FACTS ARE NOT SACRED
FACTS ARE NOT SACRED

Summary/Abstract: The title of the paper (an adapted quotation) is meant to suggest the attempt of showing that the greater the distances (temporal, spatial, conceptual or otherwise) between a series or a set of facts and the language/s describing them, the less Ŗsacredŗ these facts become, tending, in fact (sic!) to disappear completely. Our example is a 1900 murder case in Iowa, whose facts are first Ŗconcealedŗ in a sequence of trials and their numerous stories (testimonies, pleas, judgments, commentaries, verdicts…), then covered by journalist Susan Glaspell in 1901, then turned into a play by the sameŕŖTriflesŗŕof 1916 (for other, later audiences in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world through translations and other Ŗinterpretationsŗ), and finally reworked by the author into ŖA Jury of Her Peersŗ(1917)ŕa short story that partially completes the fact-to-fiction cycle in this remarkable development.

• Details
• Contents