Studies in law, politics, and society. Vol. 43, Law and literature reconsidered : special issue

The purpose of this special issue of "Studies in Law, Politics, and Society" is to examine the situation of law and literature. Once hailed as a promising new way to think about law and as opening a vital conversation about literature the question today is whether the law and literature enterprise has lived up to its initial promise. Has it succeeded in establishing a new interdiscipinarity or lost energy as law and literature courses become part of the mainstream both in legal and literary studies? Has the study of law and literature given way or been incorporated into boarder interdisciplinary configurations? What, if any, new paradigms of literary study of legal phenomena are on the horizon?This is a contemporary study of law and literature. It includes contributions by an international group of leading scholars. Front cover 1 Special Issue Law and Literature Reconsidered 4 Copyright page 5 Contents 6 List of Contributors 8 Editorial board 10 Chapter 1. ‘‘E proboscis unum: Law, literature, love, and the limits of sovereignty’’ 12 Notes 30 References 30 Chapter 2. What is it like to be like that? The progress of law and literature’s ‘‘other’’ project 32 Introduction 33 1. The taxonomic phase: Cataloging life’s characters To help our clients 34 2. The empathetic phase: experiencing others’ lives, The better to help them 37 3. The exemplary phase: Re-reading Plato’s Republic 53 Conclusion: The Republic constituting the Republic 59 Notes 59 Acknowledgments 60 References 61 Chapter 3. The law, the norm, and the novel 64 1. The uses of the Victorians 64 2. The norm, the law, and James Fitzjames Stephen 68 3. ‘‘Mad today and sane tomorrow’’: Sensation fiction and the law 76 4. A misunderstood relation 84 Notes 85 References 86 Chapter 4. Aesthetic judgment and legal justification 90 1. Literary discourse and aesthetic judgment 93 2. Legal institutions 99 3. The rhetoric of legal justification 105 4. Conclusion: the aesthetic predicament of legal criticism 116 References 120 Chapter 5. Textual properties: The limit of law and literature - Towards a Gothic jurisprudence 124 Mimesis - The scene of a crime 126 Literature before the law 129 Spectres of law and literature - ’Gothic devilism’10 131 Monster/text/pharmakon - Mary Shelley’s Frankestein 135 Conclusion: ‘‘Take precisely this example’’ 139 Notes 140 References 141 Chapter 6. ‘‘Reading as if for life’’: Law and literature is more important than ever 144 Hermeneutics and the legal culture 146 Narrative and the law 152 Notes 160 References 161 Chapter 7. African American literature and the law 164 Notes 181 References 182 "The purpose of this special issue of "Studies in Law, Politics, and Society" is to examine the situation of law and literature. Once hailed as a promising new way to think about law and as opening a vital conversation about literature the question today is whether the law and literature enterprise has lived up to its initial promise. Has it succeeded in establishing a new interdiscipinarity or lost energy as law and literature courses become part of the mainstream both in legal and literary studies? Has the study of law and literature given way or been incorporated into boarder interdisciplinary configurations? What, if any, new paradigms of literary study of legal phenomena are on the horizon? A contemporary study of law and literature. Contributions are by an international group of leading scholars."--Publisher