Description
Book SynopsisFocuses on European and American trial fiction since about 1880, arguing that, although generally animated by a sense of injustice, this literature reflects the virtual collapse in Western culture of the idea of a universal, or "natural", ethical law.
Trade Review"Sterne argues that trials in literature provide us with pictures of the contemporary culture's attitudes toward justice. After tracing the development of natural law in literature from Homer to about 1880, he presents readings of texts that, he argues, see justice in "murky evolutionary or revolutionary terms" (Martin Du Gard's Jean Barois, 1913; Dreiser's An American Tragedy, 1925; Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, 1948; Koestler's Darkness at Noon, 1940); as residing only in the grace of "a mysterious, loving God," (the late Tolstoy, Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, 1912; Mauriac's Th'er'ese Desqueyroux, 1927); or "as impossible in an absurd world" (Melville's Billy Budd, 1948; Kafka's The Trial, 1937; Camus's The Outsider, 1946; Kundera's The Joke, CH, Oct'69). Unfortunately, lack of theoretical structure and broadly based scholarship will limit the book's usefulness to general readers who want to consider questions of representations of justice in Europe and America and to students of literature interested in readings of canonical texts based on Sterne's interpretation of natural law. Contains adequate notes. All levels." -Choice
