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INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE: THE TRIAL OF MADELEINE SMITH AND COLLINS'S THE LAW AND THE LADY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2016

Sara Murphy
Sara Murphy*
Affiliation:
New York University – Gallatin School of Individualized Study
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Extract

“A trial and a literary text,” Shoshana Felman once noted, “do not aim at the same kind of conclusion, nor do they strive toward the same kind of effect. A trial is presumed to be a search for truth, but technically it is a search for a decision; and thus. . . it seeks not truth but finality: a force of resolution.” Literature, on the other hand, Felman posits, is characterized by “a search for meaning. . . for heightened significance, for symbolic understanding” (Felman 55). Trials function to curb the proliferation of meanings in favor of finality, if not absolute truth, whereas literature allegedly forgoes such determinacy. A corollary of this distinction has to do with language itself: while law seeks to fix linguistic meaning, literature draws attention to the inherent instability of meaning.

Type
Work in Progress
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 163 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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