recognition of the 'other' and intersubjectivity in the law: a comparative study of charles dickens's bleak house and paul beatty's the sellout

Literature has consistently drawn upon the legal system of evidence to explain how one arrives at the truth. the most elevated mechanism through which literature focuses on law as subject matter is the representation of a trial. as a result, the trial is the context in which law is most overtly significant in literary works for a variety of reasons. authority and justice are also approached differently in law and literature. justice is a term that has many different meanings depending on etymologies, philosophies, religions, civilizations and politics. the understanding of law elucidates all kinds of fictions that do not so prominently announce themselves as legal, which has recently been a point of interest for scholars of different fields. considering the status of unrecognized “other” dominated by various codes of discrimination, almost any human's ongoing search for identity deals with law, often in myriad ways. reading widely in literature, one might find deliberate portrayals of the law institutions. it disappoints, hampers, constrains the righteous protagonists. similarly, the gradual evolution of the description of subjectivity, which has been the basis of different definitions involving awareness, individuality, and truth has led to the concept of intersubjectivity defining who we are and how we think about ourselves. contemporary readings suggests different ways of conceiving a legal fiction mostly through formalistic, linguistic and stylistic approaches. thus, the current research is intended to provide a critical opening in the realm of interdisciplinary relations between literature and law in light of axel honneth’s theory of recognition. as cases of comparative study, charles dickens's bleak house and paul beatty's the sellout are analyzed to gain a better understanding of intersubjectivity toward law and formation of legal fictions in the victorian and postmodernist eras.