Overview

From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect argues for the continued vitality of Law and Literature. Traditional methods of Law and Literature are combined with work in critical media studies, affect, and cultural narratology to address topics such as ethnonationalism, anti-immigration sentiment, and systemic racism in Germany and the United States. Taking stock of the diversification of the field at fifty years, this book understands Law and Literature as a political project. It has a precedent in inaugural Law and Literature texts such as Jacob Grimm's Von der Poesie im Recht (On the Poetry in Law) from 1815/16, which imagined an alternative legal order that was grounded in the unity of law, poetic language, and feeling. The political thrust of Law and Literature continues up into the present in the arts of BlackLivesMatter, which document and resist police violence. Law and Literature offers keys for understanding how legal identities are constructed, for analyzing how legal texts are constructed, and for comprehending how cultural-legal issues are mediated affectively. Using cultural, medial, affect theoretical, and narrative analyses of law, a revitalized Law and Literature offers a set of methods and theories with which to address the most pressing issues of the present.

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9780192856869

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Reviews

remarkable * Andrew Majeske, New American Studies Journal * Greta Olson's remarkable book From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect reinvigorates the discipline of law and literature by re-envisioning it-indeed by transforming it altogether. * Andrew Majeske, New American Studies Journal * In an elegant historical and incisive theoretical intervention, From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect traces the imaginative possibilities and critical potential of the jurisliterary. Olson not only provides a coruscating political accounting of the modern collision of law with literature, she also allows herself the freedom to imagine the radical potential of an expanded discipline and properly depicted art of law. This is a work that would classically be termed bene figuratus. Lavishly argued and elegantly illuminated, this book represents the coming of age of a crucial interdisciplinary conjunction in an aesthetics of legality. * Peter Goodrich, Professor of Law, Director of the Program in Law and Humanities, Cardozo Law School * Spirited, provocative, and highly readable, from Law and Literature to Legality and Affect argues that if there is any place where human complexity shows itself most, it is in the realm of affect. The strength of this book lies in the multiple disciplinary lenses Greta Olson convincingly brings together to open up new vistas to address the all too often problematic encounters of legalities and affective understandings of law in contemporary democratic societies under the rule of law. A must read for those in Law and Humanities and beyond to help further a critical-humanistic project for legal research and augment the understandings it brings to legal practice. * Jeanne Gaakeer, professor of jurisprudence at Erasmus School of Law, Rotterdam, and senior justice in the Court of Appeal, The Hague *

In an elegant historical and incisive theoretical intervention, From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect traces the imaginative possibilities and critical potential of the jurisliterary. Olson not only provides a coruscating political accounting of the modern collision of law with literature, she also allows herself the freedom to imagine the radical potential of an expanded discipline and properly depicted art of law. This is a work that would classically be termed bene figuratus. Lavishly argued and elegantly illuminated, this book represents the coming of age of a crucial interdisciplinary conjunction in an aesthetics of legality. * Peter Goodrich, Professor of Law, Director of the Program in Law and Humanities, Cardozo Law School * Spirited, provocative, and highly readable, from Law and Literature to Legality and Affect argues that if there is any place where human complexity shows itself most, it is in the realm of affect. The strength of this book lies in the multiple disciplinary lenses Greta Olson convincingly brings together to open up new vistas to address the all too often problematic encounters of legalities and affective understandings of law in contemporary democratic societies under the rule of law. A must read for those in Law and Humanities and beyond to help further a critical-humanistic project for legal research and augment the understandings it brings to legal practice. * Jeanne Gaakeer, professor of jurisprudence at Erasmus School of Law, Rotterdam, and senior justice in the Court of Appeal, The Hague *

Author Information

Greta Olson is Professor of English and American Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Giessen. She is a general editor of the European Journal of English Studies (EJES), and, with Jeanne Gaakeer, the co-founder of the European Network for Law and Literature. Professor Olson aims to facilitate work on the nexus between political and artistic practice and academic analysis. She is involved in a project on ""Beyond the Male Gaze: Towards Pluralistic Media Practices"" with the filmmaker Lisa Friederich, and in one on the politics of images of migration.

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