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Can I read Criminal Conversations : Sentimentality and Nineteenth-century Legal Stories of Adultery on EtoBox?
Criminal Conversations : Sentimentality and Nineteenth-century Legal Stories of Adultery by Korobkin, Laura Hanft is a book available to read on EtoBox.
What is Criminal Conversations : Sentimentality and Nineteenth-century Legal Stories of Adultery about?
Storytelling is an essential aspect of any legal case. But what kinds of stories win cases, and why? Criminal Conversations explores sentimentality as both a literary genre and a rhetorical strategy in the novels and courtrooms of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. By focusing on "criminal conversation"--the civil tort whereby a cuckold sues his wife's lover to for damages to his property rights from the adultery--Korobkin argues that literary discourse, used in the courtroom, affects the outcomes of legal cases. She shows how lawyers used sentimentality strategically to guide juries in reaching verdicts, and how appellate courts appropriated the rhetoric, plots, and characters of sentimental fiction to redefine husbands' and wives' marital obligations. Criminal Conversations begins by tracking the legal fictions that were part of the civil tort of adultery from its origins in the English Renaissance. Korobkin then examines in detail the final arguments at Henry Ward Beecher's sensational criminal conversation trial of 1874-1875. The final part of the book takes up a series of appellate decisions that decided whether women could bring criminal conversation cases
- Author
- Korobkin, Laura Hanft
- Publisher
- New York: Columbia University Press
- Published
- 1998
- Language
- EN
- ISBN
- 9780231105095
- Subjects
- Literary Fiction, History, Fiction
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