Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature [Paperback]

Peter Brooks (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226075869 | ISBN-13: 978-0226075860 | Publication Date: October 1, 2001 | Edition: 1

The constant call to admit guilt amounts almost to a tyranny of confession today. We demand tell-all tales in the public dramas of the courtroom, the talk shows, and in print, as well as in the more private spaces of the confessional and the psychoanalyst's office. Yet we are also deeply uneasy with the concept: how can we tell whether a confession is true? What if it has been coerced?

In Troubling Confessions, Peter Brooks juxtaposes cases from law and literature to explore the kinds of truth we associate with confessions, and why we both rely on them and regard them with suspicion. For centuries the law has considered confession to be "the queen of proofs," yet it has also seen a need to regulate confessions and the circumstances under which they are made, as evidenced in the continuing debate over the Miranda decision. Western culture has made confessional speech a prime measure of authenticity, seeing it as an expression of selfhood that bears witness to personal truth. Yet the urge to confess may be motivated by inextricable layers of shame, guilt, self-loathing, the desire to propitiate figures of authority. Literature has often understood the problematic nature of confession better than the law, as Brooks demonstrates in perceptive readings of legal cases set against works by Rousseau, Dostoevsky, Joyce, and Camus, among others.

Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov captures the trouble with confessional speech eloquently when he offers his confession with the anguished plea: this is a confession; handle with care. By questioning the truths of confession, Peter Brooks challenges us to reconsider how we demand confessions and what we do with them.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The most useful work of criticism I own, and the only one I revisit annually."--Maud Newton

(Maud Newton ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap

"A book so rich in fresh ideas that I found myself underlining as madly as an undergraduate."-Richard Lourie, New York Times Book Review

Confession, Peter Brooks writes, is "one of the most complex and obscure forms of human speech and behavior," inextricably entwined with our ideas of punishment and absolution, relied upon as ultimate truth and yet treated with profound suspicion. In this book, Brooks juxtaposes cases from law, literature, and elsewhere-from the Miranda decision to Camus to the Catholic confessional-to explore the kinds of truth we demand from confessions and the ways in which we use them.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226075869
• ISBN-13: 978-0226075860
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #837,772 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Speaking No Ill of Speaking Guilt, May 19, 2001

By 

Elias Alias (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature (Hardcover)

Those with an interest in law and literature have awaited this book, and for them there should be no disappointment. From a variety of perspectives, Brooks reflects on the extraordinary value that Western culture places on the act of confession, and the equally extraordinary problems that Western culture has assessing individual confessions. We want confessions, yet we are equally suspicious of them. Brooks' method for examining this cultural ambiguity is to juxtapose literary and legal traditions of confession (the religious tradition also receives significant attention). By juxtaposing these traditions, Brooks argues that we can better see the demands that are made of confession in Western culture, as well as the demands that confession, in turn, makes of us as members of social communities and as individuals. His interdisciplinary moves are skillful, his historical and legal glossings are accessible, and his readings of literary texts (and films) are smart. The chapters can be read individually, allowing the reader to jump around at will. Chapter 1 looks at how the Supreme Court has tried to address the problem of confession, primarily through Miranda. Chapter 2 looks at the relationship between the confessor to the confessant in various contexts -- law, literature, religion, psychoanalysis. Chapter 3 looks at the problem of the voluntary vs. the coerced confession with a close reading of Culombe v. Connecticut. Chapter 4 discusses how the religious tradition of confession affects modern understanding of identity and selfhood. Chapter 5 addresses the law's difficulty addressing psychoanalytic concepts of truth, identity, guilt, and victimhood. Finally, Chapter 6 sums things up by looking at what motivates or compels an confession at all. Among other literary works, Rousseau's Confessions, The Brothers Karamazov, Alfred Hitchcock's film I Confess, The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Camus' The Fall make extended appearances. These texts are hardly obscure, and neither are the general outline or the finer points of Brooks' argument. Very helpful to anyone interested in confession, narrative and rhetoric, or the general relationship between law and literature.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best of Law and Literature Scholarship, March 30, 2003

By 

Claudio Salas (New Haven, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature (Paperback)

For those with a general background in literature and in law, this book is straightforward and easy to follow. The book explores the complicated act of confessing in a myriad of contexts, greatly enriching the reader's understanding of this most troubling speech act. When so much "scholarship" in the nascent field of law and literature is banal, a profound work such as this one gives the entire field much needed legitimacy.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars like nothing I've ever read, July 3, 2001

By 

Paul de Man (Montevideo, Argentina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature (Hardcover)

There's no shortage of originality in Peter Brooks' recent foray into the confessional act. Indeed, "Troubling Confessions" is a kind of sui generis text on the place of confession in Western Culture, and as such it bears absolutely no resemblance to other and earlier critical treatments of confessional literature. What's remarkable, looking back on the rich tradition of literary and cultural scholarship that came out of Yale during the 70s and 80s, is that nobody even *thought* to broach exactly these questions. That a work so plainly underivative should appear now, after the long and arid years during which the Yale school had grown into a pale and emaciated shadow of its former self -- well, it gives one pause. And one could justifiably argue that this is the effect of Brooks' oeuvre as a whole, which, if read cover to cover, induces the kind of silence from which even the keenest intellect can scarcely be roused.