Death Sentences
Literature and State Killing
Edited by Birte Christ and Ève Morisi
Click cover to enlarge Buy hardback at: Buy paperback at: Booksellers & libraries: | Studies In Comparative Literature 49 Legenda 23 April 2019 • 258pp ISBN: 978-1-781885-57-4 (hardback) • RRP £80, $110, €95 ISBN: 978-1-781885-58-1 (paperback, 13 December 2021) • RRP £10.99, $14.99, €13.49 ISBN: 978-1-781885-59-8 (JSTOR ebook) Access online: Books@JSTOR In addition to its original library hardback edition, this title is now on sale in the new student-priced Legenda paperback range. As Albert Camus once remarked: 'Of capital punishment, people write only [...] in a low voice.’ Journalists and state officials alike use a carefully policed language when making any reference to the death penalty: when human beings are to be executed by the state, some key actors talk about what will be done in terms of legalities and procedures. Does fiction provide a counterbalance for that discretion, or simply echo it? What other perspectives can it bring into the foreground, and can literary language express a response to a supposedly necessary horror, or a terrible injustice, which other voices or media cannot? Considering a range of major works from across Western Europe and the United States, from the 18th century until the present day, Death Sentences investigates the contribution of poetics to our understanding, past and present, of capital punishment. The sophisticated literary representations found in Hugo, Dostoevsky, Wilde, Kafka, Mailer, King and others offer a privileged vantage point from which to illuminate and critique a unique institution which itself relies heavily on spectacle and representation to be operative and legitimized. Birte Christ is Assistant Professor of American Literature and Culture at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen. Ève Morisi is Associate Professor of French and Fellow of St Hugh’s College at the University of Oxford. Contents:
Bibliography entry: Christ, Birte, and Ève Morisi (eds), Death Sentences: Literature and State Killing, Studies In Comparative Literature, 49 (Legenda, 2019) First footnote reference: 35 Death Sentences: Literature and State Killing, ed. by Birte Christ and Ève Morisi, Studies In Comparative Literature, 49 (Legenda, 2019), p. 21. Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Christ and Morisi, p. 47. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) Bibliography entry: Christ, Birte, and Ève Morisi (eds). 2019. Death Sentences: Literature and State Killing, Studies In Comparative Literature, 49 (Legenda) Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Christ and Morisi 2019: 21). Example footnote reference: 35 Christ and Morisi 2019: 21. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) This title is distributed on behalf of MHRA by Ingram’s. Booksellers and libraries can order direct from Ingram by setting up an ipage Account: click here for more. Permanent link to this title: www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Death-Sentences www.mhra.org.uk/publications/sicl-49 |