From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect

remarkable * Andrew Majeske, New American Studies Journal *
Greta Olson's remarkable book From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect reinvigorates the discipline of law and literature by re-envisioning it—indeed by transforming it altogether. * Andrew Majeske, New American Studies Journal *
In an elegant historical and incisive theoretical intervention, From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect traces the imaginative possibilities and critical potential of the jurisliterary. Olson not only provides a coruscating political accounting of the modern collision of law with literature, she also allows herself the freedom to imagine the radical potential of an expanded discipline and properly depicted art of law. This is a work that would classically be termed bene figuratus. Lavishly argued and elegantly illuminated, this book represents the coming of age of a crucial interdisciplinary conjunction in an aesthetics of legality. * Peter Goodrich, Professor of Law, Director of the Program in Law and Humanities, Cardozo Law School *
Spirited, provocative, and highly readable, from Law and Literature to Legality and Affect argues that if there is any place where human complexity shows itself most, it is in the realm of affect. The strength of this book lies in the multiple disciplinary lenses Greta Olson convincingly brings together to open up new vistas to address the all too often problematic encounters of legalities and affective understandings of law in contemporary democratic societies under the rule of law. A must read for those in Law and Humanities and beyond to help further a critical-humanistic project for legal research and augment the understandings it brings to legal practice. * Jeanne Gaakeer, professor of jurisprudence at Erasmus School of Law, Rotterdam, and senior justice in the Court of Appeal, The Hague *
Greta Olson argues that 'the law has gone pop' and therefore there is a need to reconceptualise the relationship between law and literature, and to use law and literature to understand the relations between legality and affects. In this new and original scenario lies the main justification for a new study on the topic. The author offers an original methodology to approach legal analysis on law literature and culture, making a case to keep the cultural legal narratology (in literary theory, the study of narrative structure) within the traditional approach to law. * Dr Carlo Corcione, Law Society Gazette *
This book takes major strides toward the transformation of law and literature into a genuinely interdisciplinary amalgam of differing forms of knowledge. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * Choice *
IN A SPEECH ADDRESSING the Canadian Bar Association in 1970, leading literary critic of the twentieth century Northrop Frye said that "all respect for the law is a product of the social imagination, and the social imagination is what literature directly addresses."3 In her book From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect, Greta Olson makes an important contribution in her reimagination of law and literature as a discipline. What is remarkable is the extent to which Olson's thesis, arguing for broadening the scope and aims of the field, gives effect to Frye's characterization of the field more than half a century before. * Azka Anees, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University (Student Author) *