Wortgebunden. Zur Verbindlichkeit von Versprechen in Recht und Literatur

Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 2021

To commit oneself by way of giving one´s word is a basic condition of social life. Promise is at work in morality, in law, but also in love. It therefore provides a view of the relationship between these different forms of social commitment. Because a promise can never guarantee its own effect, but must always suppose it, it raises the question of how binding through self-commitment can succeed in all its various fields of application. The contributions making up this volume examine this question at the interface of law and literature.

A sample reading can be found here

About the editors:

Dr. Gregor Albers is a legal scholar and legal historian. He is academic advice at the Institute for Roman Law and Comparative Legal History at the University of Bonn.

Prof. Dr. Joachim Harst is junior professor of comparative literature at the University of Cologne. His habilitation thesis deals  with the commitment in adultery narratives in world literature.

Dr. Katharina Kaesling is a legal scholar and research coordinator at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Law as Culture". In 2017, she published her comparative law dissertation on post-marital responsibility in France and Germany.