What is the dynamic relationship between our culture's written and unwritten laws and its literature? How is that relationship evolving? How do law and literature influence or reflect one other? And what lessons might we draw from their symbiotic relationship?

This 24-lecture series from a much-honored teacher approaches these questions with provocation and passion as it explores the rhetorical and philosophical connections that link these two disciplines, moving through ancient Greece, the Middle Ages, England's experience of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and the 19th and 20th centuries. Focusing on individual works of literature where law - implicit or explicit - is a central theme, as well as on the overall relationship between law and literature in society, Professor Heinzelman shows how that relationship gradually transformed, from the astoundingly intricate cross-connections between law and literature still present during the time of Shakespeare, to a point in the mid-18th century when the two disciplines separated more clearly into the distinct realms we recognize today.

The crucial period from the late 17th to the 19th century - during which that separation evolved and solidified - draws her sharpest focus, with the literature of the time, including some of the most famous and influential works ever put to paper, offering a profound perspective on that era's structures and values as well as an enduring impact we still feel today.