법과 문학 연구—성과와 점검

Abstract

Law and literature appeared in the past thirty years or so as a nexus of interdisciplinary projects. The study of law and literature reflected the tremendous change in the academic field that had put much emphasis on interdisciplinary study. Consequently, the collective effort of law and literature had a great impact on revealing the nature of law as well as literature itself. The “law and literature movement” that had arisen in the 1980s in the United States was based on the belief that law needs to go beyond its boundary to actively seek the humanistic value from literature. Thus the proponents of law and literature emphasized that the humanistic value and interpretive techniques that literature embodies can have a validity in the exploration of law in the ways in which meaning is created. The study of law and literature had gone through many changes along with the development of interdisciplinary perspective. In the early 1990s hermeneutics was introduced into the study of law, leading to more diverse interpretations of the text of law. Along with this, the literary concept of narrative was given much attention in the sense that law can be explained by stories. Recently, the study of law and literature was increasingly overshadowed by the application of culture or cultural studies into law. Being a critical response to the nexus of law and literature, this new development moved beyond the realm of literature by relating law to culture, while asserting that law might be understood through culture. All these approaches, however, responded to a desire to bring legal and humanistic thought together, and in this process, law and literature came to the recognition of the validity of the interdisciplinary project. Despite their intrinsic difference, law and literature demonstrated the positive aspect of the collaborative effort by breaking down the academic barrier.