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Staging the Trials of Modernism
Testimony and the British Modern Literary Consciousness

Dale Barleben (Author)

9781487501075

Hardback, published 10 February 2017

184 pages
22.9 x 16.5 x 1.3 cm, 0.42 kg

In Staging the Trials of Modernism, Dale Barleben explores the interactions among literature, cultural studies, and the law through detailed analyses of select British modern writers including Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, and James Joyce. By tracing the relationships between the literature, authors, media, and judicial procedure of the time, Barleben illuminates the somewhat macabre element of modern British trial process, which still enacts and re-enacts itself throughout contemporary judicial systems of the British Commonwealth.

Using little seen legal documents, like Ford's contempt trial decision, Staging the Trials of Modernism uncovers the conversations between the interior style of British Modern authors and the ways in which law began rethinking concepts like intent and the subconscious. Barleben’s fresh insights offer a nuanced look into the ways in which law influences literary production.

Acknowledgements

Introduction – Turning and Turning: The Gyres of Modern Law, Culture and the Interiority of the Civil Subject


Chapter 1 – Legal Reforms, the Blackmailer’s Charter and Oscar Wilde’s Trials: The Legal Stage of Modernism


Chapter 2 – Law’s Empire Writes Back: Legal Positivism and Literary Rejoinder in Wilde and Conrad


Chapter 3 – High Modernist Challenges to Legal Authority in Ford and Joyce


Chapter 4 – Conclusion: Manufacturing Individual Identity


Works Consulted

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