Kenny on "Words, Words, Just Words": Law, Language, and Magic in Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell Trilogy @dkennytcd

David Kenny, Trinity College Dublin School of Law, has published 'Words, Words, Just Words': Law, Language, and Magic in Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell Trilogy. Here is the 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.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.