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Lawyers and Literature
| Spring | 2019 |
Monday. January 7. 2019
"Before the Law" | Thinking About Parables
A Note about the Class Assignments pages:
Assigned readings are marked by the double purple bullets:
Relevant, non-required, readings & web resources, are marked by
a single purple bullet:
I have, in an effort to make Lawyers and Literature
the most complete course possible, included Instructor's
Notes (for many of the assignments), along with links or notations
for Supplemental Readings that will appear at the end of the assigment
and will be clearly marked Supplemental Reading.
For additional prefatory remarks about the course, see:
Getting Started
Monday. January 7. 2019: "Before the
Law" | Thinking about Parables
Frank
Kafka, "Before the Law," in Nahum N. Glatzer (ed.), The Complete
Stories and Parables 3-4 (New York: Quality Paperback Book Club,
1971)(Willa Muir & Edwin Muir trans.) [online
text]
Spence:
Doors of Risk
[video, 2:57 mins.] Following
remarks made by Gerry Spence, Anne Lamott's response to parable
seems appropriate: "We write to expose the unexposed. If there is
one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must.
Otherwise, you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already
been in. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door
shut. But the writer's job is to see what's behind it, to see the
bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words--not
just into any words but if we can into rhythm and blues." [Anne
Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
198 (New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1995)]
Kafka,
Fragments
Kafka,
"On Parables"
"Walter
Lacklustre" [a parable by John Bonsignore,
a co-founder of the former Department of Legal Studies, University
of Massachusetts-Amherst]
Three
Parables
Parable
of the Treasure: A Classic Hasidic Tale
"The
Blind Men and the Elephant" [John Godfrey
Saxe] [A Reading of "The
Blind Men and the Elephant"
by Tom O'Bedlam]
A
Final Exam Question
Instructor's Note
Writing: Week 1
Supplemental Reading
In
Parables: Teaching Through Parables
John J. Bonsignore, 12 Legal Stud. F. 191 (1988)
Supplemental Audio
David Foster
Wallace on Kafka
[9:28 mins.] [audio]
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