Law and Literature - A misunderstood relation

Richard Posner

Harvard University Press

1988

371 páginas

12h 22m

ISBN-10: 0674514688

In the first comprehensive treatment of the interrelations between two ancient fields of learning, Richard Posner both explores literature on legal themes -- masterpiece in the depiction of law by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dickens, Melville, Kafka and other great imaginative writers -- and scrutinizes legal texts (legislative and judicial) through the lens supplied by literary theory and the methods of literary criticism. He also explores the regulation of literature by the law of defamation, of obscenity, and of copyright.

Posner mines literature for jurisprudential insights, compares problems of legal and literary interpretation, and presents and criticizes previous scholarly treatments while offering a fresh approach. He emphasizes areas of mutual illumination between law and literature, but also areas of essential difference rooted in the different social functions of legal and literary texts. Although he takes up many theoretical issues, including the problematics of revenge as a mode of social conrol, the conflict between Enlightenment and Romantic values, and rival schools of literary and legal interpretations (including descontruction), his book in particularly distinctive in its concreteness: its lively readings of many works of both literature and law.

A genuinely interdisciplinary work by a pioneer in interdisciplinary legal studies, the book will be of interest to teachers and students of literature as well of law; to college students; to practicing lawyers and judges -- and indeed anyone who is interested in the intersection of the political and cultural spheres.