The Puritan Cosmopolis traces a sense of kinship that emerged from within the larger realm of Puritan law and literature in late seventeenth-century New England. Nan Goodman argues that these early modern Puritans-connected to the cosmopolis in part through travel, trade, and politics-were also thinking in terms that went beyond feeling affiliated with people in remote places, or what cosmopolitan theorists call "attachment at a distance." In this way Puritan writers and readers were not simply learning about others, but also cultivating an awareness of themselves as ethically related to people all around the world. Such thought experiments originated and advanced through the law, specifically the law of nations, a precursor to international law and an inspiration for much of the imagination and literary expression of cosmopolitanism among the Puritans. The Puritan Cosmopolis shows that by internalizing the legal theories that pertained to the world writ large, the Puritans were able to experiment with concepts of extended obligation, re-conceptualize war, contemplate new ways of cultivating peace, and rewrite the very meaning of Puritan living. Through a detailed consideration of Puritan legal thought, Goodman provides an unexpected link between the Puritans, Jews, and Ottomans in the early modern world and reveals how the Puritan legal and literary past relates to present concerns about globalism and cosmopolitanism.

The Puritan Cosmopolis: The Law of Nations and the Early American Imagination (Oxford Studies in American Literary History)

Literature & Fiction

Goodman, Nan

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

The Puritan Cosmopolis traces a sense of kinship that emerged from within the larger realm of Puritan law and literature in late seventeenth-century New England. Nan Goodman argues that these early modern Puritans-connected to the cosmopolis in part through travel, trade, and politics-werealso thinking in terms that went beyond feeling affiliated with people in remote places, or what cosmopolitan theorists call "attachment at a distance." In this way Puritan writers and readers were not simply learning about others, but also cultivating an awareness of themselves as ethically relatedto people all around the world. Such thought experiments originated and advanced through the law, specifically the law of nations, a precursor to international law and an inspiration for much of the imagination and literary expression of cosmopolitanism among the Puritans. The Puritan Cosmopolisshows that by internalizing the legal theories that pertained to the world writ large, the Puritans were able to experiment with concepts of extended obligation, re-conceptualize war, contemplate new ways of cultivating peace, and rewrite the very meaning of Puritan living. Through a detailedconsideration of Puritan legal thought, Goodman provides an unexpected link between the Puritans, Jews, and Ottomans in the early modern world and reveals how the Puritan legal and literary past relates to present concerns about globalism and cosmopolitanism.

Shifting the Blame: Literature, Law, and the Theory of Accidents in Nineteenth Century America

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &amp; Francis, an informa company.

Shifting the Blame

Routledge

Drawing on legal cases, legal debates, and fiction including works by James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, and Charles Chesnutt, Nan Goodman investigates changing notions of responsibility and agency in nineteenth-century America. By looking at accidents and accident law in the industrializing society, Goodman shows how courts moved away from the doctrine of strict liability to a new notion of liability that emphasized fault and negligence. Shifting the Blame reveals the pervasive impact of this radically new theory of responsibility in understandings of industrial hazards, in manufacturing dangers, and in the stories that were told and retold about accidents.
 In exciting tales of the actions of "good Samaritans" or of sea, steamboat, or railroad accidents, features of risk that might otherwise escape our attention--such as the suddenness of impact, the encounter between strangers, and the debates over blame and responsibility--were reconstructed in a manner that revealed both imagined and actual solutions to one of the most difficult philosophical and social conflicts in the nineteenth-century United States. Through literary and legal stories of accidents, Goodman suggests, we learn a great deal about what Americans thought about blame, injury, and individual responsibility in one of the most formative periods of our history.

Princeton University Press

Shifting the Blame: Literature, Law, and the Theory of Accidents in Nineteenth-Century America

A community is defined not only by inclusion but also by exclusion. Seventeenth-century New England Puritans, themselves exiled from one society, ruthlessly invoked the law of banishment from another: over time, hundreds of people were forcibly excluded from this developing but sparsely settled colony. Nan Goodman suggests that the methods of banishment rivaled—even overpowered—contractual and constitutional methods of inclusion as the means of defining people and place. The law and rhetoric that enacted the exclusion of certain parties, she contends, had the inverse effect of strengthening the connections and collective identity of those that remained.
Banished investigates the practices of social exclusion and its implications through the lens of the period's common law. For Goodman, common law is a site of negotiation where the concepts of community and territory are more fluid and elastic than has previously been assumed for Puritan society. Her legal history brings fresh insight to well-known as well as more obscure banishment cases, including those of Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, Thomas Morton, the Quakers, and the Indians banished to Deer Island during King Philip's War. Many of these cases were driven less by the religious violations that may have triggered them than by the establishment of rules for membership in a civil society. Law provided a language for the Puritans to know and say who they were—and who they were not. Banished reveals the Puritans' previously neglected investment in the legal rhetoric that continues to shape our understanding of borders, boundaries, and social exclusion.

Banished: Common Law and the Rhetoric of Social Exclusion in Early New England

University of Pennsylvania Press

Charles Dickens, Master Storyteller (Library of American Folktales)

Children's Books

Kipling Pr

The Routledge Research Companion to Law and Humanities in Nineteenth-Century America

Nineteenth-century America witnessed some of the most important and fruitful areas of intersection between the law and humanities, as people began to realize that the law, formerly confined to courts and lawyers, might also find expression in a variety of ostensibly non-legal areas such as painting, poetry, fiction, and sculpture. Bringing together leading researchers from law schools and humanities departments, this Companion touches on regulatory, statutory, and common law in nineteenth-century America and encompasses judges, lawyers, legislators, litigants, and the institutions they inhabited (courts, firms, prisons). It will serve as a reference for specific information on a variety of law- and humanities-related topics as well as a guide to understanding how the two disciplines developed in tandem in the long nineteenth century.

Stern, Simon

Reference

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Goodman, Nan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Goodman, Nan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Goodman, Nan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Puritan Cosmopolis: The Law of Nations and the Early American Imagination (Oxford Studies in American Literary History)

The Puritan Cosmopolis: The Law of Nations and the Early American Imagination (Oxford Studies in American Literary History)

Shifting the Blame

Shifting the Blame

Shifting the Blame: Literature, Law, and the Theory of Accidents in Nineteenth-Century America

Banished: Common Law and the Rhetoric of Social Exclusion in Early New England

Charles Dickens, Master Storyteller (Library of American Folktales)

The Routledge Research Companion to Law and Humanities in Nineteenth-Century America

Shifting the Blame: Literature, Law, and the Theory of Accidents in Nineteenth Century America

The Routledge Research Companion to Law and Humanities in Nineteenth-Century America