Personhood: Literary Visions of a Legal Fiction
Date of Award
Fall 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Comparative Literature
First Advisor
Campe, Rüdiger
Abstract
This dissertation pursues a philosophical question—what is law?—through the writings of four twentieth-century Anglophone and German authors for whom “the law” [Gesetz] was a consistent point of reference. It channels this inquiry through the theme of the “person”—a Greco-Roman term for an actor’s mask. It finds in literary form a rhetorical arena that brings phases in the historical development of legal concepts into closer resolution. At the same time, it shows that legal theorists—including the Europeans whose writings helped define the modern semantic sense of personhood—enlisted terms from the dramatic arts and, in some cases, resorted to generically poetic forms to make their points. By illustrating the interpenetration of aesthetic and institutional life, this dissertation takes the insights of two tried-and-true approaches in Law and Literature scholarship in a new direction. The first approach taken by Law and Literature scholars is to investigate the representation of law in works of literature. The second approach is to train the resources of literary theory on properly “legal” objects such as writing on animal skins, modern paperwork, trial spaces, and handbooks. Building on these perspectives, this dissertation investigates the rhetorical conditions of possibility for legal concepts. It argues that, as opposed to a moral and psychological index, the sources examined portray the concept of personhood as a cultural technique with spiritual ramifications.
Recommended Citation
Stern, Lindsay O'Connor, "Personhood: Literary Visions of a Legal Fiction" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1175.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1175
