Staging the trials of modernism : testimony and the British modern literary consciousness / Dale Barleben.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Acknowledgments -- Introduction: turning and turning: the gyres of modern law, culture, and the interiority of the civil subject -- Legal reforms, the blackmailer's charter, and Oscar Wilde's trials: the legal state of modernism -- Law's empire writes back: legal positivism and literary rejoinder in Wilde and Conrad -- High modernist challenges to legal authority in Ford and Joyce -- Conclusion: manufacturing individual identity -- Notes -- Works consulted -- Index.

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.

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