'Words, Words, Just Words': Law, Language, and Magic in Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell Trilogy
23 Pages Posted: 18 Nov 2021
Date Written: October 14, 2021
Abstract
In this paper, presented at a conference hosted by the Huntington Library in October 2021, I explore the idea that law is rhetoric using a comparison of law and magic, examined through Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell Trilogy. The books offer a hugely insightful commentary on how these two practices use language to its utmost extreme, showing language to be at once supremely powerful and yet also barely there. I think they can help us see law's magic, and how it really works to order our social lives.
Keywords: Wolf Hall, law and language, law and literature, law as rhetoric, Thomas Cromwell, Hilary Mantel
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation