Focusing specifically on the Bildungsroman and international human rights
law, Slaughter analyzes the legibility of human rights, the literary,
political, and juridical effect of transcribing into international law
conventions the ancient Greeks felt were so pervasive they could remain
unwritten. As he defines what everyone should know he describes how
literature reflects the formal articulation of international human rights
law, the writing of the development of citizenship in the Bildungsroman,
the inability of the pubic sphere to normalize narrative forms of human
rights, the tradition of narrative self-sponsorship and the right to self-
determination, and the acts of reading and writing within the domain of
international humanitarianism.