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Lawyers and Literature
James R. Elkins
Studying Literature
[Image used with permission of the Florida Center for Instructional Technology]
 "We all have slumbering realms of sensibility which can be coaxed into wakefulness by books." [Robertson Davies, A Voice From the Attic: Essays on the Art of Reading 13 (New York: Penguin Books, rev. ed., 1990)]
"[L]iterature is an art, and . . . as an art it is able to enlarge and refine our understanding of life." [Robertson Davies, Reading and Writing 2-3 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, special ed., 1993) (1992)]
The study of literature "is the place—there is no other in most schools—the place wherein the chief matters of concern are particulars of humanness—individual human feeling, human response, and human time, as these can be known through the written expression (at many literary levels) of men living and dead, and as they can be discovered by student writers seeking through words to name and compose and grasp their own experience. English [that is, literature] is about my distinctness and the distinctness of other human beings. . . . The instruments employed are the imagination, the intellect, and texts or events that rouse the former to life . . . . [T]he goal . . . is to expand the areas of the human world—areas that would not exist but for art—with which individual man can feel solidarity and coextensiveness." [Benjamin DeMott, Supergrow: Essays and Reports on Imagination in America 143 (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1969)]
"[Literature] returns you to otherness, whether in yourself or in friends, or in those who may become friends. Imaginative literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness." [Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why 19 (New York: Scribner, 2000)]
"You look for your own story in literature; it's one of the best mechanisms you have to convince yourself you're not alone." [Glenn Schaeffer, founder of the International Institute of Modern Letters, UNLV Magazine]
"[Literature] expands one's sympathy, it
complicates one's sense of oneself and the world, it humiliates the
instrumentally calculating forms of reason so dominant in our culture
(by demonstrating their dependence on other forms of thought and express,
and the like). It is one of the deepest characteristics of literary
texts to throw into question the nature of the language in which they
are written, and this necessarily throws into question as well the nature
of any language in which they might be talked about or into which they
might be translated." [James Boyd White, From
Expectation to Experience: Essays on Law & Legal Education
55 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999)]. White goes
on to observe that "literary teaching" leads us "towards
incrementally more complete, but never wholly adequate, understandings
of other people and other minds—towards other languages,
other ways of thinking and being and imagining the world. These understandings
in turn carry us towards a general understanding both of language and
of the mind, one that is literary rather than conceptual in kind and
affects our reading not only of 'literature' but of all the texts that
make up our world." [Id. at 58]. Literature lives through language, and so must we
. . . ." [Id. at 60]. "What
I think literature has most to teach, then, is a way of reading, and
reading not only 'literature' but all kinds of texts and expressions:
a way of focusing our attention on the languages we use, on the relations
we establish with them, and on the definition of self and other that
is enacted in every expression." [Id.]
"Reading is a direct and immediate engagement with language. Discussing what we read intensifies this engagement . . . . As we build language skills, we build life skills. We learn our place within the world of language. In an important sense, by reading and discussing what we read, we all create our own place in the world." [Robert Waxler, The Power of Stories]
"Students are formed by the reading they do, by the views of self and world such reading presents." [Parker J. Palmer, To Know as We Are Known 19 (New York: Harper & Row, 1983)]
"The craft of literature: Articulates
insights, sentiments in ways that sometimes the rest of us cannot—Gives
voice to what is submerged and suppressed (the questions behind the
questions)—Defamiliarizes the familiar." [Johanna
Shapiro, Can Poetry Make Better Doctors? <website no longer available>]
"The craft and artistry of literature . . . can help learners
see clinical situations and patients not only from different perspectives,
but also with greater clarity, identifying insights and feelings in
ways learners might not be able to fully articulate. . . . [The humanities,
including literature] challenge the priorities, understandings, and
presumptions that are conveyed to students and residents through formal
training." [Johanna Shapiro & Lloyd Rucker,
Can Poetry Make Better Doctors? Teaching the Humanities and Art to Medical
Students and Residents at the University of Californ ia, Irvine, College
of Medicine, 78 (1) Academic Medicine 953, 954 (2003)]
"I urge literature upon lawyers and law students to teach how the culture of the law attracts and repels those who enter its province. Novels are profoundly useful tools to study human nature, and I teach these books as a strategy, not a panacea, to counter many of the ills attributed to legal education and lawyering today." [Ilene Durst, Valuing Women Storytellers: What They Talk About When They Talk About Law, 11 Yale J.L. & Feminism 245 (1999)]
On
Books
Conversations in Literature
[The most useful part of this collection of materials for our purposes is the video in which teachers of literature talk about what literature means to them. I recommend that you watch the video. To access the video, go to the first workshop, "Responding as Readings" and "View this Video." You will be asked to sign-up so you can log-on to the site.] 
Salman
Rushdie on Teaching the Novel and Reading for Pleasure
Video; 5:35 mins
Introduction : What is Literature?
Terry Eagleton
Literary
Editors on Literary Fiction
What Makes Literary Fiction Literary?
A Note on the Narrator in the Story
Defining Basic Terms (for those who can't get along
without definitions as a starting point)
Literature
Wikipedia
Belles-lettres
Wikipedia
Fiction
Wikipedia
Literary Fiction
Wikipedia
Most Importantly, What Gives a Text Its Literary Qualities?
Formal Properties of Literature
Davis Oldham, notes for students in his African Literatures course
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