Teaching Law in Literature: Concepts, Contexts, and a Sample Lesson

• Main Author: Sollano, Francis C
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2023
• Subjects: Characterization; Interdisciplinarity; Law and Literature; Pedagogy; Tertiary Education; Education; Language and Literacy Education; Law; Legal Education
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/english-faculty-pubs/209; https://doi.org/10.31944/20239601.02
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Law and Literature has developed both as a scholarly and pedagogical field, especially since the prevalence of interdisciplinarity in the last quarter of the twentieth century. However, there remains some confusion about how the meeting of the disciplines is operationalized in university or college teaching, especially in the context of the Philippine government mandate to make literature classes more interdisciplinary. This paper argues that literature teachers should be grounded on the strength of their discipline in order to effectively teach this interdisciplinary course without precluding the need that they acquire practicable knowledge of law. The paper discusses the background of inter/disciplinary trends in modern academia and focuses on law in literature as an iteration of the interdisciplinary course. Albert Camus’s “The Guest” (1957) is used as a sample text because it represents the conflicts that the characters go through as they encounter the law in its various countenances and complications.