Law, Literature and History

Law and literature is a vital engagement, in the strictest sense of the word. Constantly evolving as it reaches further across disciplinary margins. The purpose of this article is to take a closer look at one such reach; into history. From both sides, it might be supposed. Revisiting two historical texts, and two modern texts set in the past. The first part of the article explores the idea of writing history, more particularly still the possibility that it might be an intrinsically literary enterprise. The second and third parts then revisit these historical texts. In part two, we will re-read Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Milton's Samson Agonistes. And then, in part three, two plays written by Caryl Churchill, both set in the seventeenth-century. For the same essential reason; to contemplate the possibility that reading texts such as these might make us better historians, whilst also perhaps making us better literary critics, and better lawyers, too.