Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680

Christopher N. Warren

Develops a rich interdisciplinary argument by drawing from literary scholarship, legal scholarship, the history of reading, and the history of international political thought
Places literary form at the center of early modern debates over global legalities
Charts a new literary history of international law in the age of Shakespeare, Milton, Grotius, and Hobbes
Argues that the field of law and literature has tacitly accepted tendentious but politically consequential assumptions about whether international law is "real" law
Offers powerful revisionist readings of texts including Sidney's New Arcadia, Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Bacon's Aphorismi de Jure Gentium, Hobbes's Thucydides, Milton's Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, and Grotius' Sophompaneas

Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680

Christopher N. Warren

Description

In this groundbreaking study, Christopher Warren argues that early modern literary genres were deeply tied to debates about global legal order and that today's international law owes many of its most basic suppositions to early modern literary culture. Literature and the Law of Nations shows how the separation of scholarship on law from scholarship on literature has limited the understanding of international law on both sides. Warren suggests that both literary and legal scholars have tacitly accepted tendentious but politically consequential assumptions about whether international law is "real" law. Literature and the Law of Nations recognizes the specific nature of early modern international law by showing how major writers of the English Renaissance-including Shakespeare, Milton, and Hobbes-deployed genres like epic, tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, and history to shore up the canonical subjects and objects of modern international law. Warren demonstrates how Renaissance literary genres informed modern categories like public international law, private international law, international legal personality, and human rights. Students and scholars of Renaissance literature, intellectual history, the history of international law, and the history of political thought will find in Literature and the Law of Nations a rich interdisciplinary argument that challenges the usual accounts by charting a new literary history of international law.

Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680

Christopher N. Warren

The Stakes of International Law and Literature
From Epic to Public International Law: Philip Sidney, Alberico Gentili, and "Intercourse Among Enemies"
Jacobean Comedy and the Anagnorisis of Private International Law
The Tragicomic Law of Nations: The Winter's Tale and the Union
From Imperial History to International Law: Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Law of Nations
From Biblical Tragedy to Human Rights: International Legal Personality in Grotius' Sophompaneas and Milton's Samson Agonistes
"A Problem from Hell": From Paradise Lost to the Responsibility to Protect
Conclusion
Bibliography

Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680

Christopher N. Warren

Author Information

Christopher N. Warren is an Assistant Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where he teaches courses on law, literature, and the humanities. Warren's scholarship has appeared in English Literary Renaissance, The Seventeenth Century, and the European Journal of International Law. Prior to Carnegie Mellon, Warren trained at the University of Oxford before a receiving a Harper-Schmidt fellowship in the University of Chicago's Society of Fellows.

Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680

Christopher N. Warren

Reviews and Awards

Winner of Roland H. Bainton Prize for Literature, Council of the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference

"Christopher Warren has made the sensible and helpful decision to put the two together and write about the relationship between the establishment of international law in the seventeenth century and the development of literary forms and types... A rewarding book." -- Andrew Hadfield, The Seventeenth Century.

"A major achievement. Warren offers a magisterial account of how early modern literary genres inflected the discourses of modern international law." -- Studies in English Literature: 1500-1900

"This brilliantly conceived and executed study of the principles and function of the ius gentium demonstrates how it has contributed to what we now recognize as the basis for our present international law - the law that binds together all people generally in civil units. Given the present challenges to a peaceful order in regions throughout the globe, Warren's history could hardly be more timely." --Constance Jordan, Renaissance Quarterly

"A study to which the expression 'groundbreaking' truly applies...." --Jus Gentium: Journal of International Legal History

"Christopher Warren journeys adventurously and authoritatively back into the early modern world, interpreting it anew as a contemporary Humanist scholar. With agility and perspicuity, he penetrates fields of inquiry from genre studies to nationalism studies, and to the history of international law, which ranges from public international law to private international law, international legal personality, and human rights. In seven learned, densely packed, and assiduously referenced chapters, Warren offers a literary genealogy for the law of nations by considering the place of the imagination and literary evidence in the legal and philosophical life of early modern England." -- The Review of English Studies Advance Access

"This book is a welcome development in law and literary studies, or law and humanities scholarship more broadly...Warren makes a persuasive case for literature's formative role in the development of international law, a role that has thus far been neglected by literary scholars and international lawyers alike." -- Renaissance Studies

"...highly recommendable to anyone who would like to understand the exact philosophy shaping the early modern communities within the New World..." - US Studies Online

"...detailed and tightly-reasoned...hugely successful..." - SHARP News