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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Matteo Nicolini
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2019.
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The article focuses on the epistemological paradigms that underpinthe current trends in comparative legal research, by assessing them within theframework of the law-and-literature movement. In particular, it examines thescientific state of mind and the veering towards quantitative approaches whichnow percolate through legal comparative studies. The article argues that suchstate of mind is not merely confined to the ambit of comparative law. It hasindeed several traits in common with the scientific mentality which has beensaturating the knowledge system in Western culture since the seventeenthcentury. This scientific state of mind was one of Jonathan Swift’s main targets.In Gulliver’s Travels, A Tale of a Tub, and A Discourse Concerning the MechanicalOperation of the Spirit, Swift satirised the seventeenth-century scientific program,which had reduced the advancement of knowledge into a system that isvery similar to twenty-first century information systems. This reduction wasinfluenced by Cartesian philosophy and was achieved through methodologicalinnovation. But it was also a consequence of the debate on ancient and modernlearning, which had originated in France, but had immediate resonance inEngland. Swift rejected absolute reliance on quantitative methods: not onlydoes this make it possible to set an equation between law and literature, but italso allows us to bring humanities into the debate about quantification incomparative law – and, as a consequence, to reappraise through literaturesome common assumptions we usually make about the law.
Author(s): Nicolini M
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Pólemos. Journal of Law, Literature and Culture
Year: 2019
Volume: 13
Issue: 2
Pages: 327-248
Print publication date: 18/09/2019
Online publication date: 18/09/2019
Acceptance date: 15/05/2019
Date deposited: 19/09/2019
ISSN (print): 2035-5262
ISSN (electronic): 2036-4601
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH
URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/pol-2019-0015
DOI: 10.1515/pol-2019-0015
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