Trials in Literature

This entry discusses the representation of trial scenes and trial narratives in literature. The first section outlines the pervasiveness of the trial motif in literary history, offering a thematic account of this literary interest. Through a mix of canonical and popular, ancient and modern, examples, it argues that such trials typically examine the relationship between law and justice. Problematizing the discovery of truth through legal process is a notable concern, and satire is a prominent vehicle for critique. This sustained literary engagement is placed in the context of the cultural memorialisation of trials and the avid consumption of sensational trials in modernity. The second part of the entry addresses the major critical approaches to the study of trials within Law and Literature, principally hermeneutic, narrative, historicist, and psychoanalytic studies. Critical studies of authors and books put on trial demonstrate law’s anxious response to literary expression.