Poethics and Other Strategies of Law and Literature
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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.Synopsis
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.
Library Journal
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