Literature and Law
Hannah Wells profile
MTWR 1-2:30
Fulfills Sector 1: Theory and Poetics of the English Standard Major
Fulfills Sector 5: 19th Century Literature of the English Standard Major
This course will consider the intersection between literature and the law from an historical as well as a philosophical perspective. How does the rhetoric of law teach us to separate fact from fiction? How is it represented in works of literature? And how does the narrative logic of fiction inform the law? We will read Sophocles' Antigone, Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote, Melville's Billy Budd, Kafka's The Trial, Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and Athol Fugard's The Island, as well as brief theoretical writings by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Michel Foucault, Duncan Kennedy, and Patricia Williams. Course requirements will include one in-class presentation, two critical essays, and a final exam.
updated 2007-06-29
