Character, Writing, and Reputation in Victorian Law and Literature - (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Law, Literature and the Humanities) (Paperback)

About the Book

Drawing on primary sources including novels, Victorian periodical literature, legislative debate, case law and legal treatise, Cathrine O. Frank traces the ways conventions of literary characterisation mingled with character-centred legal developments to produce a jurisprudential theory of character that extends beyond the legal profession.

Book Synopsis

Why would Hawthorne and Eliot grant their fallen women an anachronistic right to silence that could only worsen their punishment? Why did Bronte and Gaskell find gossip such a useful source of information when lawyers excluded it as hearsay? How did Trollope's work as an editor influence his preoccupation throughout his novels with libel? Drawing on a range of primary sources including novels, Victorian periodical literature, legislative debate, case law, and legal treatise, Cathrine O. Frank traces the ways conventions of literary characterisation mingled with character-centred legal developments to produce a jurisprudential theory of character that extends beyond the legal profession. She explores how key categories and representational strategies for imagining individual personhood also defined communities and mediated relations within them, in life and in fiction.

From the Back Cover

Examines legal and literary narratives of personhood in the nineteenth century Why would Hawthorne and Eliot grant their fallen women an anachronistic right to silence that could only worsen their punishment? Why did Bronte and Gaskell find gossip such a useful source of information when lawyers excluded it as hearsay? How did Trollope's work as an editor influence his preoccupation throughout his novels with libel? Drawing on a range of primary sources including novels, Victorian periodical literature, legislative debate, case law, and legal treatise, Cathrine O. Frank traces the ways conventions of literary characterisation mingled with character-centred legal developments to produce a jurisprudential theory of character that extends beyond the legal profession. She explores how key categories and representational strategies for imagining individual personhood also defined communities and mediated relations within them, in life and in fiction. This book offers new readings of works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, Anne Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle. It analyses their literary constructions of character in relation to specific legal cases and doctrines, including the right to silence, libel and privacy. Key Features: - traces the concept of character through related areas of law, cultural discourses of character and the formal structures of the novel - includes new work on Anthony Trollope's topical and editorial interest in libel - includes new coverage of the relationship between libel, the development of privacy rights and emerging modernist aesthetics - presents a transatlantic approach to select works and issues, including the right to silence and privacy Cathrine O. Frank is Professor of English at the University of New England, Maine, USA

Review Quotes

Frank presents an erudite, engaging, and challenging account of ways literary and legal constructions of character interanimate in Victorian culture.--Andrea Hibbard "Victorian Studies"

From its contribution to the subfield in literary studies focusing on character to its development of "character talk" as a wide bridge between law, literature, and a number of fields, Character: Writing and Reputation enlivens both legal and literary studies by taking on character, too often ignored in both disciplines.--Adam Kozaczka "The New Rambler"

The book's extensive legal history and assessment, along with case studies of character and reputation taken from the Victorian novel, offer much to law and literature scholars interested in the development of privacy and libel law in the period.--Jolene Zigarovich "Gaskell Journal"

About the Author

Cathrine O. Frank is Professor of English and Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities major, University of New England, Maine, USA