Poetic and Legal Fiction in the Aristotelian Tradition

Eden, Kathy

doi:10.1515/9781400858323

Cited by 144 publications

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“…As Kathy Eden suggests, the need to 'represent a scene enargically' had risen originally in court-related activities and forensic oratory, since, in the absence of first-hand knowledge on the part of judges and jurors, 'the vividness of ocular proof' had to be reproduced through language. 100 Thus, not only was Mill's methodological argument in 'Preface' neither new nor revolutionary; it drew from classical sources 'drearily familiar to any educated person living between the Renaissance and the nineteenth century', as Nadel put it. No reviewer of History questioned his version of the task of the historian.…”

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confidence: 99%

Utility, Reason and Rhetoric: James Mill's Metaphor of the Historian as Judge

Loizides

2019

Utilitas

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James Mill's History of British India (1817) made a rather strange claim: first-hand experience of India was not vital in writing a history – potentially, it led to false ideas about its subject-matter: eyewitnesses are susceptible to bias. The historian was thus to perform his task as a judge: sifting through various testimonies to obtain a ‘more perfect’ conception of the whole than those who witnessed its various parts. Although strange, Mill's claim does not bewilder his readers: after all, Mill was a ‘militant’ exponent of theorizing utilitarianism. I argue that such a reading of Mill's method is injudiciously restrictive. Not only did Mill draw on well-known methodological concerns in contemporary historiographical practice, not necessarily linked with Jeremy Bentham or the Scottish theoretical historiography, but he also seemed to adopt the vocabulary of forensic rhetoric, making his claim that his was a ‘judging’ history more literal than it has been supposed.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Utility, Reason and Rhetoric: James Mill's Metaphor of the Historian as Judge

Loizides

2019

Utilitas

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“…The power of trials to serve as social dramas is indicated by the fact that so many works of prose fiction, drama, film, and television use the courtroom to structure their dramatic action. Indeed, Grossberg could have emphasized his point even more by pointing out the similarities between the rise of drama in ancient Greece and the rituals of its legal system (Eden 1986). According to Grossberg, however, unlike some other social dramas (e.g., political rallies), trials must have "clear endings" (p. 90).…”

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confidence: 99%

Michael Grossberg's Telling Tale: The Social Drama of an Antebellum Custody Case

Thomas

1998

Law soc. inq.

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That point made, I can make the next obligatory move: mention of the 0. J. Simpson trials. The fact that they need to be mentioned-Grossberg succumbs as well-helps to confirm one of Grossberg's largest claims. As the title indicates, the book is about "legal experience." People experience the law, Grossberg argues, as much indirectly as directly; highly publicized trials are an important part of their indirect legal experience. If, on the one hand, the popularization of a trial leads to distortions, on the other, it serves to educate the public about the law. Think, for instance, of how many people were first made aware of various rules of evidence and the differences between civil and criminal proceedings because of the Simpson trials.

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The Position of Poetry: Making and Defending Renaissance Poetics

Kinney

2003

A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture

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Poetic and Legal Fiction in the Aristotelian Tradition

Cited by 144 publications

References 0 publications

Utility, Reason and Rhetoric: James Mill's Metaphor of the Historian as Judge

Utility, Reason and Rhetoric: James Mill's Metaphor of the Historian as Judge

Michael Grossberg's Telling Tale: The Social Drama of an Antebellum Custody Case

The Position of Poetry: Making and Defending Renaissance Poetics

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