François Ost & Jeanne Gaakeer (Eds.), Crossing Borders: law, language, and literature, Wolf Legal Publishers, Nijmegen (The Neederlan), 2008, 180 pp. ISBN-13 : 9789058503732
Proceedings of the Special Workshop on Law and Literature held at the 23rd World Conference of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (IVR), August, 2007, Cracow. Given the theme of the congress, ‘Differences and Similarities between Legal Cultures’, much attention was devoted to interdisciplinary developments in law and legal theory. Within these developments, the interrelation of law, language, and literature takes a prominent place, now that law and literature meet at the foundational level of language, which they share as their instrument. ‘Law as Literature’, then, starts from the claim that developing a feeling for language and literary style benefits any legal professional, and ‘Law & Literature’ is devoted to analyses of literary works with a law-related topic in a broad sense. Scholars from countries as varied as Brazil, Mexico, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom found themselves attracted to these topics. The result is this collection that is in itself also a reflection of the wide range of levels at which contemporary discussions in the field take place.
Table of Contents:
Introduction by Jeanne Gaakeer and Francois Ost
Part I: Interrelations of law, language and literature
Law and Literature: an analysis of Sophocles’ Antigone and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, by Marcelo Campos Galuppo
Utopian capabilities: on critical legal thinking and Cervantes’ Don Quixote, by Jom Reinhard
Kafka, kavka, K: the case of a hyphenated identity, by Vera Karam de Chueiri
Law and essays (cronicas): the enchanting soul of the streets, by Monica Sette Lopes
Comprehending Contraries or Doublethink? Law, literature and the dangers of cognitive dissonance, by Jeanne Gaakeer
On Law and Literature: dimensions and limits of a controversial relationship, by Marcelino Rodríguez Molinero
Thought and Art in Hispanic Tradition of Legal Literature: aesthetic keys for legal interpretation, by Héctor Lòpez Bello
Investigative Literature- Bertolt Brecht revisited, by Lorenz Schulz
Hellenism and Hebraism: legal traditions and the work of Cynthia Ozick, by James Gray
Part II: New Perspectives
Hyperliterature and Law, Unity of Text, Diversity of Readings, by Andreij Kristan
A Little Place Before the Law: Two tales of one metaphor, by Maria Aristodemou
Sade and Portalis at the foot of the Scaffold, an example of jurisfiction, by Francois Ost
