Literature and Human Rights

The interdisciplinary series “Law & Literature” takes a systematic look at the correlation between literature and the law. The studies presented in this series analyze the complex interrelation between two cultural spheres which are not only at the basis of Western Culture and Society, but share in a common focus on texts. Bringing together contributions by jurists, historians of law, legal philosophers, and specialists in literary and cultural studies, this series reflects a trend in current inter- and transdisciplinary research which has recently shown rapid growth both in Europe and the United States.

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The idea of human rights is not new. But the importance of taking rights seriously has never been more urgent. The eighteen essays which comprise Literature and Human Rights are written as a contribution to this vital debate. Each moreover is written in the spirit of interdisciplinarity, reaching across the myriad constitutive disciplines of law, literature and the humanities in order to present an array of alternative perspectives on the nature and meaning of human rights in the modern world. The taking of human rights seriously, it will be suggested, depends just as much on taking seriously the idea of the human as it does the idea of rights.