LAW, LITERATURE, AND TRANSLATION CONFERENCE
TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN 9-10th of June 2012
There is no law without literature for law is also literature. Irish druids were not only poets: they were also invested with judicial authority. Still to this day, literature and translation of literature often deal with law, but very often the focus lies on the many ways of breaking the law. Especially in Ireland, poets and jurists are both celebrated and blamed for their talents in using words. Both are endowed with the power to charm their audience, sometimes at the cost of truth. The training of both a jurist and a poet involves a certain degree of self-characterization formed and influenced by culture. Law and literature, like all the humanities, share a common interest in the human experience and they look into what makes them specifically human. However, law aims at the clarity of an objective science whereas the power of literature and its translation rely on emotion and sensitivity of interpretation. Unlike what is expected from law, they feed on ambivalence, ambiguity, paradox and contradiction. Both Law and Literature are caught in the extensive possibilities but also the limitations of both written and spoken words. This conference aims to create an interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars of law, literature, and translation studies, and it seeks to explore the various interactions between these disciplines. It takes a broad approach to the fields of law, literature, and literary translation, welcoming papers considering key areas such as the following (and beyond):
· Law in literature
legal and criminal figures in literature
crime and punishment
writers and criminals
heroes and public offenders…
· Law of literature
censorship
freedom of expression
freedom of information
libel and defamation
ethics
publishing issues
copyright issues
· Law as literature
the rhetoric of law
the narrative of law
law as a performing art
staging law
law as performance
criminal confessions and jurists’ memoirs
legal reading and interpretation
translating law and comparative law
Law and translation Ownership
Copyright law
Questions of originality
An abstract of no more than 500 words should be emailed to Dr Peter Arnds (arndsp@tcd.ie) and Dr Sandrine Brisset (brissesm@tcd.ie) by the 1st of November 2011.
