abstract: For over a century, writings in the Law & Literature genre have been largely restricted to works concerning lawyers and courtrooms. This despite early preeminent Law& Literature scholars' assertions that the genre should incorporate any writing that examines the intersection of law, crime, morality, and society. For over a half-century, Detroit novelist Elmore Leonard has been producing well-written, introspective novels about criminals, violence, and society's need to both understand and condemn these things, all under the broad, oft-marginalized genre of crime and detective fiction. This paper pairs the work of Elmore Leonard, using his successful novel Out of Sight as a stylistic framework, with the Law & Literature genre. After a dissection of the true definition of a Law & Literature and detective fiction, as well as an excavation of underlying themes and imports of Out of Sight, it is found that Law & Literature scholars need to be more inclusive of crime novels like Leonard's. And, given the characteristics of both genres, Leonard's novels are more appropriately classified as Law & Literature rather than detective fiction. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2012

This thesis argues that the popularity of the clandestine marriage plot in English and Spanish drama following the Reformation corresponds closely to developments and emerging conflicts in European matrimonial law. My title, ‘casos de honra,' or ‘honour cases', unites law and drama in a way that captures this argument. Taken from the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega's El arte nuevo (1609), a treatise on his dramatic practice, the phrase has been understood as a description of the honour plots so common in Spanish Golden Age drama, but ‘casos' [cases] has a further, and related, legal meaning. Casos de honra are cases touching honour, whether portrayed on stage or at law, a European rather than a strictly Spanish phenomenon, and clandestine marriages are one such example. I trace the genealogy of three casos de honra from their recognisable origins in Italian novelle, through Italian, French, Spanish, and English adaptations, until their final early modern manifestations on the English and Spanish stage. Their seeming differences, and often radical divergences in plot can be explained with reference to their distinct, but related, legal concerns.

The Rights of Creativity is a study of Swedish copyright history from the birth of Sweden’s first copyright legislation in the early 19th century to the passing of the current law in 1960. As the title suggests, the law is regarded as part of a wider cultural context and the dissertation moves beyond the borders of legal history and analyses the law in relation to the history of literature, film, television and other media that partly reflect and partly intersect with the legislative process. The main object of the study is to see how the author is constructed in legal and cultural discourses during the 19th and 20th century. The dissertation focuses on three Swedish copyright laws from 1877, 1919 and 1960, but these laws and their preambles are also related to a few contemporary cultural intertexts, namely: August Strindberg’s novel Röda rummet [The Red Room] from 1879; the director Mauritz Stiller’s films Gunnar Hedes Saga [The Blizzard] and Gösta Berlings saga [The Saga of Gösta Berling] from 1923 and 1924, and finally the television shows Hylands hörna and Skäggen from 1962 and 1963. Apart from this it also pays some attention to the Freedom of the Press Act from 1810 that came to include Sweden’s first copyright statement, as well as to the development after 1960. Eventually it aims to show how the historical legacy has affected the copyright legislation and debates of today. / Skapandets rätt handlar om hur den juridiska synen på upphovsmannen rätt och skapandets villkor har förändrats i förhållande till den kulturella utvecklingen i Sverige under 1800 och 1900-talet. Avhandlingen består av en kronologisk studie av de upphovsrättslagar som antogs 1877, 1919 och 1960, men den behandlar också 1810 års tryckfrihetsförordning och de senaste årens rättsutveckling i korthet. Denna upphovsrättshistoriska exposé placeras in i ett litteratur- och mediehistoriskt sammanhang och lagtexterna underkastas en intertextuell analys där deras relation till några olika kulturella intertexter analyseras. Inledningsvis diskuteras hur 1810 års Tryckfrihetsförordning kom att innefatta Sveriges första upphovsrättsbestämmelse. Därefter kontrasteras Sveriges första separata upphovsrättslag från 1877 mot August Strindbergs genombrottsroman Röda rummet, allt i ljuset av Jürgen Habermas teori om den borgerliga offentligheten. 1919 års lagstiftning relateras sedan till Mauritz Stiller filmatiseringar av Selma Lagerlöfs romaner En herrgårdssägen och Gösta Berlings saga. Instiftandet av dagens upphovsrättslag från 1960 analyseras slutligen mot bakgrund av den nya tidens TV-medium som här exemplifieras av Hylands hörna och Skäggen. Avslutningsvis knyts allt samman i en kapitel där historiens lärdomar appliceras på dagens debatt. Här diskuteras hur tre föreställda oppositioner mellan konstnär-publik, privat-offentligt och original-kopia har format upphovsrättens historia och hur de fortfarande färgar samtidens upphovsrättsdiskussioner.