Taking Exception to the Law: Materializing Injustice in Early Modern English Literature - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1442642017 ISBN 13: 9781442642010

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2015

Synopsis

Taking Exception to the Law explores how a range of early modern English writings responded to injustices perpetrated by legal procedures, discourses, and institutions. From canonical poems and plays to crime pamphlets and educational treatises, the essays engage with the relevance and wide appeal of legal questions in order to understand how literature operated in the early modern period.

Justice in its many forms – legal, poetic, divine, natural, and customary – is examined through insightful and innovative analyses of a number of texts, including The Merchant of Venice, The Faerie Queene, and Paradise Lost. A major contribution to the growing field of law and literature, this collection offers cultural contexts, interpretive insights, and formal implications for the entire field of English Renaissance culture.

About this title

About the Author

Donald Beecher is a professor in the Department of English at Carleton University. Travis DeCook is an associate professor in the Department of English at Carleton University. Andrew Wallace is an associate professor in the Department of English at Carleton University. Grant Williams is an associate professor in the Department of English at Carleton University.

Review

‘The editors gather an admirable selection of essays from a range of scholars....Taking Exception to the Law provokes stimulating conversation between legal and literary sources.’

(Larissa Tracy Sixteenth Century Studies vol 47:02:2016)

‘The volume takes its place among lively and rapidly expanding scholarship on early modern law and literature... Such a survey can do little, of course, to give a full sense of the richness of the volume but perhaps can tantalize readers with the variety of texts and breadth of concepts the authors tackle.’

(Karen Cunningham Renaissance Quarterly vol 69:02:2016)

‘Taking Exception to the Law certainly illuminates the networks of literary actors, both non-human and human, that exert power in early modern English law.’

(Marissa Greenberg English Studies in Canada vol 42:3-4:2016)

‘Highly recommended’

(J.D. Sharpe Choice Magazine, vol 52:12:2015)

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1442642017
• ISBN 13: 9781442642010
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Beecher Donald, DeCook Travis, Wallace Andrew, Williams Grant