From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect by Greta Olson

IN A SPEECH ADDRESSING the Canadian Bar Association in 1970, leading literary critic of the twentieth century Northrop Frye said that "all respect for the law is a product of the social imagination, and the social imagination is what literature directly addresses."3 In her book From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect, Greta Olson makes an important contribution in her reimagination of law and literature as a discipline. What is remarkable is the extent to which Olson's thesis, arguing for broadening the scope and aims of the field, gives effect to Frye's characterization of the field more than half a century before.