Critical Approaches in Law and Literature

1. Provide students with an in-depth knowledge of the relationship between law and literature and its thematic and methodological relevance for both legal and literary studies.
2. Promote the use of critical thinking through comparative work, by referring to case studies (both jurisprudential and literary).
3. Encourage the use of interdisciplinary perspectives for the analysis of exemplary social and political issues (e.g., social injustice and sexual freedom), also to promote theoretical approaches for a dialogue between heterogeneous fields of knowledge.

Upon completion of the course, students should be able to:
1. Explain the origin and developments of law and literature studies, their functions, and their potential critical uses.
2. Discuss some theoretical issues (e.g. fiction, language, interpretation) through reference to concrete cases and recurring disagreements, especially in societies characterized by pluralisms of various kinds.
3. Critically debate around some fundamental ethical conflicts (e.g. on freedoms), by referring to the narrative/normative attitudes of both laws and decisions, on the one hand, and literary texts, on the other hand, with particular reference to the short story and the novel.