ABSTRACT
I Jurisprudence is becoming a fashionable source of arguments and analogies for literary critics. Debates about the nature of legal reasoning, the laws of evidence and the politics of juridical discourse are seen as bearing directly on issues in literary theory. At present these overtures are distinctly unilateral, with students of law showing little interest in returning the compliment. Occasionally it is recognized, in passing, that what goes on in a court of law is often rather like what happens in novels. ‘Hard’ cases of various kinds have their obvious analogues in fictional terms. Where motive is in question, the process of arriving at a just or equitable verdict may strike the observer as something like the experience of reading a complex ‘psychological’ novel. Other cases-those where the background situation needs piecing together from circumstantial clues-might resemble a piece of detective fiction. But these are just loose and strictly onesided analogies, based on the assumption that law is ‘for real’ and literature at most a source of illustrative fancies. Furthermore, it is the traditional wellmade plot-the kind where everything hangs together, at least when one has turned the last page-that always underlies these analogies. It is hard to imagine any student of law being told to read Kafka or Robbe-Grillet as adjuncts to a training in legal interpretation.
