The assigned readings for each class can be found
on the course website. or in a packet of Xeroxed stories provided
to you at our first class.

The assigned reading will be noted by (double square bullets).

A single square bullet is used to direct you to Instructor's Notes, Biographical
Notes, and other work by or about the author of the assigned reading.

The assigned readings that are not available online
will be provided to you. Assigned text that are online can be accessed
by the [online text] link that follows the assigned reading. These
supplemental notes are not required reading.

I have included notes, in various forms, about the
assigned readings and you are encouraged to pursue these notes as
time, and energy, permit. You may peruse the notes and find that
your time is better spent focusing on the assigned literary reading.

For
some of the stories and assignments, I will provide relevant supplemental
readings. These readings will be signaled as follows: Supplemental
Reading

Following each week's class, I will move the week's
assignment from the Assignments
page of the course website to an Archives
page; this will allow you to keep track of our progress in the course.

I will generally post assignments a week or two in advance. If you are interested in course readings that extend beyond the posted assignment, I will try to provide you with an update on scheduled readings. If you need information about future assignments, please let me know.

I have never quite settled, in theory or in practice,
on exactly and precisely what I should tell you as we get the course
underway. It is possible, I realize, that you may have far less
interest in where and how we begin than I do!
My hope is that the idea of a course like Lawyers and Literature
stirs the imagination and rouses you to ask: What is this course?
What is it all about? What kind of place does the instructor think
Lawyers and Literature is supposed to have in my
education as a lawyer? In response to these questions (and other
I cannot pretend to imagine), you should peruse chapters 5, 6, and
7 in the "little book," Stories in the Education of
Lawyers, that I have posted on the course website.

As we begin the course, you will want to peruse the
course website. I don't expect you to read everything presented
on course website, and I suspect that some of my commentary will
undoubtedly be more useful to you as we get the course underway.

When you use the course website and find links that don't work,
contact me and I will try to see that the link is promptly fixed.

I hope you enjoy the course.

Thinking about the Course

Lawyers and Literature is, in my estimation, and
in this you will not be surprised, an important course. You, of course,
will obviously be the ultimate judge as to whether this claim is merit
worthy. I have tried to present introductory comments and observations
about the course you will find useful. Some of these observations
will take on deeper meaning after we have had an opportunity to read
some stories together, and you get a better feel for what we are trying
to do. For a basic introduction to the course, I think you will find
the following of interest:

Postscript: Nietzsche argues that both Aeschylus
and Sophocles disguised or failed to disclose information that the
audience which had gathered to wtiness the drama to be enacted for
them might be expected to know. Nietzsche observes that the dramatists
"used the subtlest devices to furnish the spectator in the early
scenes, and as if by chance, with all the necessary information. They
had shown an admirable skill in disguising the necessary structural
features and making them seem accidental." Nietzsche claims that
Euripides had found that during the early scenes of the drama the
spectators "were in a peculiar state of unrest—so concerned
with figuring out the antecedents of the story that the beauty and
pathos of the exposition were lost on them. For this reason he introduced
a prologue even before the exposition, and put it into the mouth of
a speaker who would command absolute trust." Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Birth of Tragedy 80 (New York: Anchor Books, 1956). You
may consider my various efforts to write about the Lawyers
and Literature course, in the chapters of Stories in the
Education of Lawyers, a prologue for our work in the course.