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lawyers and literature
James R. Elkins
Studying Literature
 "We all have slumbering realms
of sensibility which can be coaxed into wakefulness by books."
[Robertson Davies, A Voice From the Attic: Essays
on the Art of Reading 13 (New York: Penguin Books, rev. ed., 1990)]
"[L]iterature is an art, and . . . as an art it is able to enlarge and refine our understanding of life." [Robertson Davies, Reading and Writing 2-3 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, special ed., 1993) (1992)]
 The study of literature "is the place—there is no other in most schools—the place wherein the chief matters of concern are particulars of humanness—individual human feeling, human response, and human time, as these can be known through the written expression (at many literary levels) of men living and dead, and as they can be discovered by student writers seeking through words to name and compose and grasp their own experience. English [that is, literature] in sum is about my distinctness and the distinctness of other human beings. Its function, like that of some books called 'great,' is to strive at once to know the world through art, to know what if anything he uniquely is, and what some brothers uniquely are. The instruments employed are the imagination, the intellect, and texts or events that rouse the former to life . . . . [T]he goal . . . is to expand the areas of the human world—areas that would not exist but for art—with which individual man can feel solidarity and coextensiveness." [Benjamin DeMott, Supergrow: Essays and Reports on Imagination in America 143 (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1969)]
"It appears to me quite tenable that
the function of literature as a generated prize-worthy force is precisely
that it does incite humanity to continue living; that it eases the mind
of strain, and feeds it, I mean definitely as nutrition of impulse."
[T.S. Eliot, Literary Essays of Ezra Pound 20
(New York: New Directions Book, 1935)]
Literature "returns you to otherness, whether in yourself or in friends, or in those who may become friends. Imaginative literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness." [Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why 19 (New York: Scribner, 2000)]
"You look for your own story in literature; it's one of the best mechanisms you have to convince yourself you're not alone." [Glenn Schaeffer, founder of the International Institute of Modern Letters, UNLV Magazine]
"Literature, I argue, is the product
of a way of reading, of a community agreement about what will count
as literature, which leads the members of the community to pay a certain
kind of attention and thereby to create literature."
[Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive
Communities 97 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980)]
Literature teaches, "it expands one's
sympathy, it complicates one's sense of oneself and the world, it humiliates
the instrumentally calculating forms of reason so dominant in our culture
(by demonstrating their dependence on other forms of thought and express,
and the like). It is one of the deepest characteristics of literary texts
to throw into question the nature of the language in which they are
written, and this necessarily throws into question as well the nature
of any language in which they might be talked about or into which they
might be translated." [James Boyd White, From Expectation
to Experience: Essays on Law & Legal Education 55 (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1999)]. White goes on to observe that "literary
teaching" leads us "towards incrementally more complete, but
never wholly adequate, understandings of other people and other minds—towards
other languages, other ways of thinking and being and imagining the
world. These understandings in turn carry us towards a general understanding
both of language and of the mind, one that is literary rather than conceptual
in kind and affects our reading not only of 'literature' but of all
the texts that make up our world." [Id.
at 58].
"Literature lives through language, and so must we
. . . ." [Id. at 60].
"What
I think literature has most to teach, then, is a way of reading, and
reading not only 'literature' but all kinds of texts and expressions:
a way of focusing our attention on the languages we use, on the relations
we establish with them, and on the definition of self and other that
is enacted in every expression." [Id.]
"Reading is a direct and immediate engagement with language. Discussing what we read intensifies this engagement, giving us an increased sense of authority and self-confidence. As we build language skills, we build life skills. We learn our place within the world of language. In an important sense, by reading and discussing what we read, we all create our own place in the world. We become productive citizens." [Robert Waxler, The Power of Stories] "Students are formed by the reading they do, by the views of self and world such reading presents." [Parker J. Palmer, To Know as We Are Known 19 (New York: Harper & Row, 1983)]
"For students whose recent training stresses precise, structured, and explicit analysis, the inferential and expressive freedom of . . . fiction can be disorienting. . . . Some students may have so successfully transformed themselves into legal writers that expressive prose no longer communicates anything . . . ." [Alexander Scherr & Hillary Farber, Popular Culture as a Lens on Legal Professionalism, 55 S.C.L. Rev. 351, 378 (2003)]
"The study of literature offers many ways to improve literacy: it gives access to language, reading, writing, a shared culture, and one's own self." [Jean Trounstine, Why Literature in Prison?]
"America's literature matters. A nation
defines itself and its world by the stories it tells and the books
it reads. Concurrently, its international identity is shaped by the
songs of its poets, the myths of its writers, and the imagination
of its citizens." ["Why Literature?" The
Writer's Garrot (web posting no longer available)]
"The craft of literature: Articulates
insights, sentiments in ways that sometimes the rest of us cannot—Gives voice to what is submerged and suppressed
(the questions behind the questions)—Defamiliarizes
the familiar." [Johanna Shapiro, Can
Poetry Make Better Doctors?]
"[L]iterature goes beyond life. It
is art; it is an imaginative creation that can tell truths gracefully,
subtly through narrative, poetry and the movement of characters on
a stage. Any imaginative act suggests possibility, and this is another
reason to continue studying literature." [Florence
Dee Boodakian, In
Defense of Literature][website no longer available]
"I urge literature upon lawyers and law students to teach how the culture of the law attracts and repels those who enter its province. Novels are profoundly useful tools to study human nature, and I teach these books as a strategy, not a panacea, to counter many of the ills attributed to legal education and lawyering today." [Ilene Durst, Valuing Women Storytellers: What They Talk About When They Talk About Law, 11 Yale J.L. & Feminism 245 (1999)]
On Studying Literature
On Books
The Premature Obituary of the Book: Why Literature?
Understanding Literature
Nineteen Theses on Literature Conversations in Literature
[The most useful part of this collection of materials for our purposes is the video in which teachers of literature talk about what literature means to them. I recommend that you watch the video. To access the video, go to the first workshop, "Responding as Readings" and "View this Video." You will be asked to sign-up so you can log-on to the site.] 
Literature | a subject of study in the university
On
the Decline and Fall of Literature
Humanism and Literary Theory
Basic Definitions
Literature
Wikipedia
Belles-lettres
Wikipedia
Fiction
Wikipedia
Literary Fiction
Wikipedia
What is Literature?
EncycloZine: Literature
Purchase Used, Hard-to-Find & Obscure Books
abebooks.com
preferred and premier source of books used & rare; I've used this
resource
so often that it threatens to impoverish me
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