Practice Extended

"Practice Extended is a collection of Robert A. Ferguson's essays reflecting forty years of his scholarship and reflects the evolution and the aims of the field as well as its impact on the study of both literature and law. Ferguson's work explores a wide range of topics including immigration, eloquence, the Constitution, rhetoric and Ulysses, and mercy. Ferguson's essays emphasize the interdisciplinary connection between law and literature. The field, as Ferguson sees it has roots in two major developments in the intellectual history of law--first, the growing doubt about whether law in isolation is a source of value and meaning, or whether it must be understood within larger cultural and intellectuals contexts; and, second, the continued focus on the mutability of meaning in all texts, whether literary or legal. Those who work in the field stress one or the other of two complementary perspectives: law in literature (understanding legal issues as they are explored in great literary texts such as Billy Budd) and law as literature (understanding legal texts by reference to methods of literary interpretation, analysis, and critique)"--

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Philosophy, Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.