"Laws and Notions of Law in Premodern Cultures" syllabus (History, University of Victoria) (original) (raw)

In this course, we will examine systems of, and ideas about, law, in a broad sense, from antiquity to the early modern era, particularly (though not exclusively) in societies rooted in the major Abrahamic faiths in Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Together we will consider law as something that is always, in the first place, historically contingent, shaped by and vividly reflective a particular time and placealthough not necessarily evidence of effective implementation or regular enforcement. Yet, even when we cannot know whether certain premodern laws or law codes were actually put into practice, such texts can still reveal much about the ideals, expectations, and norms within cultures at particular moments, or at least about the legal and political actors hoping to impose order on those societies. Because laws and notions of law in the premodern world were nearly inextricable from the spheres of politics and religion, we will focus especially on the complex intersections of these core components of culture and society.

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