Poethics and Other Strategies of Law and Literature

by Richard Weisberg

Overview

Lawyers, like novelists, must use language that is precise, passionate, and real, in order to tell their stories clearly and persuasively. Richard Weisberg, one of the pioneers of the dynamic new Law and Literature movement, offers this lively collection of closely linked essays exemplifying the field's now influential strategies. Weisberg here names and narrates the central vision of Law and Literature, which he calls poethics: the revival of jurisprudence through literary sources and techniques.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231074544
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	03/11/1992
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Richard H. Weisberg is a professor of constitutional law at the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York City, a leading scholar on law and literature.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Paving the Way
I. Poethics: Toward a Literary Jurisprudence
1. Filling the void
2. The Poetic Method for Law, or How the Law Means
3. Narrative Aspects of Judicial Opinions
4. Poetic Substance: The Poethics of Legal Narrative
Legalistic Storytellers
II. Let’s Not Kill All the Lawyers: Anglo-American Fiction’s Equivocal Approach to the Lawyer FIgure
5. The Literary Lawyer’s Six Compelling Traits
6. “I’ll have no feelings here!”: More on Mr. Jaggers
7. Law’s Oppression of the Feminine Other: Mr. Tulkinghorn v. Lady Dedlock
8. John Barth’s Todd Andrews: Inductive Reasoning, Relative Values
9. Gavin Stevens’ Quest for Silence: Faulkner’s Developing Lawyer Figure
III. Christianity’s Ends
10. “Then you shall be his surety”: Oaths and Mediating Breaches in The Merchant of Venice
11. Accepting the Inside Narrator’s Challenge: More on the Christ Figure in Billy Budd, Sailor
IV. The Self-Imploding Canon
12. Law, Literature and the “Great Books”: Legal Rhetoric, or the Stories Lawyers Tell
V. Lawtalk in France: The Challenge to Democracy
13. Avoiding Central Realities: Narrative Terror and the Failure of French Culture Under the Occupation
14. Legal Rhetoric Under Stress: The Example of Vichy
VI. Lawtalk in America
15. Thoughts on Judge Richard Posner’s Literary Performance
16. From Jefferson to the Gulf War: How Lawyers Have Lost Their Golden Tongue
17. Notes on Three Works by James Boyd White
Notes (1974) on The Legal Imagination
Notes (1987) on Heracles’ Bow
Notes (1991) on Justice as Translation
Conclusion
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

Weisberg has skillfully woven together two seemingly distant subjects. As he explains, ``poetic ethics, or . . . poethics . . . endeavors nothing less than to fill the ethical void in which legal thought and practice now exist.'' Part 1 discusses the foundations for a program of study in law and literature. Part 2 explores ``the storyteller's legalistic obsession'' in a series of splendid essays on works by authors such as Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, and William Shakespeare. The last section focuses on legal rhetoric used in Vichy France and by American lawyers throughout history, with a discussion of Judge Richard Posner's Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation (Harvard Univ. Pr., 1988). Highly recommended for graduate programs.--Lois Cherepon, St. John's Univ. Lib., Staten Island, New York

Library Journal

Weisberg (law, Yeshiva U.), one of the pioneers of the new Law and Literature movement, offers a powerful collection of closely linked essays exemplifying the field's now influential strategies. He names and narrates the central vision of Law and Literature, which he calls poethics: the revival of jurisprudence through literary sources and techniques. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews