This paper explores how, in Shakespeare‘s sonnets (and in the plays), Shakespeare looks to legal tenure and the mechanics of common-law possession to explore the claim of erotic relation and erotic estrangement on the speaking self and its "self-possession." The connection between land and love that Shakespeare‘s texts deploy, charge and amplify was of some use to the common lawyers themselves. In the erotics of land law, I argue, we thus find a topic whose contours demand an approach to law and literature that respects the law‘s dynamics, as well as the sonnets‘.
Download the article here from SSRN (priced).
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