Marco Wan

Masculinity and the Trials of Modern Fiction

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

How do lawyers, judges and jurors read novels? And what is at stake when literature and law confront each other in the courtroom? Nineteenth-century England and France are remembered for their active legal prosecution of literature, and this book examines the ways in which five novels were interpreted in the courtroom: Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Paul Bonnetain's Charlot s'amuse, Henry Vizetelly's English translations of Émile Zola's La Terre, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness. It argues that each of these novels attracted legal censure because they presented figures of sexual dissidence - the androgyne, the onanist or masturbator, the patricide, the homosexual, and the lesbian - that called into question an increasingly fragile normative, middle-class masculinity.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales)
• Seitenzahl: 177
• Erscheinungstermin: 11. Mai 2018
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 234mm x 156mm x 10mm
• Gewicht: 272g
• ISBN-13: 9781138606166
• ISBN-10: 1138606162
• Artikelnr.: 52641662

Autorenporträt

Marco Wan is Associate Professor of Law and Honorary Associate Professor of English at the University of Hong Kong.

Inhaltsangabe

1. Introduction: Legal Interpretation, Gender and the Novel
2. The Madame Bovary Trial: Androgyny and Realism's 'Lascivious Painting'
3. The Charlot s'amuse Trial: Masturbation and the Scandal of Naturalist
Fiction in France
4. The Henry Vizetelly Trials: Patricide and Obscene French Novels in
England
5. The Oscar Wilde Trials: The Sodomite, 'Literary' Evidence and 'Legal'
Interpretation
6. The Well of Loneliness Trials: Lesbianism, Male Homosexuality and the
Return of the Repressed.