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“THE ANATOMY OF A BARRISTER'S TONGUE”: RHETORIC, SATIRE, AND THE VICTORIAN BAR IN ENGLAND

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2004

Jan-Melissa Schramm
Jan-Melissa Schramm
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Extract

IN THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS (1848–50), William Thackeray calls upon the binary model of Victorian intellectualism in order to define the status and responsibilities of an author of fiction. For Thackeray, himself an initiate of the Middle Temple, the antagonist which permitted such a clarification of artistic privilege was the law, as conceived in utilitarian and mechanistic terms. Perhaps inspired by the ensign of the Inner Temple, the Winged Horse – suggestive of Thackeray's favorite trope for his own creativity, Pegasus-in-Harness – Thackeray effects a deft appropriation of the humanist history of the law for the services of literature, thus divorcing current legal praxis from its traditional role in the protection of liberties and the creation of English identity. Only the author can appreciate and animate the law's history, which is itself a tale of synergistic legal and literary productivity:

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , September 2004 , pp. 285 - 303
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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