In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the ideas and practices of justice in Europe underwent significant change as procedures were transformed and criminal and civil caseloads grew apace. Drawing on the rich judicial records of Marseille from the years 1264 to 1423, especially records of civil litigation, this book approaches the courts of law from the perspective of the users of the courts (the consumers of justice) and explains why men and...

Conjunctions' milestone fiftieth issue gathers together the many voices, forms, and styles that have defined the legendary literary journal since it was launched by Bradford Morrow in 1981. Established masters like William H. Gass, John Ashbery, Richard Powers, Edwidge Danticat, Rae Armantrout, Robert Coover, and Lyn Hejinian join rising stars such as Ben Marcus, Paul La Farge, Edie Meidav, and Peter Orner to create a landmark compendium of stunning...

Conjunctions: 61, A Menagerie gathers essays, fiction, and poetry that imagine the world of our fellow beings, animals. Cultural mythologies and pantheons are populated with snakes, monkeys, cats, jackals, whales: a cast of characters whose stories reveal how complex and wildly contradictory our species' relationship with other animals is. They're friends, enemies, tools, food. Descartes deliberated about whether animals have souls, deciding they...

Radical Shadows collects lost, forgotten, suppressed, rare, or unknown works by major literary writers from the late nineteenth century forward. From previously unpublished work by Djuna Barnes and Truman Capote (his earliest known story), to writing by Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Kawabata, Musil, and other world-class authors, the issue is a celebration both of the art of translation and of the breadth and depth of the many revelatory discoveries that can...

With work from the seventy-five poets who are the game-changing, bar-setting voices of our time first published in this volume, Conjunctions: 35, American Poetry is the definitive collection for the contemporary poetic landscape. Includes astonishing uncollected work from masters of the form, as well as breathtaking new ventures from risk takers such as Juliana Spahr and Kevin Young. Contributors include John Ashbery, Susan Wheeler, and James Tate....

In Natural Causes, a provocative collection of radical reinventions of the genre of nature writing, we encounter shrimp farms and spoonbills, maize husks and Austrian woods, tarantulas and eels, multitudinous winds that pollinate or desiccate-nature in all its myriad forms, right down to photons, neutrons, neutrinos, and, yes, even Godzilla, the Sasquatch, and some of nature's other fictive and folkloric monsters.

New writings on the topic of friendship from Stephen O'Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Clark, Elizabeth Gaffney, Rick Moody and Darcey Steinke, and more. Aristotle proposed that a friend is, in essence, "another self," and it is indisputable that our relationships with our friends are nearly as complex as the ones we have with ourselves: One minute we're in perfect accord, another we're uncertain. Friendships are as mercurial as they are essential....

New writings-on rooms, buildings, and the spaces and structures that surround us-from Robert Coover, Joyce Carol Oates, Joanna Scott, and more. From huts to houses to high-rises, childhood bedrooms to churches, the spaces we occupy and pass through shape our memories and perceptions, often without our conscious awareness. These stories, essays, and poems from a wide variety of contributors draw on our sense of place to explore the literal and metaphorical...

Exploring the myriad ways in which we go about preserving what might otherwise be forfeited. Whether trained specialists or lay people who care about something, preservationists come from every stratum of life. The archivist, the linguist, the local town historian. The paleontologist, the heirloom seed-saver, the family photographer, the Monuments Men. Old two-by-two Noah and taxonomist Linnaeus. The suburban girl who collects enough yard sale books...

Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Beattie, Diane Ackerman, and more explore the double-edged sword of curiosity . . . Curiosity is as central to life as breathing. And like breath itself, when it ceases, the vibrancy of life fades and disappears. Curiosity leads to discoveries both beneficent and, at times, destructive. It often occasions wonderment, but also terror. It prompts the precise scientist, but also the nosy gadfly. A double-edged sword, curiosity...