ABSTRACT
This chapter takes as its theoretical point of departure a Derridean and Irigarayan analysis of the problematic status of and relation between textuality and the ‘feminine’ within Western discourse. It considers from this theoretical perspective the formulation of the ideal of ‘verisimilitude’ in eighteenth-century literature and law, foregrounding in particular the disruptive tension that emerges in juridical and literary discourse between ‘truth’ and ‘text’. This tension is evident throughout the history of Western thought, but I argue that it acquires a specific historical expression in the 1700s, which I explore through close readings of the influential 1785 essay The Progress of Romance by literary critic and novelist Clara Reeve, 1 William Blackstone's Commentaries and Jeremy Bentham's A Fragment on Government.
