CRC 1385: Law and Literature - A03: The Law of Experiential Psychology. The Pitaval as Literature of Social Milieu and the Law Court between 1750 and 1850

Basic data for this project

Description

The collection of criminal cases Gayot de Pitaval began in 1734 constitutes a paradigmatic edition of belletristically reworked legal texts. The Pitaval collections thus provide material that lends itself to an investigation of explanatory patterns of criminal behavior and their foundation in the anthropology of the period. The project will look specifically at a) the interrelations between situational explanations in narrative literature and concurrent debates in (criminal) law; b) the infiltration of psychological semiotics into legal practice and theory; and c) the transformation of rhetorical topoi in characterization towards an empirical psychology.