The Garden as the Law in the Renaissance: A nature metaphor in a legal setting
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Daniela Carpi,
Daniela Carpi is Full Professor of English Literature at the Faculty of Foreign Literatures, Department of English Studies, University of Verona. Her fields of research are: Renaissance theatre, critical theory, postmodernism, law and literature, literature and science, literature and visual arts. She collaborates with Ombre Corte in Verona, where she directs a section “Culture” devoted to comparative criticism and a section “Agon” on law and culture; with DeGruyter in Berlin, where she edits (with professor Klaus Stierstorfer) the series “Law and Literature.” She is the Coordinator of the Doctoral Course in English Studies at the University of Verona. She is in the scientific board of the journals
Symbolism: a Journal of Critical Aesthetics (New York),Anglistik (Heidelberg),La torre di Babele (Parma),Law and Humanities (Warwick),Cardozo Law Bulletin (University of Trento). She has founded the Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura (AIDEL), which she presides. Among her most recent publications she has edited the volumes:The Concept of Equity: an Interdisciplinary Assessment (Heidelberg: Winter, 2007);Practising Equity, Addressing Law (Heidelberg: Winter, 2008);Bioethics and Biolaw through Literature (Berlin/Boston: DeGruyter, 2011).
Abstract
Among the many visual images we use for the law the garden is an outstanding one. The topos of the garden has a wide semantic range: it is the eternal metaphor of life and it is an ethical image indicating the active behavioral rules man has to follow. The myth of the garden arises connected to a structural system put at man’s disposal, however a system which entails limits and limitations. The action of shaping nature is connected with a sort of violence imposed on nature: the garden becomes man’s grand scenario where man challenges God in his ambition to modify and regulate nature. In the case of both garden and law a creation according to certain rules is implied and these rules must be respected unless the garden and the juridical system wither and die. I here explore the relationship between the concept of garden/landscape through which law is conceived and from which it draws meaning.
About the author
Daniela Carpi is Full Professor of English Literature at the Faculty of Foreign Literatures, Department of English Studies, University of Verona. Her fields of research are: Renaissance theatre, critical theory, postmodernism, law and literature, literature and science, literature and visual arts. She collaborates with Ombre Corte in Verona, where she directs a section “Culture” devoted to comparative criticism and a section “Agon” on law and culture; with DeGruyter in Berlin, where she edits (with professor Klaus Stierstorfer) the series “Law and Literature.” She is the Coordinator of the Doctoral Course in English Studies at the University of Verona. She is in the scientific board of the journals Symbolism: a Journal of Critical Aesthetics (New York), Anglistik (Heidelberg), La torre di Babele (Parma), Law and Humanities (Warwick), Cardozo Law Bulletin (University of Trento). She has founded the Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura (AIDEL), which she presides. Among her most recent publications she has edited the volumes: The Concept of Equity: an Interdisciplinary Assessment (Heidelberg: Winter, 2007); Practising Equity, Addressing Law (Heidelberg: Winter, 2008); Bioethics and Biolaw through Literature (Berlin/Boston: DeGruyter, 2011).
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Focus: Legal Metaphor
- Crossroads? Some Remarks on the Future of Law and Literature
- The Garden as the Law in the Renaissance: A nature metaphor in a legal setting
- The Matter of Metaphor in Language and Law
- Theatrical Role-Playing, Crime and Punishment in Peter Ackroyd’s Dan Leno and The Limehouse Golem (1994)
- Reflexions at the Margin of “Human Rights from a Philosophical Point of View” by Jeanne Hersch
- Women's Reproductive Rights: A literary perspective
- Book Reviews
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Focus: Legal Metaphor
- Crossroads? Some Remarks on the Future of Law and Literature
- The Garden as the Law in the Renaissance: A nature metaphor in a legal setting
- The Matter of Metaphor in Language and Law
- Theatrical Role-Playing, Crime and Punishment in Peter Ackroyd’s Dan Leno and The Limehouse Golem (1994)
- Reflexions at the Margin of “Human Rights from a Philosophical Point of View” by Jeanne Hersch
- Women's Reproductive Rights: A literary perspective
- Book Reviews
