16th century
A01=Bradin Cormack
Author_Bradin Cormack
boundaries
british
Category=DSB
centralization
common law
court systems
cure for a cuckold
cymbeline
early modern
england
english
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
equity
europe
european
formalization
france
great britain
imperium
improvisation
ingenuity
ireland
jurisdiction
justice
legal
legalism
literary
literature
litigation
magnyfycence
nationalism
pericles
professionalism
reformation
renaissance
thomas more
transformation
william shakespeare
Product details
- ISBN 9780226116242
- Weight: 709g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 01 Feb 2008
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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English law underwent a rapid transformation in the sixteenth century, in response to the Reformation and also to heightened litigation and legal professionalization. As the common law became more comprehensive and systematic, the principle of jurisdiction came under particular strain. When the common law engaged with other court systems in England, when it encountered territories such as Ireland and France, or when it confronted the ocean as a juridical space, the law revealed its qualities of ingenuity and improvisation. In other words, as Bradin Cormack argues, jurisdictional crisis made visible the law's resemblance to the literary arts. "A Power to Do Justice" shows how Renaissance writers engaged the practical and conceptual dynamics of jurisdiction, both as a subject for critical investigation and as a frame for articulating literature's sense of itself. Reassessing the relationship between English literature and law from More to Shakespeare, Cormack argues that where literary texts attend to jurisdiction, they dramatize how boundaries and limits are the very precondition of law's power, even as they clarify the forms of intensification that make literary space a reality.
Tracking cultural responses to Renaissance jurisdictional thinking and legal centralization, "A Power to Do Justice" makes theoretical, literary-historical, and methodological contributions that set new standards for law, the humanities, and the cultural history of early modern law and literature.
Bradin Cormack is associate professor of English at the University of Chicago and coauthor of Book Use, Book Theory: 1500-1700.
