Reading for the law : British literary history and gender advocacy / Christine L. Krueger.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-298) and index.

Introduction : Theory, advocacy, and history -- Historiographies of witchcraft for feminist advocacy : historical justice in Elizabeth Gaskell's Lois the witch -- Witchcraft precedents as literary history : from The discoverie of witchcraft to Sir Matthew Hale -- The historical turn in witchcraft literature : from Enlightenment historiography to historical realism -- Theories and histories of agency : Mary Wollstonecraft's narrative of the reasonable woman -- Agency, equity, publicity : compos mentis in Charles Reade's Hard cash and lunacy commission reports -- Gendered credibility : testimony in fiction and indecent assault -- Women's legal literacy and pro se representation : from Griffith Gaunt to Georgina Weldon -- Concealing women's mens rea: advocacy for female prisoners and infanticidal mothers -- The secret agency of juries : forging resistance against sodomy prosecution.

"Taking her title from the British term for legal study, "to read for the law:' Christine L. Krueger asks how "reading for the law" as literary history contributes to the progressive educational purposes of the Law and Literature movement. She argues that a multidisciplinary "historical narrative jurisprudence" strengthens narrative legal theorists' claims for the transformative powers of stories by replacing an ahistorical opposition between literature and law with a history of their interdependence and their embeddedness in print culture. Focusing on gender and feminist advocacy in the long nineteenth century, Reading for the Law demonstrates the relevance of literary history to feminist jurisprudence and suggests how literary history might contribute to other forms of "outsider jurisprudence."" "Krueger develops this argument across discussions of key jurisprudential concepts: precedent, agency, testimony, and motive. She draws from a wide range of literary, legal, and historical sources, from the early modern period through the Victorian age, as well as from contemporary literary, feminist, and legal theory. Topics considered include the legacy of witchcraft prosecutions, the evolution of the Reasonable Man standard of evidence in lunacy inquiries, the fate of female witnesses and pro se litigants, advocacy for female prisoners and infanticide defendants, and defense strategies for men accused of indecent assault and sodomy. The saliency of the nineteenth-century British literary culture stems in part from its place in a politico-legal tradition that produces the very conditions of narrative legal theorists' aspirations for meaningful social transformation in modern, multicultural democracies."--Jacket

Print version record.

English.

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