Volume 18, Issue 1 - Focus: Revenge and the Law

If revenge functions to compensate for inequity arising from an initial transgression, thereby restoring equity, can we speak of restoration of an equitable social or personal situation in Janet Lewis’s novel The Wife of Martin Guerre (1941)? This work belongs to Janet Lewis’s series of three novels based on “Cases of Circumstantial Evidence”, of which The Wife of Martin Guerre is the most famous. It concerns the case of Martin Guerre, the sixteenth-century French peasant who apparently returned home to his wife after a long absence but was later revealed to be an impostor. The wife at first believes that the impostor is indeed her husband, then starts to have doubts, gathers information to contest his assertions, develops an exaggerated religious sense of guilt for the sin of adultery, and successfully sues him, leading to his being hanged. Several questions arise: is she justified in feeling guilty for having given in to sexual attraction, thus blinding herself to the available clues pointing to the impostor’s deception? Can the outcome be considered an equitable result, despite the fact that the false Martin Guerre was actually a good administrator, dealing fairly both with his subjects and his wife, and thus created a much more harmonious life for everybody than the lawful husband had done? I consider the story as a case of revenge stemming from an incorrect religious perspective, or alternatively narcissistic damage, which does not bring about redress of a tort, but rather social unhappiness.

Hamlet is a troubling piece. In this essay the reasons of internal ambiguity are analyzed through the conceptual prism of revenge. Moving from the well-known dispute between T.S. Eliot and C. Schmitt, the Author proposes an anti-canonical reading of the themes of the tragedy by reconstituting its socio-legal context. The aim is to bring to the surface legal elements which would be combined with the political facts already described by Schmitt in order to aid and amplify the validity of his argumentative approach. The historical transition from a documentary culture to a revenge culture, that marked the English imaginative world in Renaissance and post-Renaissance time, allows the interpreter to explain the excess not contained by Hamlet’s plot not only with the figures of the taboo of the Queen and the taboo of the Avenger (outlined by Schmitt in his work Hamlet or Hecuba ), but also with a new and yet unexplored taboo of justice.

This essay examines the notion of constitutional deliverance within the Victorian settlement. The expression points to the way constitutional arrangements react to threats that may disrupt the politico-legal order. Rooted in constitutional morality, it entails executing justice, restoring order, and protecting individuals’ rights and freedoms. To this end, it analyses Phineas Finn , Phineas Redux , and The Prime Minister , i.e. three of the six Anthony Trollope’s Palliser Novels , and explores whether the freedom of the press executed constitutional deliverance in the Victorian era. The essay will focus on Mr Quintus Slide, the editor of the People’s Banner , whose acts of moralisation seem to fit into the (political and biblical) notion of deliverance. The article argues that Slide used the press not to deliver the Nation, but to avenge his own interests. In so doing, he contradicted the idea of constitutional deliverance as embedded in Parliament, where the anointed Monarch summons His body politic to execute justice and protect it.

The essay deals with the law and revenge issue, questioning the fundamental assumption according to which the law, by its own nature, should act as a substitute for vengeance. Provided that both law and revenge have their common grounds on the different, and at times conflicting, feelings of resentment and loyalty, the paper maintains that law can prevent revenge only if it is trusted by the victims, being itself a part to a bond of loyalty. Graham Greene’s 1958 “entertainment” Our Man in Havana is chosen as a reference scenario. The paper analyses the characters’ attitudes towards the law, their resentments, and their bonds of loyalty, and investigates the emotional scenario behind the two revenges mentioned in the novel. Finally, the essay maintains that each person’s degree of trust in the law, and therefore their willingness to renounce revenge, depends on that person’s own choices and inner feelings about themselves and the community.

Justice has been an aspiration and, at the same time, a temptation for humans since the beginning. The tendency to resolve disputes in a simple and even brutal manner has been progressively replaced by the creation of a system of rules, useful to compress and eliminate the excesses of a restorative approach in a rebalancing function, often governed by revenge. Revengeful action, however, has remained in common perception as a more effective remedy than that provided by the norm and has continued to influence the actions of the servants of the law themselves. The figure of the “dirty” detective has become popular in noir literature, bringing with it all the suffering and uncertainty associated with the coexistence of justice and revenge as a means of restoring balance. A question lies behind the dilemmas of the servant of the law: does good or evil prevail in our society?

James Joyce’s “Counterparts” is a poignant exploration of the multifaceted themes of anger, revenge, and justice within the backdrop of early twentieth century Dublin. The story takes the reader on a journey through the life of Mr. Farrington, whose struggles embody those of an average Irish worker in the face of British imperialism and societal pressures. Farrington’s gradual transformation from a man burdened by anger into one consumed by an insatiable thirst for revenge serves as a stark commentary on the corrosive effects of his predicament. As the narrative unfolds, it becomes increasingly evident that the boundary between anger and revenge is a fine line, easily blurred in the tumultuous world of Mr. Farrington. The story challenges readers to consider the legitimacy of his emotions and actions, highlighting the complexities of the human psyche when subjected to perceived injustices. Farrington’s impulsive and misguided attempts at revenge only serve to underscore the tragic nature of his character, exemplifying the societal constraints that restrict his agency and expression. “Counterparts” ultimately paints a bleak picture of justice, where Farrington’s quest for revenge takes on a violent and delusional character that fails to address the core issues of perceived injustices. His inability to channel his anger into a purposeful course of action mirrors the broader sense of disempowerment experienced by many Irish citizens in Joyce’s time.

Why do we strike intrinsically inoffensive objects when they intrude upon our lives? Why, for example, do we kick the car when it breaks down, or slap the chair that pinches our finger against the table, or strike the open door that collides with our head? In this essay, I ask whether this phenomenon, which I call the performance of “pure object revenge”, might arise from an impulse to execute vindicatory, and in that sense vengeful, justice upon the offending object. My new explanation for the phenomenon is that we strike the offending object because it has no life but has briefly acted as if it were alive. It therefore reminds us in the brief moment of its offence that our bodies are also inanimate dust and will return to dust and in the meantime are only briefly animated. In short, my argument is that we strike the object because it is a memento mori. To test and support this, I offer a reading of the “closet scene” at the centre of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to illustrate the performative impulse to banish inanimate objects at the threshold of the living and the dead.

In January 2020, Vanessa Springora published Consent, an unusual memoir that discloses the elaborated version of a personal story. Springora was 14 years old when she met the 50-year-old Gabriel Matzneff, a well-known French writer. Thirty years later, she decided to take back the agency that she claims was taken from her, with the artilleries of literature. While closely following Springora’s narrative, the paper focuses on the emergence of a new “memoir genre”, which besides presenting a platform for personal redemption, instigated an important shift within the French public opinion regarding the nature of consent, and ignited significant legal reform in this regard. As will be elaborated, Consent and other works in similar spirit appositely demonstrate the power of law to stimulate certain narrative patterns, and the power of stories to influence cultural atmosphere which leads to legal changes.

This article explores diverse models of legal interpretation and their impact on the intersection of law and literature. Beginning with narrative naturalism and the Tarskian Correspondence Model, it contrasts with the Symphonic model’s contemporary perspective, recognizing the nuances of legal concepts. Then, it examines Heraclitean Realism and the Provocative Tapestry Model as challenges to the traditional concept of legal system. While realism acknowledges subjectivity, the Provocative Tapestry Model seeks revolutionary change. In comparative law, the Tarskian Model aligns with linguistic analysis, the Symphonic Model with harmonizing approaches, the Living Tapestry Model with dynamic perspectives, and the Provocative Tapestry Model with confronting conflicts. These diverse interpretation lenses influence cross-cultural legal understanding in comparative law methods, creating a multifaceted perspective. The conclusion examines narrative tropes in each interpretation, revealing storytelling elements and rhetorical strategies shaping legal traditions.

This paper investigates the role of the dark knight archetype in the theory of sovereignty. The dark knight archetype has repeatedly emerged in popular culture, but has never been fully explored in jurisprudence and political theory. The aim is to develop a new visual method to bridge the distance between the theory and the tropes that have historically been used to create and justify the notion of sovereignty. Sovereignty is understood here not only as a founding concept of modern legal theory, but also as a trope: a special kind of narrative, illustrated, capable of being modernized, and yet maintaining its initial trends; one that is foundational and colonial, and capable of institutionalizing subjects and sovereigns. Strategically following the works of Agamben, Benjamin, Jung and Warburg, this paper analyses – in a psychoanalytical sense – the unconscious dimensions of sovereignty from evidence collected in popular culture and political history. From fallen medieval knights to Zorro; from fascist Blackshirts to Darth Vader, this paper examines the pervasive repetition of dark knight figures in Western tropes of sovereignty and its consequences.