Testimony and Advocacy in Victorian Law, Literature, and Theology

Klappentext The eighteenth-century model of the criminal trial - with its insistence that the defendant and the facts of a case could 'speak for themselves' - was abandoned in 1836! when legislation enabled barristers to address the jury on behalf of prisoners charged with felony. Increasingly! professional acts of interpretation were seen as necessary to achieve a just verdict! thereby silencing the prisoner and affecting the testimony given by eye witnesses at criminal trials. Jan-Melissa Schramm examines the profound impact of the changing nature of evidence in law and theology on literary narrative in the nineteenth century. Already a locus of theological conflict! the idea of testimony became a fiercely contested motif of Victorian debate about the ethics of literary and legal representation. She argues that authors of fiction created a style of literary advocacy which both imitated! and reacted against! the example of their storytelling counterparts at the Bar. Zusammenfassung This original study examines how the changing nature of evidence in law and theology shaped literary narrative in the nineteenth century. Jan-Melissa Schramm argues that authors of fiction created a style of literary advocacy which both imitated! and reacted against! the example of their storytelling counterparts of the criminal Bar. Inhaltsverzeichnis Acknowledgements; Introduction: justice and the impulse to narrate; 1. Eye-witness testimony in the construction of narrative; 2. The origins of the novel and the genesis of the law of evidence; 3. Criminal advocacy and Victorian realism; 4. The martyr as witness: inspiration and the appeal to intuition; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Product details

• Authors: Schramm Jan-Melissa, Jan-Melissa Schramm, Jan-Melissa (Lucy Cavendish College Schramm
• Assisted by: Gillian Beer (Editor)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 27.04.2006
• EAN: 9780521026352
• ISBN: 978-0-521-02635-2
• No. of pages: 264
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Nineteent
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Social sciences, law, business > Law > General, dictionaries