'High Culture and Good Literature'

In the arts you often find yourself at events and conferences with speakers and attendees from other disciplines; sometimes history, or language studies, and sometimes it is a discipline like Media.

There has, historically, been a presentation of Media studies as something which is somehow easier or less worthy than the study of history or literature.  It has been designated as the 'soft' option or somehow easier than literary engagement because it related to a field of study which constitutes 'low culture.' 

Despite the fact that I fall within what is arguably one of the most stereotypically 'academic' fields, engaging with the classical English canon of Dickens et al, I whole heartily disagree with the disparagement of media and related fields as somehow constituting 'low' culture. 

Despite the current opinion of the Victorian novel, of Doyle and Dicken's constituting some of the highest forms of cultural exposition, the fact is that few of those who wrote novels that are now considered canonically significant were attempting to write in some effort to create 'high' culture.  They were written for the general public and serialised in papers and magazines for mass consumption.  In much the same way that Shakespeare's plays were of contemporaneous universal appeal, so Dicken's in his own time was 'Mister Popular Sentiment.'  They wrote mysteries, intrigues, thrillers, and bildunsgromen meant for the delectation of the public and their perennial appeal is testimony to the skill of their writers.  In the 1996 film Shakespeare in Love which, although fictional, expressed the opinion of the period when playwrites were considered 'vegrants and peddlers of bombast' - and given the number of bawdy jokes in Shakespeare's plays it is hardly surprising.  

Literature was the 'media' of the past, they are ways of representing the human experience in a way that it accessible to the common man, and so it is perhaps time to re-imagine the definition of the 'canon of literature' as the expression of imaginative culture to a 'canon of human experience' which can encompass the new and adaptive media world in which we now live.  It is a world in which internet fictions and collective story telling are as legitimate a representation of writing talent as anything which is released from a publishing house or where serialised television shows imagine the ideal human future in the way that Star Trek or Doctor Who present man kinds engagement with the universe in the same way that Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World or 1984 expose the hopes and frailties of human kind. 

However, that is not to say that television and film, which constitute the modern equivalent, have no way of entering the modern consciousness in the same manner that Sherlock Holmes, Oliver Twist or even Macbeth have become committed to the annals of history.  If canonicity if based upon the volume of contemporaneous uptake then television shows like Seinfeld, Dallas, and friends will become part of the TV age's cultural legacy; film series like Bat Man, Avatar, and Titanic will represent the theatrical contribution of the digital generation.  I do worry about the future literature classes that will call for historical commentary on a generation which has 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight as top selling literary works but to turn up your nose at the study of the Media and related fields is to prove yourself as short sighted as those who burnt books or banned plays - they are the modern expression of imagination, as new and innovative as plays or 3 volume novels were in their own times. 

While not every play or book ever written is remembered; those which best reflect human experiences have become the canon, we must be careful not to lose a powerful tool of cultural examination, that will be used by future generations, due to our own intellectual snobbery by consigning television, film and games to the cultural scrape heap simply because we do not see their immediate cultural significance.  

The Criminal Female

I have spent the time since the Viva pouring over a text from 1895,  The Female Offender, by Professor Caesar Lombroso, part of the Criminology Series published T. Fisher of London.  I stumbled upon it in the Library, I believe it’s an original and I am pretty sure it should be in short loan not full loan, since I now have it until October.

The introduction, written by W. Douglas Morrison, expresses the surety that Lombroso’s study of criminal anatomy will shed light on what creates and defines an offender and allow the penal system to better administer justice.  I find it incredibly interesting that in an introduction to a ‘scientific’ text about the physical deformities of female offenders, Morrison manages to make it through the entire introduction only mentioning female offenders once.

Morrison does however point out the rather interesting statistic that in the US, in 1850, 6,737 (1:3,442) people were housed in prison accommodation for a variety of reasons, by 1890 this number had swelled to 82,329, (1:757) and this increased was described contemporaneously as ‘a tide that has no ebb.’  A huge increase by anyone’s standards, although nothing to today’s US prison population.

Lombroso’s study examined a number of races and nationalities, with some measure of outsourcing of the post mortem examinations to various countries.   The monograph upon which the entire 620 page study is founded studied the anatomy of:

• 26 skulls and 5 skeletons in the possession of Signor Scarenzi  (All prostitutes)
• 60 subjects who died in a prison in Turin, examined by Messrs. Varaglia and Silva
• 17 in Rome, examined by Mingazzini and Ardú

Constituting

• 4 Prostitutes
• 20 Infantacides
• 2 Complicity in Rape
• 14 theft 
• 3 Arson
• 4 Wounding
• 10 Assassins 
• 1 Abortion

On a purely curiosity basis I want to know the measure of their definition of ‘assassin’.
Anyway!

For Lombroso physical deformity and criminality walk hand in hand, he identifies deformities in the face and skull and equates those with criminal behaviours, drawing connections between specific deformities, their prevalence in woman, as opposed to men, and the sorts of crimes committed by women with specific deformities.

Lombroso posits that the number of cranial anomalies present in a skull indicates a propensity towards criminal behaviours and that the number of anomalies can determine the type of crime that those women were predisposed to.  His observation that male criminals had a higher number of anomalies would seem to lead to the suggestion that it takes fewer abnormalities to turn a woman into a criminal than it does a man.

Lombroso’s work was, in effect, a method of using the physicality of women against them, women who suffered from genetic deformities, or who were simply unprepossessing were criminalised because of their appearance and any lack of feminine grace they might have possessed with hairy moles ‘marking degeneration in the female subject.’  It is hard to believe now that this was ever considered science, logic would dictate that when examining a woman in her 60’s that wrinkles would be a sign of ageing rather than her moral degeneration.  Taken in isolation, you could be forgiven for thinking they were describing a Disney witch rather than an attempt to 'scientifically' render the female criminal's features.  

He cites the case of Maria Köster who killed her mother with a hatchet – Lombroso posits that her facial asymmetry and asymmetrical pupil was indicative of her predisposition.  He identified a large number of ‘features’ of the female criminal, from projecting ears, flat nose, to ‘Mongolian features’ – an expression of casual racism which is hardly surprising when an examination of the plates provided in the book show several woman who bear obvious features of being mixed race.

However, while the work incites nothing short of horror in me, as a modern reader, the work makes the acceptances that ‘a man suffering from an attack of typhoid fever cannot be subjected to the same dietary, to the same exercise, as another person in the enjoyment of ordinary health.  The regime to which a patient is subjected must be suited to the anomalous condition in which he happens to be placed.  Criminal codes to be effective must act upon precisely the same principle,’ This is one of the first times, in my reading, that I have seen any sort of acknowledgement made of the adaptive nature of criminal penal administration. While it is not aimed at women, this acceptance would seem to be a first step towards the acceptance of the unique judicial position of criminal women.


Reading through the description of the degenerate female I was disconcerted to see that I fit the mould of more than one, I am of ‘unusual short stature’, ‘gigantic canine’,  deep set eyes’, with ‘prehensile feet’, and ‘very black hair’…so all in all…it’s a wonder I haven’t killed more than one person by now.

The Great Conference Debate

 I will be spending the next few months writing up my first conference paper with a view to trotting it out left, right and centre over the course of the coming year - although I suppose technically I have the potential to trot out 3 or 4 papers from my first chapter since I cover a few smaller issues within it. 

As I sat down to start my alterations I was made to consider the fact that far ahead of my submission I was laying all of my cards on the table.  My final viva is about 2 years away and yet I am hesitant to divulge all of the nuances of my argument to a public who have not my best interests at heart.  I highly doubt that my ideas are so wholly marketable as to warrant 'theft.'  If such things are even capable of being stolen in a real sense.  After all at this moment there could be someone examining the Victorian novel through the medium of the law in some other college and their expression and mine might be so different as the render our works polar opposites but  still the nagging little fear has remained.

In reality there are positives and negatives to creating and delivering conference papers.  On the positive there is the capacity to test one's theories, to dip a toe into the receptive waters and see how the academic public at large find your theories and the weight of your argument -on the whole a worthwhile endeavour.  After al, you might as well be told by a room full of strangers a year ahead of your viva that your argument lacks clout as to wait until the viva itself and be told that you need to beef up your content.  On the other hand, it does come down to jumping the gun! To go to a conference and tell the world about the theory or academic model that you are pinning a career on seems risky!

I suppose it is the paranoia and nerves of a first timers and is born mostly out of my nerves about answering to a panel of strangers! Answering to my faculty and fellow PhD's is one thing but strangers who don't understand me or my work and trusting my expression to carry me through is rather another!

THERE! That's my weekly existential crisis committed to paper!

The Search For A Title

I mentioned in the last post the problems I was having with my title well, I felt I should elucidate a little on this.  When I created my chapter structure I had a very clear idea of what it was I was intending to write about –the writer and the legislative process! It was all nicely planned in my head; I had trial transcripts of various authors’ entanglements with the law and I was intent upon drawing connections between these transcripts and the contents of their novels but then I started writing and a much more interesting idea came to the fore and rather quickly stole the show, an examination of the expression of authorial attitudes towards legal Realism and legal Formalism.  I was rather smitten (and yes I know it’s sad to be smitten by a chapter idea but there it is) and I proceeded with an examination of how authors expressed their disdain or support for these ideologies in their work, specifically in their characterisation. 

I was chugging along swimmingly, the chapter is complete and I’m looking at my finished piece, very different to what I had started writing, but still operating under the same working title that I had given it 3 months ago and which now no longer fits.  I was struggling to come up with an idea and moaned my displeasure to facebook, looking for some indulgent sympathy rather than an answer.  I didn’t get my answer, although one person did offer genuine assistance, but my bad mood was considerably lightened by some of the mock answers I received:

• "Law and The Victorian Novel A Time Traveler's Approach: Timey Wimeyness in the Judicial Process”
• 
  
• “Pride, Prejudice, and Cocaine: Regency drug law in operation” ‎
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• "Mr. Popular Sentience: The Borg and Dickens"
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• “People I know who would've been hanged by now and why”
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• "Formalist Legal Acquisitions and Brains: Propriety Rights and Legality in Pride Prejudice and Zombies"
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• “To kill a mocking bastard: Provocation law in the Deep South”
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• “War and my "piece”: Sex Crimes and Tolstoy”
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• “The Law's a Posterior - Legality and Victorian Gentility”
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• “Law Love A Duck - Cockneys and Illegal Animal Husbandry”
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• “Tyburn Tree - A history of deforestation in the greater Bangkok area”
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• “I shot the sheriff, but I swear it was in self defence - Pleas of diminished responsibility in the works of Bob Marley”
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• “I shot the sheriff, and they say it is a capital offence - Problems of ambiguity in the legal application of the death penalty in the works of Bob Marley”

I am not ashamed to say that I am tempted to actually attempt a conference paper on more than one of these!  Sex crimes and Tolstoy! There might be a nice little paper in there somewhere!  Anyway! I still have no thoughts as to my new title but I’m sure it will come!

It's Almost Time...

I appreciate that it has been some time since last I made a post and to be honest it's entirely my own fault.  I've been working my butt off trying to get my first chapter...or rather technically second chapter completed and I guess this is more an update than a proper post.  I do promise a proper full length post on my dear A.C.D at some point in the near future.  

 I decided against writing my first chapter for a myriad of reasons but really it's because I felt that it would be easiest to write at the end of this process since it sort of chronicles the entirety of the Victorian period rather than a distinct idea as the rest of the chapters.  So the second chapter it was! It is an examination of the expression legal procedural ideologies in 3 Victorian novels.  I was a little iffy on it at the start but it really gathered pace and I think is a long over looked reading of the Victorian novel. 

The Chapter's title is an adaptive process, since the thrust of the argument has developed as I wrote it the original title of 'A Trying Situation: The Writer and the Legislative Process' no longer applies and I am searching for a new one -although it is proving more elusive than originally anticipated. 

 

To say that I was nervous about feedback was something of an understatement, I've been climbing the walls for three days over it, waiting for someone to tell me it's terrible that I really need to reconsider my life choices and that KFC is still hiring.  In the end however, it was no where near as bad as anticipated, in fact, it was really rather affirming, with my supervisor, who is a George Eliot specialist telling me that he found my argument excellent and my topic 'brilliantly unique.' *cue excited blush*  From him, at least, it's high praise, a bit like Andrea Bochelli telling you that you can sing.   

My chapter in the end is 18,000 words in length, which seems over long as I intended to make each chapter between 10-12,000.  It seems overlong but I have assurances from my supervisor that there is nothing he would remove and that the length issue will sort itself out as I write other chapters, since there is room for cross over which will facilitate trimming the fat later. 

So my confirmation of registration Viva is in a few weeks, the 25th of be precise and while my feedback has calmed me somewhat I am still as nervous as heck about it.  I anticipate spending the next fortnight like a rabid dog, killing dead things and with rapidly diminishing sanity and patience.  In final news I got my studentship, 18k a year to help my research, including a fee waiver and a £1,000 budget for conferences and academic facilities I might need.  Very excited by that!

Formalism and Beyond

Well my viva is over and complete so now it is time to crack on with the ‘real’ work –and not be distracted by little random things like writing a paper on doctor who *shifty eyes* but in the mean time I’m beginning my work on Felix Holt The Radical, it was a late addition to the texts that I’ve decided to include in the thesis and as such I am scrambling to read the 676 page text and the other late addition, Lady Audley’s Secret, while trying to do the theoretical research for the paper, which is really BORING.  I should point out that anything I write here is not a sample of my work, it’s largely unedited and pretty slovenly in it’s style and grammar…don’t like it …don’t read.

Now we begin with legal formalism- with a vague sort of Victorian slant. 

Ninteenth century formalism was a system which was ‘procedurally formalist to the extent that it makes the success of a substantive legal claim depend on following procedural rules (Schauer 1988).  This drew is primary legal principles from what is now known as primitive formalism was the practice of deciding the outcome of disputes through the use of oracles or through trial by battle, which, for obvious reasons, became regarded as irrational. 

            

This primitive formalism, is set in opposition to the Roman legal system of ‘strict law’, which was transposed into the English legal system in the medieval period in the form of ‘formulary law’ in which redress was only available if the case fell within a certain ‘class’ of cases.  It’s application in case law is closer to what we now considered as formulism.  

          

  It was not until the nineteenth century that ‘real’ legal formalism can be said to exist, as the century was marked by a movement beyond formulary justice but in a way that preserved the benefits of the previous systems.  The rise of legal formalism was complete by 1850, whereby the legal relationships seen as deriving from natural law and custom was supplanted by legal relationships forged through economic and political alliances, and substantive fairness, which was prevalent in eighteenth century legal discourse.  

            The idea of a paternalistic and regulative legal system, which extolled the legal obligations and moral sense of community was replaced by a system that was reflective of the power of economics and individual influence.  

            At it’s most basic level legal formalism is the degree to which the system is willing to sacrifice substantive justice (equity) in favour of a system which requires strict adherence to specific elements, that need to be in place before a case can be brought (von Jhering 1869) but is, by virtue of its construction, less irrational than the earlier Roman and Medieval structures.  

             Textual formalism is literalist in nature, whereby the meaning of an issue is not varied according to context.  The interpretation of legal cases in a formalistic manner requires that no reference or consideration be given to the intention or purpose of the parties and only the strict precedential or theoretical concepts that impact upon the case can be considered and applied in the decision making process.  

There are specific moral, political and practical considerations that impact upon the level of legal formalism that is applied within specific jurisdictions and while there is a valid argument for the application of a strictly formalistic approach to criminal justice, there is an even argument for a less formalistic approach on each counter point, the modern legal end-point would seem to be an ideal balance between the two, between moral justice and the principled application of legal process

Felix Holt and Formalism to follow....at some stage!

Citations and bibliography not posted but available on request.