The Dialogue Between Literature And Law

As different subjects in social sciences, literature and law seem quite different. Literature involves more image thinking while law has more logical thinking; literature lays stress on reaction while law attaches importance to proper presentation; literature focuses on disposition, searching for fully expression of personality, always breaking through the limitations of the rules to reflect the uncertainty of human feelings while law is the embodiment of the public opinions, pursuing the universality of reason, emphasizing the stabilization of the rules. Nevertheless there is the same theme between literature and law which concerns social life, people, justice, equality, freedom, virtues and evils, right and wrong and so on. Therefore, it is possible to communicate between literature and law.From the perspective of the academic and theoretical building, the comparative study and dialogue between literature and law belongs to the interdisciplinary research in comparative literature. Both domestic and foreign scholars get involved in the field, which is generally divided into two main branches. The first branch is the law as literature, taking the text of the law and justice practices as literary texts to examine their rhetoric and narrative characteristics, that is, to make use of the literary criticism and the literary theories to help read and interpret the text of the law, which sometimes is called "literature in the law". The second branch is the law in literature, studying the law reflected in literature, that is, to focus on legal problems presented in literary works such as fictions and dramas. This dissertation takes the latter as the research direction, attempting to use the system of equal dialogue between literature and law to analyze the inseparable relationship between them, discussing the significance of the interaction between them in Western literature on the basis of the common themes concerned so as to put forward a new viewpoint of understanding the spirit of law—to examine the spirit of law from the perspective of poetic justice in literature.Apart from the parts of introduction and conclusion, the dissertation includes three chapters. The first chapter is entitled the Possibility of the Dialogue between Literature and Law. In this chapter the author mainly discusses the distinctions between law and literature from the aspects of social attributes and stability, the connections between the two from the research targets, scopes, functions and methods, and the interaction of the two from the impact of law on literature and that of literature on law. The author further points out the possibility of the dialogue and communication between literature and law. On this basis, the author puts forward the research targets, and interprets the choice of research materials, access and methods, that is, to take the common spiritual themes concerned by the two as their research targets, to study the spirit of law in the Western Literature from the different levels of values. At the same time, the author points out that the significance of this research lies in expanding the scope of the study and more in-depth understanding of the spirit of law.The second part is entitled the Spirit of Law in Western Literature. To do an in-depth study and avoid discussing the different connotations of the values on average, the author mainly chooses a specific connotation of value from "Antigone" and "The Merchant of Venice" respectively for the purpose of discussion. In Antigone the author puts more emphasis on the human values in the spirit of law while in The Merchant of Venice he focuses mainly on the fair value orientation. In the specific discussions, the author attempts to interpret human values and equality values from the two different perspectives of literature. He also tries to distinguish the different interpretations of the spirit of law from the two perspectives.The third chapter is the conclusion, with the title of the Perspective of Interpreting the Spirit of Law -Law Examined by Literature. In this part the author further expounds justice, the core of law spirit and the ultimate value pursued by law and literature. The author first discusses the consistency of spiritual pursuit in law and literature, and then sums up the points under discussion in the two works: Antigone and The Merchant of Venice. The author points out that law spirit of the realistic pursuit includes conventionalizing of the pursuit of justice while justice in literature is interpreted from a new, poetic and ideal perspective.The dissertation aims to illustrate that literature reflects law, but the law reflected in it contains a certain amount of literary values. In other words, literature forms its own judgement of law with its own values and standards, and recreates law ideally.