A consideration of literature’s legal parameters raises further questions concerning a society’s broader appreciation of its literary culture. Here, law and literature sometimes becomes ‘law of literature’: this variant typically overlaps with book and intellectual histories concerning the legality of literary production (copyright, contractual restrictions, obscenity laws, and the like). A second line of enquiry interrogates similarities and differences: the extent to which ‘law’ complements or opposes ‘literature’ (thereby problematizing these two as distinct conceptual categories). In this first line of enquiry, law and literature to many of its practitioners, if not to unsuspecting readers, often means ‘law in literature’, a variant of conventional literary criticism that specializes in works of imaginative writing containing legal themes or depicting legal practice. 7 The first seeks to establish the parameters of the partnership, showing how literary forms, genres, and structures correspond to particular legal objects, constructs, practices, or innovations. The law and literature movement has produced three main lines of enquiry, all three of which are represented in French studies. 6 Others have a looser affiliation with the law and literature movement, in that their work encompasses legal-literary study within a wider scholarly remit. Some have contributed to the three journals mentioned above.
Several of the scholars named in this état présent have long engaged in legal-literary research. We have adopted a chronological approach from 1200 to the present, focusing on major studies whose subject matter shows a sustained combination of the legal and the literary. Nonetheless, as we look to the future, we shall indicate how law and literature is beginning to consider other francophone regions. Scholars focusing on pre-twentieth-century sources from mainland France have hitherto dominated the French field, and their work forms the bulk of our survey. Over the last forty years, one can trace a steady stream of legal-literary outputs in French studies from the medieval to the contemporary. Studies of French-language sources constitute a prominent subdomain within the global purview of law and literature. There is nonetheless a turn towards recognizing the significance and scope of legal-literary research beyond the anglophone world. 4 Surveys of these new directions in law and literature have tended to focus on the English-speaking world, and predominantly on English-language sources. The study of law and literature may begin (and in some cases end) with texts but increasingly legal-literary research is framed as part of a broader cultural enquiry into the arts of writing, reading, interpretation, representation, performance, and persuasion. 2 Numerous monographs, edited series, 3 and three leading journals - Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, Law and Humanities, and Law and Literature (formerly known as Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature) - have established the movement’s scholarly credentials, and, moreover, have enlarged its remit. Today, ‘law and literature’ comprise a movement that makes a virtue of its interdisciplinary exchanges. 1 This paved the way for ongoing dialogue between legal experts and literary specialists who, in turn, have incorporated elements of legal study into their scholarly remit. In the 1970s, legal scholars in the anglophone world began to revitalize the study of law by working with literary sources and techniques. The purpose of this état présent is to assess the breadth and collective significance of these contributions. Since its emergence in the late twentieth century, the law and literature movement has been enriched by contributions from the field of French studies.
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