In the twenty-first century, as in the sixteenth, a blindfolded woman holding a sword and scales personifies justice; her blindfold conveys impartiality, her scales evenhandedness, and her sword the authority to compel obedience. In pre-democratic early modern England, Justice’s iconography was often used to legitimate the pain that the state imposed on those who broke the common peace. Simultaneously, the creative and cultural narratives within which the penal code was embedded often complicated and contradicted the state’s legally violent precepts. The relationship between legal violence and justice is at the center of this project: Must the law be violent to control violence? Does the law’s violence promote justice or disrupt it? How do the formal mechanisms of law and social control operate within the complex world of art, sermons, and literature? This project maps the late Elizabethan and early Stuart engagement with those questions. I examine a continuum of responses to legal violence embedded in the judicial institutions of Parliament, the Star Chamber, and the Queen’s Bench as well as in poetry, plays, sermons, broadsides, iconography, utopian narratives, paintings, and engravings. Often drawing on the metaphoric force of Justice’s symbols, the early modern response to legal violence was not purely semantic but strongly aesthetic, defending, mediating, reflecting, and refracting the state’s formal mechanisms of law. Reading case law along with works by Thomas More, Elizabeth I, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Edward Coke, John Donne, George Herbert, Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish, I trace law as a cultural practice, expressed and understood aesthetically through both codified and creative means.

In the twenty-first century, as in the sixteenth, a blindfolded woman holding a sword and scales personifies justice; her blindfold conveys impartiality, her scales evenhandedness, and her sword the authority to compel obedience. In pre-democratic early modern England, Justice’s iconography was often used to legitimate the pain that the state imposed on those who broke the common peace. Simultaneously, the creative and cultural narratives within which the penal code was embedded often complicated and contradicted the state’s legally violent precepts. The relationship between legal violence and justice is at the center of this project: Must the law be violent to control violence? Does the law’s violence promote justice or disrupt it? How do the formal mechanisms of law and social control operate within the complex world of art, sermons, and literature? This project maps the late Elizabethan and early Stuart engagement with those questions. I examine a continuum of responses to legal violence embedded in the judicial institutions of Parliament, the Star Chamber, and the Queen’s Bench as well as in poetry, plays, sermons, broadsides, iconography, utopian narratives, paintings, and engravings. Often drawing on the metaphoric force of Justice’s symbols, the early modern response to legal violence was not purely semantic but strongly aesthetic, defending, mediating, reflecting, and refracting the state’s formal mechanisms of law. Reading case law along with works by Thomas More, Elizabeth I, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Edward Coke, John Donne, George Herbert, Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish, I trace law as a cultural practice, expressed and understood aesthetically through both codified and creative means.

The scope of this research is to spark conversation among members of receiving communities concerning their attitudes toward displaced populations by using Euripides' Trojan Women as a facilitator. By many outside the Classics profession, the study of antiquity is often perceived as a discipline disconnected from current issues; however, remembering and examining the past can greatly shape the present. Ancient Greek theater is perhaps the genre that best lends itself to be scrutinized today for social purposes. In fact, it promoted introspection among the body of Athenian citizens by highlighting inequalities and imbalances in power structures between opposing parties. This study suggests that tragedies can still fulfill the same function. In particular, this essay focuses on Trojan Women, with the intent to unearth group dynamics between the Greek aggressors and the Trojan slaves, and to apply its lessons to recent humanitarian emergencies. Philological work shows that the Greeks in the play attempt to dehumanize their captives through practices of legal violence, objectification, and silencing. Nevertheless, the women find sanctuary from human annihilation through their ability to speak and to be heard. Dominant classes today employ similar techniques to disempower incoming societies and to deprive them of their political voice. Thanks to tragedy's ability to create a distancing effect through mythological narratives, public readings of Trojan Women might enable members of hosting countries to engage more readily in discussions concerning the theme of displacement that address their own biases. Therefore, this thesis argues that the analysis and reception of Trojan Women can elucidate the worldwide crisis in welcoming those seeking shelter and help groups asked to receive displaced populations make more compassionate and informed decisions.

This study aims to use critical discourse analysis to discern how support for vigilante acts is justified, legitimized, and constructed. By analyzing 1000 comments left on YouTube videos depicting violent vigilante acts, this study looks to create a discourse of the acts, their context, and the actors involved. The videos depict individuals taking the law into their own hands as they react to a crime, theft. Both videos end in the death of the criminal. One video takes place in the U.S. and one in the U.K. Previous research has focused on distrust of police and the justice system, to understand why citizens resort to vigilantism. With discussions on fear of crime and community justice. This study shows similar sentiments to previous research. The comments describe a discourse of society as declining, and crime perceived as increasing. The commentators create a sense of belonging and identify with the vigilante as an ‘insider’ whilst the ‘criminal’ is dehumanized and described as the ‘outsider’, and the criminal justice system is constructed as dysfunctional/illegitimate. This discourse leads the participants to see the act of the vigilante as honorable and necessary, as it’s perceived as the only way to get justice. Rights (such as due process) are pictured as something that is earned, and the criminal forfeited these rights when the decision was made to commit a crime. This points to what is described as the problem with a ‘strong state’ and how it might encourage vigilantism. This study adds to previous research by painting a full-picture critical discourse of support for vigilantism whilst also exploring how societal power dynamics play a role in its construction.

During the 1890s, a series of extra-legal and illegal activities known as "whitecapping" occurred in Sevier County, Tennessee. While the early episodes were based on traditional responses to deviant behavior in rural communities, whitecapping reflected the loss of community within the county. This study examines the relationship of whitecapping and community in Sevier County and how it changed during the 1890s. The several, often contradictory, social conditions which affected the life of every Sevier Countian are also examined to show the decline of community consensus during this period. Finally, the events galavanizing public opinion against the whitecaps are analyzed to understand their enduring effect on community in Sevier County.

During the 1890s, a series of extra-legal and illegal activities known as "whitecapping" occurred in Sevier County, Tennessee. While the early episodes were based on traditional responses to deviant behavior in rural communities, whitecapping reflected the loss of community within the county. This study examines the relationship of whitecapping and community in Sevier County and how it changed during the 1890s. The several, often contradictory, social conditions which affected the life of every Sevier Countian are also examined to show the decline of community consensus during this period. Finally, the events galavanizing public opinion against the whitecaps are analyzed to understand their enduring effect on community in Sevier County.