Dear all,
on Thursday 11th March we will start our course with a practical example of what a lesson about Law and the Humanities (or better Law and Literature) can mean. On Friday 12th Prof. Skeel will introduce us to the Law and Literature movement in the USA and next week we will continue to analyse the different ways in which the connections between Law and Literature have been interpreted also in Europe. The first lesson will then be an attempt to place practice before theory. Our aim is to make you eager to learn more.
We will analyse “the Shakespearean play most closely linked in the popular mind with law”, THE very classic of the Law and Literature studies: "The Merchant of Venice". The play will give us imputs to think about some important legal issues and to better unserstand the perception of key legal problems in a certain historical period. To sum up, we will use the MOV to ask questions rather then give answers.
SHAKESPEARE IN LAW
Brief Outline:
The lesson will be focused on the following questions:
1) What was the role of Jewes in 16th/17th century Europe? /What does it mean not to be admitted in a community?
2) What was the discipline of usury? / What does usury mean?
3) What was the relation between law and equity in Shakespeare’s England? / What does equity mean?
Suggested reading:
D.J. Kornstein, Fie Upon your Law!, in “Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature”, 5.1 (1993): A Symposium Issue on “The Merchant of Venice”, pp. 35-56.
The lesson will be focused on the following questions:
1) What was the role of Jewes in 16th/17th century Europe? /What does it mean not to be admitted in a community?
2) What was the discipline of usury? / What does usury mean?
3) What was the relation between law and equity in Shakespeare’s England? / What does equity mean?
Suggested reading:
D.J. Kornstein, Fie Upon your Law!, in “Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature”, 5.1 (1993): A Symposium Issue on “The Merchant of Venice”, pp. 35-56.
Stefania Gialdroni CV:
Stefania Gialdroni is a research fellow (“assegnista di ricerca”) at the University of Roma Tre Law Faculty, the chair of Medieval and Modern Legal History. She obtained her PhD in 2009 “en co-tutelle” between the University of Milano-Bicocca and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales - Paris (EHESS). In 2006 she entered the Marie Curie Program “European Doctorate in history, sociology, anthropology and philosophy of legal cultures in Europe”. In the framework of the European Doctorate she spent one year at the London School of Economics (LSE), and two years at the EHESS in Paris. She received several scholarships from the Max-Planck Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt am Main, where she attended the International Max-Planck Research School for Comparative Legal History (2005-2006). In 2003 she graduated from the University of Rome Tre, Law Faculty.
She has been assisting Prof. Emanuele Conte in the organisation of the Law and the Humanities courses at the RomaTre Law Faculty since 2008.
The subject of her PhD thesis is the legal structure of the English East India Company during the 17th century.
DAVID SKEEL ON LAW AND LITERATURE
Brief Outline:
In this class, we will briefly explore the history of law and literature scholarship in the United States, and consider the prospects of this movement for the future. We will focus in particular on three recent strands of law and literature scholarship, which are often referred to as 1) law as language (associated with James Boyd White); 2) literature as empathy (associated with Robin West and Martha Nussbaum) and 3) law and narrative (associated with Patricia Williams).
Suggested readings:
- D.A. Skeel, Lawrence Joseph and Law and Literature, in "University of Cincinnati Law Review", 77.3 (2009), pp. 921-939.
- J.B. Baron, Law, Literature and the Problems of Interdisciplinarity, in "The Yale Law Journal", 108 (1999), pp. 1059-1086.
Prof. David Skeel's CV:
David A. Skeel is currently the S. Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2004-), after having been Associate Professor of Law at the Temple University School of Law (1993- 1998) and Professor of Law at University of Pennsylvania Law School (1999- 2003) .
He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina (B.A. 1983) and the University of Virginia (J.D. 1987). His poems have appeared in Boulevard, Kansas Quarterly and elsewhere. He has written on law and literature or related issues for Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Legal Affairs, Wallace Stevens Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, and other publications; and he served as an advisory editor of Boulevard in the 1990s.
He also is the author of two books:
- Icarus in the Boardroom: The Fundamental Flaws in Corporate America and Where They Came From (Oxford U. Press, 2005)
- Debt’s Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America (Princeton University Press, 2001) .
In 1999 & 2002 he received the Harvey Levin Award for Excellence in Teaching and in 2004 the Lindback Award (university-wide “Great Teacher” award).
For a complete overview on Prof. Skeel’s CV and his extensive list of publications see:
http://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/dskeel/
Dear Dr Gialdroni,
RispondiEliminaI did not understand how the get the texts for the next lecture, or maybe I simply cannot read the blog properly. Could you give me any explanations?
Thanks a lot.
Dear Dr Gialdroni,
RispondiEliminaI tried to get the texts for tomorrow's lesson, but I failed.
I'm not able to enlarge the text of Professor Skeel, so I can't print it and read it.
Maybe you'll give more details about it tomorrow.
Thanks a lot
Anna Leonetti
Dear Dr Gialdroni,
RispondiEliminaI've used "One Note" to open the file of Professor Skeel, but unfortunately i'm able to see only few pages! Maybe the file is corrupted, i don't know...
Hope to get some news tomorrow!
Alessia Guaitoli
Ps. I'm watching the Merchant of Venice, while waiting to get the text and read it (i was curious after today's lecture)!
Well, I don't know what happened...I will try again. See you in a few minutes.
RispondiEliminaStefania Gialdroni
Dear all,
RispondiEliminaI agree with the student who suggested to Dr. Gialdroni to watch together the movie “The merchant of Venice”, in class, after our friday morning lesson.
I probably have the dvd of the movie, so let me know if anybody is interested in.
About our thursday lesson and the question of the role of the Jews in the history, in particular in the Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice”, I’d like to underline the fact that this question is like an “evergreen”, which characterizes all the historical periods, and which is the object of the studies of many important authors and writers.
In this sense I suggest the reading of Tacitus’s "Historiae", book number five.
At the beginning of the fifth book infact, Tacitus talks about jewish people, which is involved in the war of Judea.
Tacitus is the first author who describes Jews (in Roman’s opinion the Judea was only a very small unimportant area in their Empire, for this reason roman historians never mention them).
He makes an “excursus” about the history, the habits and usages of the people of Judea, from the roman citizen point of view.
He talks about their origins and he says that there were many theories about their provenance.
Then Tacitus speaks about the Jews expulsion’s from Egypt: he says that the egyptian Pharaon considered them as people “hated” from God, so, for this reason, God sent in Egypt an awful pestilence.
In this situation Jews, that were alone in the desert, saved themselves with the help of Mosè, a prophet sent from God, who gave them a new city and a new temple, establishing new rituals and new habits.
The author describes these rituals, defining them as “sordid and unconventional”: Tacitus judges the Jews behaviour’s as immoral.
Tacitus does not investigate thoroughly why the specificity of the Jewish tradition, but focuses on the superficial appearance dictated by popular belief.
The Jews, having morals and religious beliefs very different from those of other nations, are regarded by the Romans as men without morality.
Consequently, the author, not understanding what its habits are different, describes them in a negative way.
First of all he considered them as a sect in which components are "succor one another but also imbued with hatred for all humanity", mainly due to the fact that they maintain their strong identity, not blend in with other peoples.
According to Tacitus, they eat and sleep apart, the 'libidinous but without having relations with foreign women, implementing circumcision as a sign of recognition.
The fact that the Romans look with more surprise, though, is their way to worship God: for the people of Judea, there is only one temple, one holy city, one god without a face.
The Jews have one God and conceived only in the thought; portray the image of God in human form with mortal matter and profane, because they believe their God, supreme and eternal, is not, that are everlasting.
The condition of the Jews described by Tacitus in no way changes in the centuries to come, until it comes to building real “ghettos” within each city.
The figure of the jew has evolved so as to embrace the full area of trade, trespassing in most cases the figure of the money lender, just as Shylock.
I believe this has contributed even more to the Jews marginalization by the civil society: Shylock, infact, is seen with suspicion and disdain by the citizens of Venice.
Analysis of “The Merchant of Venice”, therefore, a clear view on the Jews for not at all far from the one made by Tacitus.
All the best,
Flavia Mancini