Oxford
University Press is publishing a book on literature and law in the era of the
Magna Carta.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture showcases the plurilingual
and multicultural quality of medieval literature and promotes work that not
only focuses on the whole array of subjects medievalists now pursue—in
literature, theology, philosophy, social, political, jurisprudential, and
intellectual history, the history of art, and the history of science—but also
work that combines these subjects productively. It offers innovative and
interdisciplinary studies of every kind, including but not limited to
manuscript and book history, linguistics and literature, post-colonial and global
studies, the digital humanities and media studies, performance studies, the
history of affect and the emotion, the theory and history of sexuality,
ecocriticism and environmental studies, theories of the lyric, of aesthetics,
of the practices of devotion, and ideas of medievalism.
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 Château
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Jahner’s research focuses on the interaction
of literary, legal, and textual cultures in the high and later Middle Ages,
especially in Britain and France. She is the author of Literature and
Law in the Era of Magna Carta, forthcoming from Oxford University Press,
which explores the ways that literary training shaped political vocabularies
and legal communities in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. With Emily
Steiner and Elizabeth Tyler, she is the editor of Historical Writing in
Britain and Ireland, 500–1550, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
Her current research considers how multilingual book production in later
medieval England made use of the burgeoning concept of the “experiment.”
Research for this project is currently supported by a Graves/ACLS Award in the
Humanities (2018–2019).
At Caltech, Jahner teaches courses on Geoffrey
Chaucer, on poetry and theories of justice, on premodern sexualities, and on
medieval romance. She is recipient of the ASCIT Teaching Award (2013) and the
HSS Division Teaching Award (2015). In January 2019, she will join Studies
in the Age of Chaucer as the book review editor.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: The Poetics of Jurisdiction
1: The Grammar of Sacrifice: Becket, Learning,
and Libertas
2: Classroom Historicisms: Interdict and the
Poetria nova
3: Inventing Magna Carta
4: Jurisdictional Formalism: Robert Grosseteste
and the Pastoral Model of Governance
5: Conjuring England: Crusade, Violence, and
Communitas
Coda: The Jurisdictions of Form
Bibliography
