Testimony and Advocacy in Victorian Law, Literature, and Theology

By Jan-Melissa Schramm

Book Overview

The eighteenth-century model of the criminal trial - with its insistence that the defendant and the facts of a case could 'speak for themselves' - was abandoned in 1836, when legislation enabled barristers to address the jury on behalf of prisoners charged with felony. Increasingly, professional acts of interpretation were seen as necessary to achieve a just verdict, thereby silencing the prisoner and affecting the testimony given by eye witnesses at criminal trials. Jan-Melissa Schramm examines the profound impact of the changing nature of evidence in law and theology on literary narrative in the nineteenth century. Already a locus of theological conflict, the idea of testimony became a fiercely contested motif of Victorian debate about the ethics of literary and legal representation. She argues that authors of fiction created a style of literary advocacy which both imitated, and reacted against, the example of their storytelling counterparts at the Bar.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521026350
• ISBN13: 9780521026352
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"