The Letter of the Law ─ Literature, Justice and the Other

This set of seventeen essays offers material on the role of literature and theory in relation to the law, and to the role of the Other. Topics include the Other before the law, doing gender justice, and textuality and law, with entries on the spirit of literature, the Other as the (purloined) letter of the law, outlaws in William Harrison's Description of England, justice and poetry in faerie land, Judith S. Murray's The Traveler Returned, sovereign law and bare life in Bleak House, the remedy of law, sexual harassment, the "devadasi," the legal performances of Georgia Weldon, Harper Lee versus Fannie Flagg, the anti-detective fiction of Muriel Spark, Derrida on the "democratic right to say anything," law and literature in the nuclear age, authorship and the work of Vergilio Ferreira, and a definition of defamation and privacy law. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Efterpi Mitsi is an Associate Professor in English Literature and Culture at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, with publications on early modern and travel literature.
Christina Dokou is Assistant Professor of American Literature and Culture at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her areas of interest, on which she has published articles and anthology chapters, include comparative literature, American folklore, comics and gender studies.
Stamatina Dimakopoulou is Assistant Professor in American Literature and Culture at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, with publications in the field of modernist studies.