“«A footnote in legal history». Critica della giustizia e Englishness in Arthur and George di Julian Barnes”

The article considers Julian Barnes’ novel Arthur and George (2005) as an outstan- ding case study of the presence of justice and the law in contemporary neo-Vic- torian ction. The novel is a bio ction on Arthur Conan Doyle’s commitment to campaigning in favour of George Edalij, an unjustly imprisoned young solicitor of Parsee origins, in a legal case that led to the institution of the Court of Appeal in 1907. Arthur and George engages with some crucial tropes of the Victorian novel, notably the nexus between testimony, evidence, knowledge and truth, which sustains the thematic core of the novel, and the epistemological concern with knowledge and belief. The novel subtly addresses issues of national identity, cul- tural and political ethos and renews Barnes’ concern with the indeterminacy of truth and the dif culty of ever knowing the past.