Cross Examinations of Law and Literature. Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, and Melville

Cover Type: Hardcover
Book Condition: Fine
Jacket Condition: Fine
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publisher Place: Cambridge. Mass
Publisher Year: 1987
Edition: First Edition

Description: 300 pages. Book and Jacket appear to have hardly been read and are both in Fine condition throughout. The only exception is a small inscription to the inside page.

Publishers Description: In Cross Examinations of Law and Literature Brook Thomas uses legal thought and legal practice as a lens through which to read some of the important fictions of antebellum America. The lens reflects both ways, and we learn as much about the literature in the context of contemporary legal concerns as we do about the legal ideologies that the fiction subverts or reveals. Successive chapters deal with Cooper's Pioneers and Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables (property law and the image of the judiciary), Melville's "Benito Cereno" and Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (slavery), Melville's White Jacket, Pierre and "Bartleby" (worker exploitation or wage slavery), The Confidence-Man (contracts), and finally, "Billy Budd," which examines a number of issues illustrative of the triumph of legal formalism after the Civil War.

ISBN: 0521330815