations and implementations of cultural policy in the People’s Republic of China, with emphasis on the regulation of literature. The analysis interrogates the quality criteria for creative production introduced in Xi Jinping’s 2014 speech at a forum for writers and artists, some of which are shown to be of pre-modernist European origin. It then looks at how these concepts are adopted by policy makers, cultural organizations, and the publishing trade, often in awkward juxtaposition with community-specific aesthetic values and markers of excellence.","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132613453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Importance of Not Being Honest","authors":"Haiyan Lee","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2021.1991612","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2021.1991612","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract When Lord Acton said power corrupts, he had in mind the powerholders. Can power also corrupt the powerless? I ponder this uncomfortable question as I walk through three films about smuggling: Dying to Survive (China), Dallas Buyers Club (U.S.), and In Darkness (Poland). In all, the protagonist is either a petty criminal or a flawed individual who is suddenly faced with a choice that pits him against the law while promising moral redemption. This disjuncture in legal and moral justice is precisely where crime fiction thrives. By reading these films together, I hope to make two points: (1) an unjust system forces the powerless to live in bad faith; (2) the powerless can overcome the moral burden of bad faith by forging communities of complicity. In conclusion, I suggest that it is not enough to reject victim-blaming and that attending to the moral injury of power can strengthen the fight against domination and oppression.","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124622238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Jesús R. Velasco, Dead Voice: Law, Philosophy and Fiction in the Iberian Middle Ages, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 256 pp, ISBN 9780812251869, Americas: $69.95, outside the Americas: £56.00","authors":"M. Del Mar","doi":"10.1080/1535685x.2021.2011047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685x.2021.2011047","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116344501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Victor Fan, Extraterritoriality: Locating Hong Kong Cinema and Media (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), 360pp","authors":"M. Wan","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2021.2011051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2021.2011051","url":null,"abstract":"In its legal sense, “extraterritoriality” refers broadly to the application and enforcement of laws by a country beyond its own borders. It also stipulates that citizens of that country are not subjected to the jurisdiction of the place they are in while they are abroad. “Extraterritoriality” arises because of a geographical shift, and can connote a sense of dislocation and even placelessness. Recasting the legal term in a broader cultural frame, Victor Fan’s book compellingly develops these connotations to re-interpret extraterritoriality as a way of understanding film and media. In the Introduction, Fan argues that, as a British colony in Asia and then a Special Administrative Region of China, “Hong Kong has always been configured as an extraterritorial space, even though the terms of its extraterritorial status have been contested” (11). For the inhabitants of this space of shifting sovereignties, longstanding migration, and, as some have argued, temporal uncertainties, “home” is a complex concept. From this starting point, Fan contends that the conflicting social, political, cultural, and linguistic forces of the city give rise to a “sense-uncertainty” whereby Hong Kongers’ ideas of their own individuality, subjectivity, and autonomy are always thrown into question (13). Fan approaches Hong Kong cinema and media as images that negotiate and give form to the notions, affects and sensibilities that make up this extraterritorial senseuncertainty. Each of the chapters in the book discusses a moment of crisis or change in Hong Kong film history, and approaches both canonical and lesser known works in light of the extraterritorial nature of Hong Kong cinema and media. Chapter 1 focuses on the development of film criticism during the Leftist Riots of 1967. Through a close reading of the emerging film criticism and theory of the late 1960s, Fan observes that in that period, the question “What is Hong Kong cinema?” could only be articulated and “carefully concealed” under the question “What is Chinese cinema?” (52). In his rereading of Lee Tit’s In Face of Demolition (1953), which tells the story of a group of people living together in a decrepit building, Fan demonstrates how extraterritoriality can emerge as a kind of “spontaneous awareness” (67) through the cultivation of in-group loyalty and mutual dependency within a community. In Chapter 2, Fan complicates the notion of extraterritorial subjecthood by considering it in relation to gender. How, he asks, do “women filmmakers, cinematic spectators and televisual viewers speak from their doubly—socio-political and gendered—extraterritorialised position?.” Key to his answer is the way in which directors of the Hong Kong New Wave make use of cinematography to articulate extraterritoriality. In his examination of Tang Shu-hsuen The Arch (1968), for instance, he demonstrates that filmmakers draw on Six-Dynasty","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115983932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Peter Goodrich, Advanced Introduction to Law and Literature (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton MA, USA), 2021.pp. 119","authors":"A. Durant","doi":"10.1080/1535685x.2021.2011049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685x.2021.2011049","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124949695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Utopian Law and Literature of Systematic Colonisation","authors":"S. Chalmers","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2021.2011046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2021.2011046","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Edward Gibbon Wakefield is usually remembered as the English political economist whose theorisation of “systematic colonisation” provided the blueprint for the establishment of British colonies in Australia and New Zealand. This paper re-reads Wakefield’s writings on systematic colonisation as works of utopian literature, which not only represented a social fantasy that was deeply capitalist, but worked to realise the settler-colonial projects through the literary projection of this fantasy. Through the re-reading, the paper focuses on two main points. One, the force of Wakefield’s work was the force of literature. It was not Wakefield’s scholarly contributions to political-economic thought that made his work such a force of history; it was the literary form of his writings on colonisation that enabled his work to capture and incite the social imagination, as works of fiction in a utopian tradition going back to Thomas More’s Utopia and Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis. And two, the force of Wakefield’s literary work was the force of law. Not only did Wakefield’s utopian literature crystallise a social fantasy in a way that made it available, and seductively so, to legislators, but Wakefield’s literature gave meaning and effect to the resulting legislation of the colonies.","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126560039","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Athenian Law and Classical Greek Tragedy: The Case of Oedipus the King","authors":"Ekaterini Nikolarea","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2021.1991613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2021.1991613","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper is a comparative study of two different but interrelated discourses: fifth-century Athenian law and the classical Greek tragedy Oedipus the King, and its tertium comparationis is the rhetoric or language shared by these discourses. In order to discuss what is involved in this comparison this paper revolves around three axes of attention. First, it tries to show how most of the language of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, if contextualized, is invested with legal terms and can be interpreted in terms of Athenian law. Second, it argues that, aside from the philosophical and educational aspects of Oedipus the King, the Athenian audience must have experienced one of the most important aspects of their public life: participating in the Athenian popular courts (dikasteria: δικαστήρια) as juries. If it is so, then Sophocles the playwright can be viewed as a logographos, a speech-writer, and his play can be understood as a legal case study in an Athenian popular court. Third, the paper puts forward the proposal that the case of Oedipus the King and its legal rhetoric used as the plot unfolds can be a paradeigma (either a paradigm or an example), in addition to orations by Aeschines, Antiphon, Demosthenes and other Athenian rhetoricians, and can shed light on how the Athenian legal system worked when this tragedy was performed in fifth-century Athens.","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"127 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132758089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}