Cathrine O. Frank contributes to new book on Law and Literature
Cathrine O. Frank, Ph.D., professor of English, recently published 鈥淣arrative and Law,鈥 an essay on the relationship between storytelling and legal representation, in the book (Cambridge University Press, 2018), edited by Kieran Dolin.
Frank鈥檚 chapter compares Arthur Conan Doyle鈥檚 鈥淭he Strange Case of George Edalji鈥 (1907)鈥攁 public appeal on behalf of wrongly-convicted Staffordshire solicitor George Edalji鈥攁nd Julian Barnes鈥 novel Arthur and George (2005).
According to Frank, both accounts marshal cultural and legal narratives, including stock stories about race and class and references to the Dreyfus Affair in France, to analyze and reframe the case against Edalji. However, it is Barnes鈥 attention to formal narrative properties, Frank argues, that highlight their impact on individual character in ways that coincide with both the aims of narrative jurisprudence and a renewed rhetoric of character in contemporary narratives of personal, cultural and national identity.
Law and Literature is part of the Cambridge University Press series Cambridge Critical Concepts.
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