The Criminal Spectre in Law, Literature and Aesthetics: Incriminating Subjects / Edition 1

by Peter J. Hutchings

Overview

This book analyses the legal and aesthetic discourses that combine to shape the image of the criminal, and that image's contemporary endurance. The author traces the roots of contemporary ideas about criminality back to legal, philosophical and aesthetic concepts originating in the nineteenth century. Building on the ideas of Foucault and Walter Benjamin, Hutchings argues that the criminal, as constructed in places such as popular crime stories or the law of insanity, became an obsession which haunted nineteenth century thought.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415236065
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/18/2001
Series:	Routledge Advances in Sociology , #2
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: 'This subject of ghosts' 2. Spectacularizing crime, ghostwriting the law 3. Mad, murderous and dangerous to know 4. The feminine phantom: women, crime and fantasy 5. Modern forensics: photography and other suspects 6. The genius of crime