Table Of ContentLITERATURE AND THE LAW OF NATIONS,
1580–1680
Literature and
the Law of Nations,
1580–1680
CHRISTOPHER N. WARREN
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Acknowledgments
It is a pleasure to thank the many friends, family, and colleagues in Pittsburgh,
Chicago, Oxford, and many other places who have lent time and energy to the
writing of this book. I thank my colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, in the
University of Chicago Society of Fellows, and at Oxford University, above all my
wise and learned D.Phil. supervisor Sharon Achinstein. The list of those who have
provided friendship, advice, thoughtful criticism, and acts of generosity while this
book was in progress is a long one. Meriting special mention are Marian Aguiar,
Matthew Stembridge Anderson, Cliff Ando, Lauren Benton, David Bevington,
Eyona Bivins, Bradin Cormack, Andrew Dilts, Michael Fakhri, Stephen Fallon, Ed
Gordon, Kinch Hoekstra, Paul Hopper, Elizabeth Hutcheon, Matt Jenkinson,
Richard Joyce, Victoria Kahn, Margaret Kinsky, Jon Klancher, Peggy Knapp, Dino
Kritsiotis, Christine Lee, John Lehoczky, Fritz Levy, Noel Malcolm, Matt McHale,
Vickie McKay, Tim Michael, Jeff Miller, Sophie Murray, Sanjay Narayan, Mark
Neustadt, Chris Neuwirth, Marisa O’Connor, John Oddo, Anne Orford, Umut
Oszu, Jessica Otis, Alex Porcaro, Joanna Picciotto, Ethan Pullman, Rich Purcell,
Andreea Ritivoi, Jason Rosenblatt, Shalini Satkunanandan, Jonathan Scott,
Barbara Sebak, Daniel Shore, Tracey Sowerby, David Shumway, Jonathan Stainsby,
Paul Stevens, Benjamin Straumann, Richard Strier, Antti Tahvanaihen, Premala
Thiagarajan, Rachel Trubowitz, Katie Wade, and Jeff Williams. David Norbrook
and Lorna Hutson examined the Oxford D.Phil. thesis where I first explored many
of the ideas in this book, and I am grateful to both for excellent suggestions at a
formative moment. Rare Books Librarians at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the
Bodleian Library, the Dutch Royal Library, the Newberry Library, CMU’s Hunt
Library, the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library, the British Library, and
Chatsworth House assisted with research. I owe special thanks to Andrew Marshall
in Interlibrary Loans at CMU. Since excellent academic bookstores are fading fast,
I also register here my deep gratitude to two great ones, Blackwell’s (Oxford) and the
Seminary Co-Op (Hyde Park, Chicago). I thank my tremendous editors and staff
at Oxford University Press, especially Jaqueline Baker and Rachel Platt, and
Deborah Hey, who was responsible for copyediting. I thank Oxford University
Press and Taylor & Francis for permission to publish in revised form material
appearing initially in The Seventeenth Century, The European Journal of Interna-
tional Law, and The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and
the Justice of Empire, edited by Benjamin Struamann and Benedict Kingsbury.
For opportunities to air work in progress, I’m grateful to Paul Stevens and the
Toronto Milton Seminar, to Jason Rosenblatt and the Northeast Milton Seminar,
to Benjamin Struamann, Benedict Kingsbury, and NYU Law School, to the Uni-
versity of Chicago Renaissance Workshop, to Anne Orford, Dino Kritsiotis, and
J. H. H. Weiler and the Junior Faculty Forum for International Law, and to Jo
Craigwood and Tracey Sowerby and the Textual Ambassadors Network, kindly
vi Acknowledgments
supported by the AHRC. I gratefully acknowledge an Erwin R. Steinberg Summer
Fellowship from the Carnegie Mellon Department of English, an appointment as
Visiting Scholar at the University of Chicago in 2011–2012, and an appointment
as Senior Research Visitor at Keble College, Oxford in 2013. My graduate students
have helped me think through many of the issues in this book—sometimes, much
more than they know—and I thank in particular Julie Bowman, Marisa C olabuono,
Kate Hamilton, Stephen Rosnick, D. J. Schuldt, Natalie Suzelis, and Pavithra
Tantrigoda. For some late encouragement and suggestions, I am grateful to Peggy
Knapp, Kristina Straub, Leah Whittington, Jason Rosenblatt, and Sharon Achinstein.
For support that only family can provide, I thank my mom and dad, Katherine
Norton Warren and Paul Warren, Timothy and Sunni Warren, Marie and Gerald
O’Hara, Lucy Warren, and Steve and Nancy Kachniasz. Above all, I am grateful to
Julie Kachniasz and Gabriel Matthew Warren for abiding love and laughter. Annabel
Marie Warren was born in this book’s final stages. It delights me to think that she
and it will share a world together.
Contents
List of Figures ix
1. The Stakes of International Law and Literature 1
If the Past is a Different Country, all Law is International Law 10
The Early Modern Law of Nations and the Problematic of the Made 14
Kinds of International Law 18
The Road Ahead 22
Towards a Literary History of International Law 27
2. From Epic to Public International Law: Philip Sidney, Alberico
Gentili, and “Intercourse Among Enemies” 31
Aeneas on Trial 37
“It is Very Late to Dig a Well When One is Thirsty”: Sidney’s New
Arcadia, Humanism, and International Legal Hermeneutics 48
Hannibal reads Homer 54
Epic Kindness, the “Feigned Example,” and the Law of Nations 55
Conclusion 58
3. Jacobean Comedy and the Anagnorisis of Private International Law 62
The Comic Law of Nations 66
Pericles and Private International Law 71
Roman Comedy and Roman Law 76
Prize and Piracy in Pericles 82
How Caliban read his Plautus, or the Private Tempest 89
Conclusion 94
4. The Tragicomic Law of Nations: The Winter’s Tale and the Union 96
Borders, Hinges, and Debatable Lands: Rhetorical Geographies 101
Union Emplotments 107
Antinomy and Jurisprudence on the Coast of Bohemia 110
Commune vinculum: Bodies in Place v. Common Bonds 119
How Long is the Coast of Bohemia? 124
5. From Imperial History to International Law: Thucydides, Hobbes,
and the Law of Nations 127
Time and Law 138
The Debate over Thucydides I.3–5 144
Rhetoric and Royalism: Thucydides and the Virginia Company 149
Hobbes in the Field 157
viii Contents
6. From Biblical Tragedy to Human Rights: International Legal Personality
in Grotius’ Sophompaneas and Milton’s Samson Agonistes 160
Samson and the “Golden Beames of Law and Right” 170
Tragedy, the Lore of Justice, and Government in a New Frame
in Paradise Lost 172
“From Private Interest to Public Cause”: Samson and Casus Belli in Law
of Nations Discourse 174
Misrecognition and International Legal Personality in Samson Agonistes 176
Egypt, Irony, Catastrophe 181
Grotius in Egypt 183
Preamble to the Laws 189
Raging Hunger no Allegiance Knows 193
7. “A Problem from Hell”: From Paradise Lost to the Responsibility
to Protect 203
Introduction 203
Protection in an International Context 206
Don Pantaleon and the Judex Inter Homines 210
Just Vindication 216
Terms of Indictment 219
God’s Wartime Tribunal 224
Towards the Responsibility to Protect 226
Conclusion 229
Bibliography 235
Index 273
List of Figures
2.1 The Fight between Aeneas and King Turnus, from Vergil’s Aeneid.
Giacomo del Po (Italy, Naples, 1652–1726) Italy, circa 1700, Oil
on Copper. Public domain image made available by the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art. 45
3.1 Edmund Gayton, The Lawyer’s Duel, BL Harl. 5936 (399).
Reproduced with kind permission from the British Library. 80
4.1 From T. J. Carlyle, “The Debateable Land,” Transactions of the
Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian
Society, 1, 4 (1865): 19. Reproduced with kind permission
from the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History
and Antiquarian Society. 103
5.1 Foldout illustration of the siege of Plataea in Hobbes’ Thucydides,
STC 24058. Plate before p. 155. Reprinted with kind permission from
the Folger Shakespeare Library. 135
5.2 Title-page woodcut from A true relation of the unjust, cruell, and
barbarous proceedings against the English at Amboyna in the East-Indies
(1624), STC 7452. Reprinted with kind permission from the Folger
Shakespeare Library. 136
6.1 Title-page engraving by Thomas Cecil for True religion explained, and
defended against the archenemies thereof in these times. In six bookes.
Written in Latine by Hugo Grotius (1632), STC 12400. Reproduced
with kind permission from the Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 12400
Copy 1. 188
6.2 Joseph Distributing Grain in Egypt, Etching by Jan de Bisschop,
Dutch, 1648–1657. Reproduced with kind permission from
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. 193
7.1 and 7.2 Paulo Craesbeeck’s 1644 dedication of Os Lusiadas to João Rodrigues
de Sá a Menezes. Digitization by Google Books. Reproduced with
kind permission from the Bibliothèque Jésuite des Fontaines,
shelfmark SJ BE 622/20. 221
