2025 Theses Doctoral

Expert Witness: Knowledge, Disciplinarity and Professionalism in 19th-Century Literature and Law

Dwivedi, Sumati

This dissertation studies selected English novels from the 19th century in conjunction with legal texts (cases, philosophy and history) centred on the expert witness. The objective of this study is to demonstrate that, over the long 19th century as knowledge and work were increasingly structured by disciplinarity and professionalisation, literature was engaged in a parallel project to the law that has gone largely unremarked.

This project is the production of a ‘knowledge of knowledges’: over the long 19th century, the legal discourse constructed an understanding of other discourses from its interrogation of, and its (limited and qualified) deference to, expert witnesses representing their specialised knowledges. This recognition by the master-discourse became a valuable form of legitimation and public as well as formal status; simultaneously, the account of these knowledges as apprehended by law, and arranged in its discursive form of ‘precedent,’ developed a composite picture of the vast and increasing variety of disciplines, and of their claims to monopoly and authority over their respective fields.

This dissertation argues that literature stands out from these other disciplines, first because the literary expert witness is a nearly undeveloped subject in law, secondly and more importantly because literary works embody a comparable project of depicting, analysing, and critiquing other discourses—including law—as well as literature itself. The novels analysed here indicate a rich repository of critical thinking about knowledge, disciplinarity, and professionalism that carries the potential for a counter-discourse to the hegemonic claims of law. Full development of this potential could support arguments for the autonomy of literature, and for artistic freedom of representation, built on the foundation of literature’s own, ‘native’ discourse of knowledge and expertise.