Reading for the law : British literary history and gender advocacy

The Resource Reading for the law : British literary history and gender advocacy

Label

Reading for the law : British literary history and gender advocacy

Title remainder

British literary history and gender advocacy

Statement of responsibility

Christine L. Krueger

Language

eng

Summary

"Taking her title from the British term for legal study, "to read for the law:' Christine L. Krueger asks how "reading for the law" as literary history contributes to the progressive educational purposes of the Law and Literature movement. She argues that a multidisciplinary "historical narrative jurisprudence" strengthens narrative legal theorists' claims for the transformative powers of stories by replacing an ahistorical opposition between literature and law with a history of their interdependence and their embeddedness in print culture. Focusing on gender and feminist advocacy in the long nineteenth century, Reading for the Law demonstrates the relevance of literary history to feminist jurisprudence and suggests how literary history might contribute to other forms of "outsider jurisprudence."" "Krueger develops this argument across discussions of key jurisprudential concepts: precedent, agency, testimony, and motive. She draws from a wide range of literary, legal, and historical sources, from the early modern period through the Victorian age, as well as from contemporary literary, feminist, and legal theory. Topics considered include the legacy of witchcraft prosecutions, the evolution of the Reasonable Man standard of evidence in lunacy inquiries, the fate of female witnesses and pro se litigants, advocacy for female prisoners and infanticide defendants, and defense strategies for men accused of indecent assault and sodomy. The saliency of the nineteenth-century British literary culture stems in part from its place in a politico-legal tradition that produces the very conditions of narrative legal theorists' aspirations for meaningful social transformation in modern, multicultural democracies."--Jacket

Cataloging source

N$T

Dewey number

823.009/3554

Government publication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Index

index present

LC call number

PR830.L43

LC item number

K78 2010eb

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

dictionaries
bibliography

Series statement

Victorian literature and culture series

Context

Context of Reading for the law : British literary history and gender advocacy

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Context

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