Ignazio Alessi, Gavino Scala (eds), Law and Literature. An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Medieval Texts

An interdisciplinary collection of original essays by both new and established scholars that surveys the complex relationship between law and literature in the Middles Ages.

Throughout history, law and literature have always been in constant dialogue, sharing significant connections and exerting mutual influences. Both are artificial creations, products of human imagination that use language and metaphors to build meanings and shape the world around us. In the Middle Ages, the proximity of these two genres is even more pronounced. This is not only because many literary figures were also jurists, but also because medieval legal texts can be classified as a distinct literary genre known as ‘legal literature’. Additionally, medieval jurists did not hesitate to draw upon literary texts, understood as genuine sources of law (‘auctoritates morales’), to fill gaps in their legal knowledge.

The contributions collected in this volume examine precisely this intersection between law and literature in medieval literary and legal texts. The volume follows four axes: law in literature, law as literature, literature in law, and literature as Law. The volume aims to raise awareness of the proximity of two apparently distant worlds and to provide a perspective for interdisciplinary analysis that transcends traditional rigid barriers.

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Table des matières

Foreword
Sara MENZINGER

Introduction
Ignazio ALESSI and Gavino SCALA

‘Par bataille ou par juise’. Ordeal by Combat in Thirteenth-Century Arthurian Prose Romances
Claudio LAGOMARSINI

La fiction judiciaire amoureuse (XIIe-XVe s.). Enjeux procéduraux
Cassandre CRESPIN

(Don’t) call me by your name. Lexical Gleanings of Droit Non
Marta MILAZZO

Procès du loup, procès de l’homme. La justice dans ‘Le valet aus douze femes’
Federico NOVELLO

Le meurtre de Lancelot Ier dans la fin particulière des témoins Paris, Ars. 3348 et New Haven, Beineke Library, MS 227 de l’Estoire del Saint Graal. Une vendetta à l'épreuve du droit féodal
Davide NOVATI

Acoustic Effects and Kinesic Imagination in Archbishop Wulfstan of York’s Legal Writing
Chen CUI

Exploring Legal and Linguistic Dimensions in Late Medieval English Jurisprudence. William Lyndwood’s Provinciale and Inheritance Practices
Matthew CLEARY

Conclusions. Literature as a Field of Legal Experimentation
Noëlle-Laetitia PERRET and Adrien WYSSBROD