Literature and Law in the Era of Magna Carta

Author:   Jennifer Jahner (Assistant Professor of English, Caltech)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
ISBN:  

9780198847724


Pages:   304
Publication Date:   11 October 2019
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Our Price $183.95 Quantity:  
Add to Cart

Share |

Literature and Law in the Era of Magna Carta


Add your own review!

Overview

The monograph series Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture showcases the plurilingual and multicultural quality of medieval literature and actively seeks to promote research that not only focuses on the array of subjects medievalists now pursue in literature, theology, and philosophy, in social, political, jurisprudential, and intellectual history, the history of art, and the history of science but also that combines these subjects productively. It offers innovative studies on topics that may include, but are not limited to, manuscript and book history; languages and literatures of the global Middle Ages; race and the post-colonial; the digital humanities, media and performance; music; medicine; the history of affect and the emotions; the literature and practices of devotion; the theory and history of gender and sexuality, ecocriticism and the environment; theories of aesthetics; medievalism. l Literature and Law in the Era of Magna Carta traces processes of literary training and experimentation across the early history of the English common law, from its beginnings in the reign of Henry II to its tumultuous consolidations under the reigns of John and Henry III. The period from the mid-twelfth through the thirteenth centuries witnessed an outpouring of innovative legal writing in England, from Magna Carta to the scores of statute books that preserved its provisions. An era of civil war and imperial fracture, it also proved a time of intensive self-definition, as communities both lay and ecclesiastic used law to articulate collective identities. Literature and Law in the Era of Magna Carta uncovers the role that grammatical and rhetorical training played in shaping these arguments for legal self-definition. Beginning with the life of Archbishop Thomas Becket, the book interweaves the histories of literary pedagogy and English law, showing how foundational lessons in poetics helped generate both a language and theory of corporate autonomy. In this book, Geoffrey of Vinsauf's phenomenally popular Latin compositional handbook, the Poetria nova, finds its place against the diplomatic backdrop of the English Interdict, while Robert Grosseteste's Anglo-French devotional poem, the Château d'Amour, is situated within the landscape of property law and Jewish-Christian interactions. Exploring a shared vocabulary across legal and grammatical fields, this book argues that poetic habits of thought proved central to constructing the narratives that medieval law tells about itself and that later scholars tell about the origins of English constitutionalism.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jennifer Jahner (Assistant Professor of English, Caltech)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 16.10cm , Height: 2.20cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.604kg
ISBN:  

9780198847724


ISBN 10:   0198847726
Pages:   304
Publication Date:   11 October 2019
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Poetics of Jurisdiction 1: The Grammar of Sacrifice: Becket, Learning, and Libertas 2: Classroom Historicisms: Interdict and the Poetria nova 3: Inventing Magna Carta 4: Jurisdictional Formalism: Robert Grosseteste and the Pastoral Model of Governance 5: Conjuring England: Crusade, Violence, and Communitas Coda: The Jurisdictions of Form Bibliography

Reviews

In this impressive book, Jennifer Jahner shows the compelling breadth of interpretations afforded by literary readings of English law during its period of critical formation. We can be grateful to this book for setting the standard for future such inquiries, and marking out so many paths of possibility. * Tom Johnson, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Volume 42, 2020 *


Author Information

Jennifer Jahner is Assistant Professor of English at Caltech. She is co-editor, with Emily Steiner and Elizabeth Tyler, of Historical Writing in Britain and Ireland, 500-1550, and publishes on the intersections of law, poetics, and pedagogy in the high and later Middle Ages.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions
Latest Reading Guide

ls

Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty
Shopping cart
Mailing List