Law and Literature

Catalog description

This course examines the relationship between law and literature, beginning by focusing on their similarities in techniques and goals before moving to an exploration of how they approach questions of justice, morality, and fairness in very different ways. The course will explore how law and literature perform complementary yet often opposing functions in culture and society. Our readings in literary texts will explore the various ways that literature and law interact, as literature will be observed both to illuminate the workings of justice and its assumptions for readers as well as addressing flaws in legal systems, often turning readers against the laws that govern them and challenging citizen-readers to demand that their laws actually be just and equitable.