Wax nose, Welsh hose, poison box: Imagining legal interpretation in early modern England

Guest speaker: Dr Joanna McCunn, University of Bristol

Imagery pervades the law. The metaphors and analogies used by lawyers tell us a great deal about their opinions of the law, but also about the presuppositions of their wider societies and cultures. This paper explores the imagery used to depict legal documents and interpretation in early modern England. Why do lawyers and laypeople liken legal documents to sturdy anchors, waxen noses, or a Welshman's trousers? When do they compare legal interpretation to eating a delicious fruit - and when to opening a box full of poison? By examining these images, we will see that attitudes to legal documents were profoundly influenced by contemporary debates about language and meaning. In particular, lawyers drew on discourses about Biblical interpretation and misinterpretation, and shared theologians' growing fears about the limits of language.

Biography

Joanna is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol. After taking her MA (Law with Law Studies in Germany) and BCL at the University of Oxford, she worked as a research assistant at the Law Commission for England and Wales. She then embarked on her doctoral research at the University of Cambridge, earning her PhD in 2019. Joanna’s research focuses on the historical development of English law. Her PhD thesis examined the interpretation of private legal documents in the common law courts during the early modern period. She continues to work on early modern law, and is currently investigating the influence of ideas from continental Europe on the English law of this period. Joanna is also undertaking research on the development of English contract law in the nineteenth century and, with Andrew J. Bell, is leading a comparative historical project on legal responses to intractable factual uncertainty. Joanna also writes on modern contract law.