Praising the World “by Geometrical Terms”: Legal Metrics, Science and Indicators in Swift’s Voyage to Laputa
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Matteo Nicolini
Matteo Nicolini Matteo Nicolini is Associate Professor of Public Comparative Law in the Department of Law, University of Verona. His fields of research include comparative methodology, European constitutional law, federal studies, judicial review of legislation, law and literature, African law, legal geography, and legal linguistics. He is the author of monographs, essays, and articles in Italian, Spanish, and English. He edited several collections, including (with Francesco Palermo and Enrico Milano)Law, Territory and Conflict Resolution: Law as a Problem and Law as a Solution (The Hague: Brill-Martinus Nijhoff, 2016). As for law-and-literature studies, see “‘n Droë Wit Seisoen in die Stormkaap : André Brink and the Fundamental Rights of the Afrikaners in Apartheid South Africa,” inLiterature and Human Rights: The Law, The Language and The Limitations of Human Rights Discourse , ed. Ian Ward (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015);Narrators of Fables or Framers of the Constitution? The Acallam na SenórachBeyond Time, Place , and Law, inFables of the Law: Fairy Tales in a Legal Context , eds. Daniel Carpi and Marett Leiboff (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016); “From Hard-Copy to Digital Law via ‘Illustrated Courtrooms’: Visualising the History of Legal English,”Pólemos, 11 (2017): 209–245;Turning Vanity Fair into The Coelestial City: England’s Legal Narratives of the Body Politic from Bunyan to Thackeray , inPólemos .Journal of Law, Literature and Culture , 12(1), 2018, 123–145; “Writing for the ‘Scholar and the gentleman’. Language, Society, and Legal Education in Blackstone’sCommentaries ,”The Cardozo Electronic Law Bulletin , 34(2), 2018, 1–32.
Abstract
The article focuses on the epistemological paradigms that underpin the current trends in comparative legal research, by assessing them within the framework of the law-and-literature movement. In particular, it examines the scientific state of mind and the veering towards quantitative approaches which now percolate through legal comparative studies. The article argues that such state of mind is not merely confined to the ambit of comparative law. It has indeed several traits in common with the scientific mentality which has been saturating the knowledge system in Western culture since the seventeenth century. This scientific state of mind was one of Jonathan Swift’s main targets. In Gulliver’s Travels, A Tale of a Tub, and A Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, Swift satirised the seventeenth-century scientific program, which had reduced the advancement of knowledge into a system that is very similar to twenty-first century information systems. This reduction was influenced by Cartesian philosophy and was achieved through methodological innovation. But it was also a consequence of the debate on ancient and modern learning, which had originated in France, but had immediate resonance in England. Swift rejected absolute reliance on quantitative methods: not only does this make it possible to set an equation between law and literature, but it also allows us to bring humanities into the debate about quantification in comparative law – and, as a consequence, to reappraise through literature some common assumptions we usually make about the law.
About the author
Matteo Nicolini
Matteo Nicolini is Associate Professor of Public Comparative Law in the Department of Law, University of Verona. His fields of research include comparative methodology, European constitutional law, federal studies, judicial review of legislation, law and literature, African law, legal geography, and legal linguistics. He is the author of monographs, essays, and articles in Italian, Spanish, and English. He edited several collections, including (with Francesco Palermo and Enrico Milano) Law, Territory and Conflict Resolution: Law as a Problem and Law as a Solution (The Hague: Brill-Martinus Nijhoff, 2016). As for law-and-literature studies, see “‘n Droë Wit Seisoen in die Stormkaap: André Brink and the Fundamental Rights of the Afrikaners in Apartheid South Africa,” in Literature and Human Rights: The Law, The Language and The Limitations of Human Rights Discourse, ed. Ian Ward (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015); Narrators of Fables or Framers of the Constitution? The Acallam na Senórach Beyond Time, Place, and Law, in Fables of the Law: Fairy Tales in a Legal Context, eds. Daniel Carpi and Marett Leiboff (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016); “From Hard-Copy to Digital Law via ‘Illustrated Courtrooms’: Visualising the History of Legal English,” Pólemos, 11 (2017): 209–245; Turning Vanity Fair into The Coelestial City: England’s Legal Narratives of the Body Politic from Bunyan to Thackeray, in Pólemos. Journal of Law, Literature and Culture, 12(1), 2018, 123–145; “Writing for the ‘Scholar and the gentleman’. Language, Society, and Legal Education in Blackstone’s Commentaries,” The Cardozo Electronic Law Bulletin, 34(2), 2018, 1–32.
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Focus: Legal Perspectives in Victorian Literature
- Legal Perspectives in Victorian Literature
- Charles Dickens and the Rhetoric of Law in David Copperfield
- Gentlemanliness, Status and Law in Anthony Trollope’s Lady Anna
- Infanticide in Adam Bede: Hetty Sorrel and the Language of Justice
- The Abstruse Syntax of Law in Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady
- Late-Victorian Experiences with Italian Legislation: Stories of Sex, Madness and Social Commitment
- “Undesirable Immigrants”: The Language of Law and Literature in Joseph Conrad’s “Amy Foster”
- Research
- Robotics and Work: Between Fiction and Reality
- Praising the World “by Geometrical Terms”: Legal Metrics, Science and Indicators in Swift’s Voyage to Laputa
- The Voice of the People in Homer
- Elizabeth the Rhetorician. An Analysis of the Greatest Speeches by the Virgin Queen
- Book Review
- Pier Giuseppe Monateri: Dominus Mundi. Political Sublime and the World Order
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Focus: Legal Perspectives in Victorian Literature
- Legal Perspectives in Victorian Literature
- Charles Dickens and the Rhetoric of Law in David Copperfield
- Gentlemanliness, Status and Law in Anthony Trollope’s Lady Anna
- Infanticide in Adam Bede: Hetty Sorrel and the Language of Justice
- The Abstruse Syntax of Law in Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady
- Late-Victorian Experiences with Italian Legislation: Stories of Sex, Madness and Social Commitment
- “Undesirable Immigrants”: The Language of Law and Literature in Joseph Conrad’s “Amy Foster”
- Research
- Robotics and Work: Between Fiction and Reality
- Praising the World “by Geometrical Terms”: Legal Metrics, Science and Indicators in Swift’s Voyage to Laputa
- The Voice of the People in Homer
- Elizabeth the Rhetorician. An Analysis of the Greatest Speeches by the Virgin Queen
- Book Review
- Pier Giuseppe Monateri: Dominus Mundi. Political Sublime and the World Order
