Law and Literature, Law 5818A 001 Fall, 2011 Supplementary Readings/ Works Students Might Want to Use

for Essays The works listed below are just a sampling. The comments following them are meant to help situate them in the course context. There are many other things relevant to the course and to problems of law and justice generally that can be said about them. An asterisk (*) indicates staples of law-and-literature studies: in other words, you will find a lot of secondary law and lit material about these works, but discovering an untrodden approach to the material could be commensurately difficult. Most of the listed works were written in English. For your essays, you are welcome to use works originally written in other languages as long as a translation (in English or French) is available, so that the instructor can read them. If you are using a translation into English or French, obtain one by a literary translator with a good reputation for such work. -Aeschylus, The Oresteia,* positive law, trial process growing (archetypically) out of mythic/classical tradition -Atwood, Margaret Alias Grace, legal narrative, law versus justice A Handmaids Tale, dystopia, rule-of-law paradigm turned on its head -Aym, Marcel Grace (La Grce), in Le Vin de Paris and, in Le Passe-muraille: LHuissier (The Bailiff), The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls (Le Passemuraille), The Sabines, The Card, The Decree, Poldovian Legend, The Wife-Tax Collector; Ayms play about wrongful convictions and capital punishment, The Heads of Others (La Tte des autres). Resort to magic as opposed to secular or sacred legal systems. -Babel, Isaac, The Odessa Stories, The Red Cavalry Stories, legal narrative, paradigm shift in rule-of-law paradigm, abuse of legal authority -Behan, Brendan, Borstal Boy, Duty and its relationship to the process of maturation. You might like to consider this work in the context of the case Home Office v. Dorset Yacht, [1970] 2 All ER 294 and in relation to works such as Lord of the Flies and A Clockwork Orange. -Burgess, Anthony, A Clockwork Orange, breakdown of rule of law, abuse of authority against perceived evil, the nature of social norms -Camus, Albert, The Fall (La chute)* Legal narrative, notions of justice, philosophical notion of absurdity and how it relates to rule of law Caudwell, Sarah, her other Hilary Tamar novels in the context of what we discuss about The Sirens Sang of Murder.

-Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, Reversal of rule-of-law paradigm, legal narrative, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism (see, e.g., Chinua Achebe, An Image of Africa) -DeLillo, Don, White Noise, dystopia, rule-of-law paradigm turned on its head, inherent anarchy in modern society -Deverell, William, Trial of Passion legal narrative, notions of justice, hierarchies, shifting of rule-of-law paradigm, etc. -Dickens, Charles: Dickens oeuvre, reduced to its essentials, is almost completely about the gap between law (or social hierarchy) and justice. The work often considered in law and literature courses is Bleak House,* but, beyond the fact that its background is the deadly pace and putrefaction of civil litigation, it is no better topic-source for our discipline than many of his other works. -Doctorow, E.L., Ragtime revenge lit./justice -Dostoevski, Fyodor, Crime and Punishment* (justice and evil, sociopathy) -Forster, E.M., A Passage to India, cultural relativism, competing notions of law -Golding, William, Lord of the Flies, breakdown of rule of law, competing legal narratives -Gordimer, Nadine, The House Gun Another view (than that in Disgrace) of the more just post-apartheid South Africa -Greene, Graham, Brighton Rock Sociopathy, power balances. See Greenes comment on this novel on our Some Thematic Material for Essays sheet. -Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure and/or The Mayor of Casterbridge (justice, retribution, feminism note that the wife-selling theme in Mayor is based on actual cases Hardy found in newspapers of the day) -Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter (gap between law and justice, feminist issues) -Kafka, Franz, The Trial* failure of conventional legal order, skewing of conventional paradigm - Kleist, Heinrich von, Michael Kohlhass, moral outlaw, revenge literature -Lee, Harper, To Kill a Mockingbird,* (gap between law and justice, lawyer as quester/knight) -Kelman, James, How Late It Was, How Late (equivocal versus actual evil) -MacLeish, Archibald, J.B. An interpretation of the Book of Job by way of a play. In the instructors opinion, not particularly well-conceived.

-Malcolm, Janet, The Journalist and the Murderer (including preface); legal narrative. You might want to consider with it Jeffrey Massons defamation lawsuit against Malcolm and The New Yorker (the various judgments, all the way to the US Supreme Court), which she mentions in the preface. -Melville, Herman, Billy Budd* gap between law and justice -Milton, John, Paradise Lost, archetypal relationship of law and literature, etc., etc. -More, Thomas, Utopia, attempt to restore a pre-legal or paradisal state -Mortimer John, Material from the other Rumpole books, beyond (following on) Rumpole of the Bailey Paradise Postponed (gap between law and justice, etc.) Quite Honestly, legal narrative, rehabilitation/redemption -Morrison, Toni, Beloved, use of supernatural where conventional justice fails -Orwell, George, Animal Farm, nature of revolution, moral outlawry, and consequent disappointments, new abuses of new order. (Obviously, you might want to consider with this 1984 and some of Orwells socio-political journalism.) - Politics and the English Language Famous essay every literate person has read. Ozick, Cynthia. Some of her novels and stories (e.g., The Shawl, The Messiah of Stockholm) deal with justice and redemption in a very broad way, particularly in relation to the Holocaust and Jewish history; more broadly, anyway, than does The Puttermesser Papers. - Prose, Francine, The Blue Angel, legal narratives, nature of justice, punishment, redemption; Could be discussed e.g., in an essay on the campus novel and its treatment of justice with Disgrace and The Human Stain (Roth, see below). - Plato, Apology, Crito, Phaedo (the dialogues recounting the trial and execution of Socrates); gap between law and justice, punishment, redemption, who is a criminal, etc. -Roth, Philip, The Human Stain As with the Francine Prose novel. Could be discussed e.g., in an essay on the campus novel and its treatment of justice with Disgrace and The Blue Angel. - Sayles, John, At the Anarchists Convention, particularly re: charming rogues/outlaw as hero. - Self, Will, The Butt, (comparative law, competing narrative, ironic approach to notions of justice) -Shakespeare, William, particularly (but absolutely not limited to): Measure for Measure*

Merchant of Venice* Othello King Lear justice Hamlet revenge lit/law v. justice - Traditional Ballads the relevant archetypology, iconography, treatment of justice, use of supernatural themes where natural order/rule of law breaks down -Wolfe, Tom, Bonfire of the Vanities power (im)balances, notions of justice and redemption/punishment