Law and Literature

Author: Lenora Ledwon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317954181
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 518

Book Description
First published in 1996. The first anthology of its kind in this dynamic new field of study, this volume offers students the best of both worlds-theory and literature. Organized around specific themes to facilitate use of the text in a variety of courses, the material is highly accessible to undergraduates and is suitable as well for graduate students and law students. The anthology includes important articles by key figures in the law and literature debate, and presents seven thematically arranged sections that: Survey the various theoretical perspectives that inform the relationship of law and literature Examine the interplay of ethics, law, and justice * Highlight the great scope and variety of the law's contributions to the creation of a world view * Illustrate various legal approaches to punishment * Detail and analyze the law's inherent capacity for the oppression of individuals and groups * Demonstrate that law is grounded in language and storytelling * Show that despite its solemnity, the law has a comic side Each section includes excerpts from poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction. The excerpts include writings addressing the law's impact on the "outsider" (women, Native Americans, Hispanics, African Americans, and homosexuals), as well as writings by lawyers, judges, and law professors, giving the reader an "insider's" view of the legal system. The selections range from Plato to John Barth and Wallace Stevens. At this time of increased interest in the quality of legal writing, this course material illustrates the importance of language, word choice, metaphor, and narrative. It demonstrates the practical application of literary effects, techniques, and devices, and provides valuable insights into law as a vital component of the social fabric. SPECIAL FEATURES All law schools that do not already have one in place are required to institute a course in Law and Literature. This new anthology is the first of its kind, and has been specifically designed to meet the requirements of a Law and Literature course * Selections from judges, lawyers, and professors of law give students an insider's view of the legal system * Chronological coverage-from Plato to such 20th-century writers as John Barth and Wallace Stevens-offers students a broad range of selections that examine the relationship between law, justice, ethics, and literature * Multicultural writings address the law's capacity for the oppression of individuals and groups, including women, Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, and homosexuals * Law and punishment-several selections examine this area from various points of view. Suitable for courses in: Law and literature courses in law schools and undergraduate divisions as well as interdisciplinary courses in English literature.

Literature and the Law

Author: Thomas Morawetz
Publisher: Aspen Publishing
ISBN: 1454861711
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 1077

Book Description
A unique book that explores the intersections of law and literature through engaging and entertaining stories, book chapters, poems, plays, and articles along with discussion topics, Literature and the Law is the only available book of its kind. This text covers a comprehensive variety of topics in law and literature utilizing shorter, thought-provoking, less canonical works of fiction from such authors as Herman Melville, Harper Lee, Agatha Christie, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Cynthia Ozick, Albert Camus, and more. This approach welcomes students to develop fresh ideas through exposure to writers and stories primarily new to them. The accessibility and adaptability of this text will make it a new classroom favorite for you and your students: Engaging discussion questions following each story prompt instructors and students, alike, to explore a wide range of topics: professional ethics, justice, the lives of lawyers, the role of lawyers, the legal system, the psychology of lawyering, philosophy, and more An extensive, annotated list of complementary readings at the end of each chapter offers teachers and students a rich and varied choice beyond the selected texts An adaptable nature makes it suitable for a wide variety of teaching schemes and literary tastes. It reinforces the strengths that teachers bring to the subject while filling in background information and offering texts for those areas with which they are less familiar, making it an ideal source for professors to integrate into their current teaching materials

Literature and Law

Author: Mark Fortier
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351203819
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
The fields of literature and law intersect in frequent, and often surprising ways. This clear and concise book offers an introduction to the area, covering the history, key thinkers and ideas as well as detailed and fascinating studies into areas such as evidence and truth, inheritance, sex, vigilantism and justice. Each chapter examines a number of familiar authors and texts including Shakespeare, Brecht, Austen, Dickens, Ishiguro, Beecher-Stowe, Atwood, Miller. The book also opens up the broader study of law as it relates to culture in such areas as film, television, and digital media and how they affect such issues as a right to privacy, copyright and creative reworking, and censorship. Mark Fortier offers a concise, systemic introduction to the law and legal system for the lay person, covering basic notions of justice and law (fundamental justice, natural law, positive law) and the legal system (common law vs civil law, case law, statute, constitutional law, private law [tort, contract, property], criminal law, equity, basic rules of evidence, stare decisis, the adversarial system) as well as a very handy glossary of legal terms. This is a fascinating guide to a very topical and increasingly relevant area of literary studies.

Law and Literature

Author: Ian Ward
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521474740
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
The emergence of an interdisciplinary study of law and literature is one of the most exciting theoretical developments taking place in North America and Britain. In Law and Literature: Possibilities and Perspectives Ian Ward explores the educative ambitions of the law and literature movement, and its already established critical, ethical and political potential. He reveals the law in literature, and the literature of law, in key areas of literature, from Shakespeare to Beatrix Potter to Umberto Eco, and from feminist literature to children's literature to the modern novel, drawing out the interaction between rape law and The Handmaid's Tale, and the psychology of English property law and The Tale of Peter Rabbit. This original book defines the developing state of law and literature studies, and demonstrates how the theory of law and literature can illuminate the literary text.

Law and Literature

Author: Richard A. Posner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674032460
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 596

Book Description
First edition published in 1988 : Law and literature : a misunderstood relation ; revised and enlarged edition published in 1998.

Law and Literature

Author: Lenora Ledwon
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780815320463
Category : Law and literature
Languages : en
Pages : 524

Book Description
First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Structures of Law and Literature

Author: Jeffrey Miller
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773541624
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
A ground-breaking study of the gap between law and justice, establishing - at last - a truly substantive connection between law and literature.

New Directions in Law and Literature

Author: Elizabeth Susan Anker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019045637X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Book Description
This collection of essays by twenty-two prominent scholars from literature departments and law schools showcases the vibrancy of recent work in law and literature and highlights its many new directions since the field's heyday in the 1970s and 80s.

The Oxford Handbook of English Law and Literature, 1500-1700

Author: Lorna Hutson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199660883
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 833

Book Description
This Handbook triangulates the disciplines of history, legal history, and literature to produce a new, interdisciplinary framework for the study of early modern England. For historians of early modern England, turning to legal archives and learning more about legal procedure has seemed increasingly relevant to the project of understanding familial and social relations as well as political institutions, state formation, and economic change. Literary scholars and intellectual historians have also shown how classical forensic rhetoric formed the basis both of the humanist teaching of literary composition (poetry and drama) and of new legal epistemologies of fact-finding and evidence evaluation. In addition, the post-Reformation jurisdictional dominance of the common law produced new ways of drawing the boundaries between private conscience and public accountability. This Handbook brings historians, literary scholars, and legal historians together to build on and challenge these and similar lines of inquiry. Chapters in the Handbook consider the following topics in a variety of combinations: forensic rhetoric, poetics and evidence; humanist and legal learning; political and professional identities at the Inns of Court; poetry, drama, and visual culture; local governance and legal reform; equity, conscience, and religious law; legal transformations of social and affective relations (property, marriage, witchcraft, contract, corporate personhood); authorial liability (libel, censorship, press regulation); rhetorics of liberty, slavery, torture, and due process; nation, sovereignty, and international law (the British archipelago, colonialism, empire).

Law, Literature, and the Transmission of Culture in England, 1837–1925

Author: Cathrine O. Frank
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351922637
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 546

Book Description
Focusing on the last will and testament as a legal, literary, and cultural document, Cathrine O. Frank examines fiction of the Victorian and Edwardian eras alongside actual wills, legal manuals relating to their creation, case law regarding their administration, and contemporary accounts of curious wills in periodicals. Her study begins with the Wills Act of 1837 and poses two basic questions: What picture of Victorian culture and personal subjectivity emerges from competing legal and literary narratives about the will, and how does the shift from realist to modernist representations of the will accentuate a growing divergence between law and literature? Frank’s examination of works by Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Samuel Butler, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, and E.M. Forster reveals the shared rhetorical and cultural significance of the will in law and literature while also highlighting the competition between these discourses to structure a social order that emphasized self-determinism yet viewed individuals in relationship to the broader community. Her study contributes to our knowledge of the cultural significance of Victorian wills and creates intellectual bridges between the Victorian and Edwardian periods that will interest scholars from a variety of disciplines who are concerned with the laws, literature, and history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.