Overview

This book contributes significantly to Law and Literature studies. Arguing for the political relevance of their work, the editors open the volume with an introduction that summarizes topical developments in law enforcement and penal politics including the 'prisonization' of American society and popular support for no tolerance approaches to crime. The fourteen essays that follow - six on trials and eight on prisons - discuss subjects ranging from the political ramifications of Captain Kidd's trials for piracy to a reading of South African prison memoirs and include treatments of prison films, courtroom dramas and works by Dickens, Shakespeare and Scott. The volume demonstrates powerfully how concepts of criminality are constructed and how literature participates in, and sometimes enhances, general discursive traditions of adversarial litigation and carcerality.

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9783631524558

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Author Information

The Editors: Monika Fludernik is Professor of English Literature at the University of Freiburg. She has published widely in the areas of narratology, postcolonial theory and eighteenth-century aesthetics. Author of Reading Eating Disorders (Lang 2003). Greta Olson is a research fellow at the University of Freiburg. Her publications include work on Shakespeare, narratology and cultural studies.

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