In Search of Healing Voices

One of the distinguishing features of contemporary legal studies is a desire to contextualize, to reflect upon the law in relation to other disciplines. The relation of religion and law is, of course, a prime example of such contextual or interdisciplinary engagement. But there are many others. Among the more recent, and most popular, is law and literature. The purpose of this article is to present a case-study in law and literature, one which addresses the condition of church and state in mid-Victorian England. Those who recommend the interdisciplinary engagement of law and literature make various claims. Three strategies, as they are sometimes called, are commonly identified. A first strategy invites contemplation of the necessary interpretive indeterminacies that attach to the reading of any text, legal or otherwise. A second uses the depiction of legal scenarios in literary texts, such as Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice or Melville's Billy Budd, to explore familiar jurisprudential dilemmas. A third strategy of law and literature is historical, reading Charles Dickens' Bleak House, for example, as a supplementary chronicle of Chancery reform in nineteenth-century England.1

Art · Contemplation · Depiction · Epistemology · Law and literature · Literature · Political science · Reading (process) · Relation (database) · Sociology · State (computer science) · Evolving Legal Systems and Governance · History · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies · Philosophy