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  1. Home
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  3. Cross-Examinations of Law and Literature
  • Cited by 45
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
October 2009
Print publication year:
1987
Online ISBN:
9780511570513
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511570513
Series:
Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture (21)
Subjects:
Literature, Area Studies, American Literature, Socio-Legal Studies, American Studies, Law, Literary Theory
Information

Book description

In Cross Examinations of Law and Literature Brook Thomas uses legal thought and legal practice as a lens through which to read some of the important fictions of antebellum America. The lens reflects both ways, and we learn as much about the literature in the context of contemporary legal concerns as we do about the legal ideologies that the fiction subverts or reveals. Successive chapters deal with Cooper's Pioneers and Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables (property law and the image of the judiciary), Melville's 'Benito Cereno' and Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (slavery), Melville's White Jacket, Pierre and 'Bartleby' (worker exploitation or wage slavery), The Confidence-Man (contracts), and finally, 'Billy Budd', which examines a number of issues illustrative of the triumph of legal formalism after the Civil War.

Reviews

‘A welcome addition to a fascinating area of study …’

Source: Choice

‘By placing the familiar canonical works of Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe and Melville in a carefully defined relation with contemporary legal ideology, he has illuminated both the literature and the law and has helped recover a part of our cultural history.’

Donald A. Ringe Source: American Literature

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