REAL - Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, Volume 18 (2002)

Law and literature have a long and complicated relationship. Both rely on rhetoric, interpretation, and story telling. Trials can be full of drama, and works of drama frequently stage trials. Literature offers momorable representations of judges and lawyers, while judges and lawyers affect the production of literature through copyright and censorship. There are legal fictions as well as literary fictions. Topics systematically taught in law schools - marriage and divorce, wills and inheritance, prperty, contracts, crime, the assessments of respnsibility and blame - motivate the plots of many novels and plays. Written by scholars from eight different countries, the essays in this volume represent a wide variety of approaches to the many relations between law and literature.