Lawyers and Literature James R. Elkins about the course || spring, 2012 “The issue is no longer whether reading literature should be part of the lawyer’s training. Rather, the issue is how we can best read law-related literature to make us better lawyers." ---William Domnarski, Law-Literature Criticism: Charting a Desirable Course with Billy Budd, 34 J. Legal Educ. 702 (1984) We'll use the first meeting of the class to get a better sense of what the course is about. In preparation for this first class meeting you should peruse the course website. You will find on the website an extensive array of indepth commentary on the course, a week by week projection of proposed assigned readings, and far more resources on "literature" than you will find it possible to read. selected readings. You will want to read: [Studying Literature] [Teachers' Work] As you read these first assigned stories, you should also begin to peruse the following: Reading Law, Reading Literature Enemies of Reading Assumptions About Literature What You Bring With You Making Yourself a Subject of Study Reading Lawyer Stories Thinking About Our Lives as Stories Working With Stories Strategies for Reading In the background of all your reading lies this question: What is this story doing here? And there are a host of questions that accompany it: What am I supposed to do with this story? How am I to talk about this story with my colleagues? How am I supposed to made use of the story to further my education as a lawyer? At times, we'll try to be as explicit as possible and address these questions directly. At other times, I will be content to let them reside just off central stage. You are welcome and encouraged to raised the questions (and their corollaries) at anytime, in or out of class. These questions raise still more basic questions, questions so basic you may well find them simply too basic to be considered in a serious way: How do I read? How am I to try to read this story? In thinking about these basic questions you may find it interesting, even as you begin the course to think about the s-t-r-a-t-e-g-i-e-s you use in reading: [Reading Strategies] Assignments will be marked on the assignments page with double purple bullets: . In addition to the assigned readings, you may also find it helpful to read, in preparation for class discussion, the Instructor's Note (and associated references). Some of the instructor's notes present a selection of web resources that you may also want to pursue, especially in regards to particular authors or particular readings. If you try to access the online text source for a story and it doesn'tt work, please notify me by email and I will try to promptly correct the problem. The web resources are indicated on the various webpages with a "web resources" image: The web resources are not assigned reading. Links to these resources are provided not with the idea that they provide direct guidance on how to read, interpret, or work with a particular story but because they provide information about the author of the reading, other "readings" of the story, and critical commentary and scholarly exploration of themes found in the story. In some instances, the linked resources may be of greater interest to graduate students in literature than to law students. If, during the course of your reading and web browsing, you find web resources of interest to the class please pass them along and I'll make them available, either by announcement, or by adding them to the relevant "web resources" page of the course website. I have tried to map out and schedule, in a tentative way, an entire semester of readings. It would be foolish to try to follow this schedule and not allow for more or less discussion of particular readings given your interest and my energies. Consequently, we'll try to follow the schedule but will vary it as necessary as we proceed. After each week of classes, I will update the assignments page and will add the completed week's assignment to the Assignments Archive page (which you can access from the homepage of the course website). Course Readings In this course of reading I want to: explore the possibilities and obstacles to learning about ourselves as lawyers from literature; puzzle over the relation of the real and fictional aspects of the lives we live as lawyers; explore how being a lawyer opens up and closes down important aspects of our personal lives; identify strategies we use in reading and understanding stories; participate in and learn more about the dynamics of conversation by which we try to put lawyer stories to use; introduce you to the work of contemporary lawyer poets and their use of poetry to describe their legal world (and the world beyond law). Jerome Bruner, a respected elder in the world of psychology, argues that we should "constantly be inquiring about the interaction between the powers of individual minds and the means by which the culture aids or thwarts their realization." Bruner contends this inquiry "will inevitably involve us in a never-ending assessment of the fit between what any particular culture deems essential for a good, or useful, or worthwhile way of life, and how individuals adapt to these demands as they impinge on their lives." [Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education 13 (1996)]. The legal profession is a distinct culture which aids and thwarts the realization of individual minds and lives. Lawyers and Literature examines, from a literary perspective, how a lawyer's life is enriched and diminished by the very culture that makes it possible. The readings in the course include: : Short stories: J.S. Marcus, "Centaurs" in J.S. Marcus, The Art of Cartography 17-23 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991) Lowell B. Komie in Komie's The Legal Fiction of Lowell B. Komie (Chicago: Swordfish/Chicago, 2005) "Weight," in Margaret Atwood, Wilderness Tips 163-178 (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1990) "Puttermesser: Her Work History, Her Ancestry, Her Afterlife," in Cynthia Ozick, The Puttermesser Papers 3-19 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997) selected stories from John William Corrington, The Collected Stories of John William Corrington (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990) Albert Camus, The Fall (New York: Vintage Books, 1956) An edited version of Leslie Hall Pinder, On Double Tracks (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys Ltd., 1990) "The Death of Ivan Ilych," in Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories 95-156 (New York: New American Library, 1960) Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" James R. Elkins (ed.), When Lawyers Talk About Their World: The Legal Verse of Lawyer Poets (forthcoming, Pleasure Boat Studio) The scheme for devising your grade for the course is more fully explored on a separate webpage. If you have questions, concerns, hopes, or fears concerning the readings or the course you are welcome to consult with me. I will, barring unforseen circumstances, promptly reply to your email message. I'll be delighted to meet with you and discuss the course. Drop me a note by email, or see me before or after class, and we'll find a convenient time to meet. Most "law and literature" courses are unlike what we've set out to do in Lawyers and Literature. One of the few efforts, that I've found, that describes the difference between the traditional "law and literature" course and the "lawyers and literature" course as I envision it is explored in William Domnarski's " Law and Literature," 27 Legal Studies Forum 109 (2003) [on-line text] [pertinent excerpts from the Domnarski essay] Lawyers and Literature is associated with two movements in contemporary jurisprudence: "law and literature" and "narrative jurisprudence." James R. Elkins | "A Letter to Lawyers & Literature Students" See also, James R. Elkins | "What Exactly, is Narrative Jurisprudence?" Lawyers and Literature is, most simply stated, a course comprised of stories, about stories--stories of, by, and about lawyers and the complex lives they (and we) live.   Lawyers and Literature Home Page