Poetic justice and legal fictions
Subtitle: studies in literary justice
By: Jonathan Kertzer.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780521196451
Subjects: Justice in literature; Law and literature; Legal stories -- History and criticism; Justice (Philosophy)
Description: "Literature reveals the intense efforts of moral imagination required to articulate what justice is and how it might be satisfied. Examining a wide variety of texts including Shakespeare's plays, Gilbert and Sullivan's operas, and modernist poetics, Poetic Justice and Legal Fictions explores how literary laws and values illuminate and challenge the jurisdiction of justice and the law. Jonathan Kertzer examines how justice is articulated by its command of, or submission to, time, nature, singularity, truth, transcendence and sacrifice, marking the distance between the promise of justice to satisfy our moral and sociable needs and its failure to do so. Poetic Justice and Legal Fictions will be invaluable reading for scholars of the law within literature and amongst modernist and twentieth century literature specialists"--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Acknowledgements; 1. Le mot juste; 2. Life plus ninety-nine years: the fantasy of legal fictions; 3. Time's desire: the temporality of justice; 4. One touch of nature: literature and natural law; 5. The course of a particular: on literary singularity; 6. Truth, justice and the pathos of understanding; 7. Conclusion: legal fictions; Notes; Works cited; Index.