Ebook: The Death Penalty in Dickens and Derrida: The Last Sentence of the Law

Adopting a comparative approach, this book examines how Dickens (as a voice of literature) and Derrida (as a philosopher) have approached the question of the death penalty. It makes a case for Dickens as an abolitionist, reading the 5 open letters and applying them to the novels, particularly Barnaby Rudge and A Tale of Two Cities as well as discussing Derrida’s abolitionist arguments.
In addition to Derrida, this book also puts Dickens into dialogue with thinkers as diverse as Friedrich Nietzsche, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt and Slavoj Žižek, as well as writers such as William Godwin, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Fielding.