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Literature and law in the era of Magna Carta / Jennifer Jahner

Author
Jahner, Jennifer
Published
Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019.
Edition
First edition.
Physical Description
xii, 277 pages ; 24 cm.

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Contents
The grammar of sacrifice : Thomas Becket, learning, and libertas -- Classroom historicisms : interdict and the poetria nova -- Inventing Magna Carta -- Jurisdictional formalism : Robert Grosseteste and the pastoral model of governance -- Conjuring England : crusade, violence, and communitas
Summary
Literature and Law in the Era of Magna Carta traces processes of literary training and experimentation across the early history of the English common law, from its beginnings in the reign of Henry II to its tumultuous consolidations under the reigns of John and Henry III. The period from the mid-twelfth through the thirteenth centuries witnessed an outpouring of innovative legal writing in England, from Magna Carta to the scores of statute books that preserved its provisions. An era of civil war and imperial fracture, it also proved a time of intensive self-definition, as communities both lay and ecclesiastic used law to articulate collective identities. Literature and Law in the Era of Magna Carta uncovers the role that grammatical and rhetorical training played in shaping these arguments for legal self-definition. Beginning with the life of Archbishop Thomas Becket, the book interweaves the histories of literary pedagogy and English law, showing how foundational lessons in poetics helped generate both a language and theory of corporate autonomy. In this book, Geoffrey of Vinsauf's phenomenally popular Latin compositional handbook, the Poetria nova, finds its place against the diplomatic backdrop of the English Interdict, while Robert Grosseteste's Anglo-French devotional poem, the Chateau d'Amour, is situated within the landscape of property law and Jewish-Christian interactions. Exploring a shared vocabulary across legal and grammatical fields, this book argues that poetic habits of thought proved central to constructing the narratives that medieval law tells about itself and that later scholars tell about the origins of English constitutionalism.
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ISBN
0198847726 hardcover
9780198847724 hardcover
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
View MARC record | catkey: 29248576