Law as Literature, Literature as Law c. 1200–1700

INTRODUCTION

Clare Egan and Sarah B. White

PART 1: THE POETIC AND THE EPISODIC: LEGAL LEARNING, MNEMONIC DEVICES, AND LITERARY TROPES        

1.1 Damp and Disorderly? Approaching ‘Part One’ of the Très ancien coutumier of Normandy from a Comparative Perspective

William Eves  

1.2 Memory and Verse in Twelfth-Century Austrian Procedural Writing

Sarah B. White      

1.3 Medieval Poetry in Hostiensis’s Lectura super decretalibus (1270): Literature as Law or Literature in Law? Further Considerations on the Use of Verses by the Glossators

David De Concilio     

1.4 The Scandal of the Stolen Purse: Narration, Reception, and the Literality of Crime in a Late-medieval Italian Court

Lorenzo Caravaggi    

PART 2. AT THE STAR CHAMBER, AT THE GLOBE: LAW AS PERFORMANCE AND STAGING THE LAW    

2.1 ‘You have seen the high shrieve’s warrant’: Legal Documents as Props in Star Chamber and Thomas of Woodstock

 Lucy J. S. Clarke       

2.2. ‘Libellous Articles’: Defamatory Manipulations of the Law in Early Modern England

 Clare Egan    

2.3 ‘All is but a Play’? Performance and the Star Chamber

Ian Williams   

PART 3. LEGAL NARRATIVES AND LITERARY CHARACTERS: SHAPING SOCIETAL PERCEPTIONS OF JUSTICE, GENDER AND POWER         

3.1 The Will and the Voice: Constructing Female Speaking Subjects in Late Medieval Scotland

Ebba Strutzenbladh  

3.2 ‘My bed shall be abused, my coffers ransacked, my reputation gnawed at!’: The Representation of Community Justice in The Merry Wives of Windsor

David Johnson      

3.3 Bel-imperia’s Literary Revenge and Counterlegal Justice Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy

Jayoon Byeon 

3.4 The Law in Performance: Middleton’s Michelmas Term and Edward’s Boys

Alison Findlay

AFTERWORD: ‘LAW AS LITERATURE, LITERATURE AS LAW: WHAT’S IN A CONJUNCTION?’

 Lorna Hutson

Biography

Clare Egan is a Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Literature at Lancaster University, United Kingdom. She specialises in medieval to early modern performance, especially in relation to defamation, as explored in her recent monograph Performing Provincial Libel: Community Conflict in Early Modern England (2025). Prior to her current post, she was a research assistant at the University of Huddersfield and a visiting lecturer in early modern drama and the law at the University of Southampton. Clare completed her BA Hons English Literature, AHRC-funded MA in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, and AHRC-funded PhD on early modern libel at the University of Southampton. 

Sarah B. White is an Assistant Professor in the Law of Trusts and Co-Director of the History of Law and Governance Centre at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. She specialises in medieval legal and ecclesiastical history, with expertise in court procedure, the legal profession, and the intersection of law and religion. Prior to her current post, she was a Lecturer in Medieval History at Lancaster University and a Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews on the ERC-funded comparative legal history project: Civil Law, Common Law, Customary Law. Sarah earned her BA Hons. in Medieval Studies at the University of Victoria, followed by an MA at the University of Toronto and a PhD in legal history at the University of St Andrews.