Law and Justice in Literature, Film and Theater

Karen-Margrethe Simonsen, Aarhus University, Denmark.

This volume is a Nordic contribution to research on law and humanities. It treats the legal culture of the Nordic countries through intensive analyses of canonical Nordic artworks. Law and justice have always been important issues in Nordic literature, film and theater from the Icelandic sagas through Ludvig Holberg and Henrik Ibsen to Lars Noréns theatre and Lars von Trier's Dogme films of today. This book strives to answer two fundamental questions: Is there a special Nordic justice? And what does the legal and literary/aesthetic culture of the North mean for the concept of law and justice and for the understanding of the interdisciplinary exchange of law and humanities?

The concept of law and literature as a research area was originally developed in countries of common law. This book investigates law and humanities from a different legal tradition, and contributes thus both to the discussion of the general and the comparative studies of law and humanities.

The interdisciplinary series Law & Literature takes a systematic look at the correlation between literature and the law. The studies presented in this series analyze the complex interrelation between two cultural spheres which are not only at the basis of Western Culture and Society, but share in a common focus on texts. Bringing together contributions by jurists, historians of law, legal philosophers, and specialists in literary and cultural studies, this series reflects a trend in current inter- and transdisciplinary research which has recently shown rapid growth both in Europe and the United States.