Giustizia e letteratura III

The book explores and links different cultures, disciplines and perspectives, with a far more original and broad approach to the relations between “Justice” and “Literature” than more traditional works focused on “Law” and “Literature”. The many contributions from writers, literature and movie critics, criminologists, and criminal law practitioners and scholars, draw a complex and interdisciplinary path through primary texts of Italian and international literature, with the aim of prompting readers’ reflections about core issues related to law, crime, and responsibility. Through the analysis of masterpieces of literature, such as Dante’s “Comedy”, Victor Hugo’s, Alexandre Dumas’, Charles Dickens’, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s novels, as well as Cormac McCarthy’s narratives, this book aims at stimulating dialogue and debate, as well as critical abilities and a deep-rooted sense of justice, amongst both law professionals and citizens at large. Literature and other forms of narration are presented here as a privileged key to approach long-standing questions about (amongst other) causes and consequences of crime; victimization and coping mechanisms; the role of criminal law and criminal proceedings; legalism and equity; law and ethics; the ‘time’ of justice; freedom, responsibility, culpability and forgiveness; rules, legality, socialization and culture; the impact of prejudice and of existing balances of power on the application of the law; social and legal mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion; gender issues and legal systems; and so on. A whole section (Part I) is devoted to a general analysis of the complex relations that intertwine issues of justice and human dignity respect, on one hand, and complex concepts such as narrative, literature, language, style, narrativity, form, exemplarity, on the other. Through this quest for justice in literature and arts, the volume proposes a wider cultural and research project which defies traditional formalistic and retributive approaches to criminal law, in order to open new perspectives for restorative and reintegrative strategies.