Life-writing in lawsuits

Abstract

This paper aims at presenting reflections, comments and criticism regarding the intersection between Law and Literary Studies, mainly about Law as Literature. This paper will show some findings about the missconcepted identification between literary and lawsuit narratives, and to that end, we based our research on narrative concepts derived from literary theory and from linguistics. Thus, it became obvious that in lawsuits, as well as in literary writings, an amalgam of types and classifications is constructed. However, in literary works this is done to improve an aesthetic effect, which does not compromise the “Fictional Agreement” between the author and the reader. In lawsuits, however, such variation of types and classifications is limited and must adhere to a “Reality Agreement”. Even though lawsuits and literary narratives are further apart when we look upon their objectives and nature, we found it was possible to approximate them in the light of   recent life-writing studies, in which individual.  Accounts are structured within a gray area in which the limits between reality and fiction are not so clear-cut. Therefore, lawyers’, plaintiffs’, and witnesses’ accounts have that same characteristic of merging reality and fiction, in an attempt to corroborate their will and grievances through a lawsuit.