Fatal fictions: crime and investigation in law and literature
"Lawyers and fiction writers have always confronted crime and punishment. This age-old fascination with crime on the part of both authors and readers is not surprising, given that criminal justice touches on so many political and psychological themes essential to literature, and comes equipped...
| Contributors: | ; ; |
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| Format: | Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York, NY
Oxford University Press
[2017]
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| In: | Year: 2017 |
| Online Access: |
Inhaltsverzeichnis (Verlag) |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Subito Delivery Service: | Order now. |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | "Lawyers and fiction writers have always confronted crime and punishment. This age-old fascination with crime on the part of both authors and readers is not surprising, given that criminal justice touches on so many political and psychological themes essential to literature, and comes equipped with a trial process that contains its own dramatic structure. This essay collection explores this profound and enduring literary engagement with crime and criminal justice. The essays in this collection span a wide array of genres, including tragic drama, science fiction, lyric poetry, autobiography, and mystery novels. The works discussed include works as old as fifth-century BCE Greek tragedy and as recent as contemporary novels, memoirs, and mystery novels. The cumulative result is arresting: there are "killer wives" and crimes against trees; a government bureaucrat who sends political adversaries to their death for treason before falling to the same fate himself; a convicted murderer who doesn't die when hanged; a psychopathogical collector whose quite sane kidnapping victim nevertheless also collects; Justice Thomas' reading and misreading of Bigger Thomas; a man who forgives his son's murderer and one who cannot forgive his wife's non-existent adultery; fictional detectives who draw on historical analysis to solve murders. These essays begin a conversation, and they illustrate the great depth and power of crime in literature."-- Introduction -- Scott Turow, on my careers in crime -- Part I: Criminal histories. Daniel Telech, mercy at the Areopagus: a Nietzschean account of justice and joy in the Eumenides -- Barry Wimpfheimer, suborning perjury: a case study of narrative precedent in Talmudic law -- Alison Lacroix, a man for all treasons: crimes by and against the Tudor state in the novels of Hilary Mantel -- Marina Leslie, representing Anne Green: historical and literary form, and the scenes of the crime in Oxford, 1651 -- Richard Strier & Richard McAdams, cold-blooded and high minded murder: the "case" of Othello -- Pamela Foa, what's love got to do with it? sexual exploitation in Measure for Measure: a prosecutor's view -- Part II: Race and crime. Justin Driver, Justice Thomas and Bigger Thomas -- Martha Nussbaum, reconciliation without anger: Paton's Cry, the beloved country -- Part III: Responsibility and violence. Saul Levmore, kidnap, credibility, and the collector -- Jonathan Masur, premeditation and responsibility in The Stranger -- Saira Mohamed and Melissa Murray, walking away: lessons from Omelas -- Mark Payne, before the law: imagining crimes against trees -- Part IV: Suspicion and investigation. Caleb Smith, crime scenes: fictions of security in the antebellum American borderlands -- Steven Wilf, the legal historian as detective |
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| Item Description: | Enthält Literaturangaben und Index |
| Physical Description: | xxii, 316 Seiten |
| ISBN: | 9780190610784 0190610786 |