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In the Grip of the Law

BLURB

In the Grip of Law: Trials, Prisons and the Space Between contributes significantly to Law and Literature studies. Arguing for the political relevance of their work, the editors open the volume with an introduction that summarizes topical developments in law enforcement and penal politics including the 'prisonization' of American society and popular support for "no tolerance" approaches to crime. The fifteen essays that follow – seven on trials and eight on prisons – discuss subjects ranging from the political ramifications of Captain Kidd's trials for piracy to a reading of South African prison memoirs and include treatments of prison films, courtroom dramas and works by Dickens, Shakespeare and Scott. The volume demonstrates powerfully how concepts of criminality are constructed and how literature participates in, and sometimes enhances, general discursive traditions of adversarial litigation and carcerality. Taking a variety of methodological approaches from critical legal studies and Law and Literature, the essays on trials and prisons in this volume demonstrate the mutual influence between legal and fictional texts, show how legal institutions serve to reify social divisions, and finally read legal practices in literary texts within wider discursive and cultural practices.

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