Program Overview

Program Overview

The Law and Literature program is an interdisciplinary course that explores the relationship between law and literature. The program began in the USA about 50 years ago and has since been introduced in various European countries, including Italy.

Aims and Content

The program aims to provide students with a deeper understanding of the cultural and historical-political nature of the legal phenomenon. The course covers topics such as:

• Law and Literature as related forms of cultural production
• Civil codes and the modern novel
• Literature, citizenship, democracy: historical and philosophical views
• The "L&L Movement" in the United States: J.B. White, M. Nussbaum, R. Weisberg
• Its reception in Europe
• Critical Legal Studies and Deconstructionism
• "Law in Literature", "as Literature", "of Literature"

Learning Outcomes

The proposed training activities will allow the student to:

• Know the evolutionary lines of the most general or important legal institutions and the underlying political conflicts in the modern and contemporary age
• Understand the profiles of affinity and difference in the interpretative activity of literary and legal texts
• Implement their own ability to identify the main contents and levels of meaning and their mutual relationships in complex texts
• Create their own argumentative texts on political-legal issues, respecting, in particular, the distinction between de iure condito and condendo discourses
• Know the general features of the discipline of copyright, with particular reference to the protection of literary works

Prerequisites

At least an elementary level of knowledge of legal vocabulary is required, and for foreign students, a medium-high command of the Italian language.

Teaching Methods

Frontal lessons will be alternated with moments of discussion and commentary on texts. Readings and other supplementary materials (tests or short interpretation and/or writing exercises) will be made available, from week to week, in Aulaweb. Special teaching methods may be agreed with working students.

Syllabus/Content

The course will cover topics such as:

• "Middle Ages" and "modernity" in literature and law
• The rise of the novel (Cervantes, Defoe, etc.) and its political and social implications
• The Age of Enlightenment and the "paradigm of "
• The French Revolution and its diffusion in Europe
• Literary realism and the code civil
• Law, legislation, language, and literature in German Romanticism
• Political issues and legal problems in the European novel of the nineteenth century (Dickens, Hugo, Zola, etc.)
• Equality in civil relations and inequality in political relations
• Nationalism and humanitarianism
• The social question; the penal question; the women's question
• The crisis of the "bourgeois century" (Stevenson, Stoker, Wilde, etc.)
• Myth and literature in national socialist ideology and in the experiences of authoritarianism
• Artistic creation, capitalism, and totalitarianism
• The Berne Convention and the discipline of copyright
• The literary avant-gardes of the early twentieth century (Proust, Joyce, etc.) and their political implications
• Subject, text, and interpretation
• Literature and the revival of natural law after the Second World War
• American culture and education for democracy
• Youth protest and the "beat generation"
• "Critical Studies" and "deconstructionism"
• The birth of the L&L Movement in the United States: themes, methods, and trends
• Richard Posner's criticisms
• James Boyd White and the "reading community"
• Martha Nussbaum and the "intelligence of emotions"
• European reception
• The implementation of studies in linguistics, legal argumentation, and rhetoric, legal drafting

Recommended Reading/Bibliography

Attending students:

• D. Carusi, Sua maestà legge? Tre secoli di potere, diritto e letteratura, Florence, Olschki, 2022, limited to the parts that will be illustrated and discussed in class. Non-attending students will have to prepare the exam on the entire text indicated above or agree with the teacher on an alternative program.

Teachers and Exam Board

• DONATO CARUSI
• Ricevimento: Immediately after the lesson, or by appointment to be requested by email
• Exam Board:
  • DONATO CARUSI (President)
  • ROBERTA SERAFINA BONINI
  • ANNA SANSA (Substitute)

Lessons

• The course will take place in the first semester according to the timetable that will be published in due course.
• The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

Exams

• The exam will consist of an oral interview. Intermediate or preliminary tests may be provided for attending students.
• Students in possession of a regular disability certification or DSA diagnosis may request to avail themselves of compensatory measures during the exam tests (e.g., additional time, concept maps, changes in the written/oral modality), following the procedure indicated in the guidelines (p. 5) published here.
• The exam will assess:
  • The historical-legal knowledge acquired in accordance with the teaching objectives
  • The ability to report in summary about narrative texts read and about their implications or possible implications from a political-legal point of view
• The assessment will take into account the linguistic and logical-argumentative quality of the presentation, as well as the disposition to independent judgment and critical reasoning
• Exam schedule:
  • 10/12/2025 | 12:00 | GENOVA | Orale
  • 14/01/2026 | 12:00 | GENOVA | Orale
  • 28/01/2026 | 12:00 | GENOVA | Orale
  • 19/05/2026 | 12:00 | GENOVA | Orale
  • 10/06/2026 | 12:00 | GENOVA | Orale
  • 24/06/2026 | 12:00 | GENOVA | Orale
  • 08/07/2026 | 12:00 | GENOVA | Orale
  • 09/09/2026 | 10:30 | GENOVA | Orale