Law and Literature
An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Medieval Texts
Ignazio Alessi, Gavino Scala (eds)
- Pages: 243 p.
- Size:156 x 234 mm
- Language(s):English, French
- Publication Year:2026
- € 80,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-62034-3
- Paperback
- Forthcoming (Apr/26)
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- ISBN: 978-2-503-62035-0
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An interdisciplinary collection of original essays by both new and established scholars that surveys the complex relationship between law and literature in the Middles Ages.
Ignazio Alessi is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Geneva. He holds a law degree from the University of Palermo and a Ph.D. in legal history from the same university and the EHESS of Paris. He was a junior researcher at the University of Fribourg (CH) and a visiting scholar at the Centre Relais Culture Europe in Paris and at Wolfons College, University of Oxford.
Gavino Scala is a postdoctoral researcher at University of Geneva. He has a joint Ph.D. in Romance Philology at University of Siena and University of Zurich. He was postdoctoral researcher at University of Fribourg (CH).
Throughout history, law and literature have always been in constant dialogue, sharing significant connections and exerting mutual influences. Both are artificial creations, products of human imagination that use language and metaphors to build meanings and shape the world around us. In the Middle Ages, the proximity of these two genres is even more pronounced. This is not only because many literary figures were also jurists, but also because medieval legal texts can be classified as a distinct literary genre known as ‘legal literature’. Additionally, medieval jurists did not hesitate to draw upon literary texts, understood as genuine sources of law (‘auctoritates morales’), to fill gaps in their legal knowledge.
The contributions collected in this volume examine precisely this intersection between law and literature in medieval literary and legal texts. The volume follows four axes: law in literature, law as literature, literature in law, and literature as Law. The volume aims to raise awareness of the proximity of two apparently distant worlds and to provide a perspective for interdisciplinary analysis that transcends traditional rigid barriers.
Foreword
SARA MENZINGER
Introduction
IGNAZIO ALESSI and GAVINO SCALA
‘Par bataille ou par juise’. Ordeal by Combat in Thirteenth-Century Arthurian Prose Romances
CLAUDIO LAGOMARSINI
La fiction judiciaire amoureuse (XIIe-XVe s.). enjeux procéduraux
CASSANDRE CRESPIN
(Don’t) call me by your name. Lexical Gleanings of ‘Droit Non’
MARTA MILAZZO
Procès du loup, procès de l’homme. la justice dans Le valet aus douze femes
FEDERICO NOVELLO
Le meurtre de Lancelot Ier dans la fin particulière des témoins Paris, Ars. 3348 et New Haven, Beineke Library, MS 227 de l’Estoire del Saint Graal. une vendetta à l'épreuve du droit féodal
DAVIDE NOVATI
Acoustic Effects and Kinesic Imagination in Archbishop Wulfstan of York’s Legal Writing
CHEN CUI
Exploring Legal and Linguistic Dimensions in Late Medieval English Jurisprudence. William Lyndwood’s Provinciale and Inheritance Practices
MATTHEW CLEARY
Conclusions. Literature as a Field of Legal Experimentation
NOËLLE-LAETITIA PERRET and ADRIEN WYSSBROD