Plagiarism and Literary Property in the Romantic Period.(Material Texts.) (original) (raw)

Literary Borrowing … and Stealing: Plagiarism, Sources, Influences, and Intertexts

ESC: English Studies in Canada, 1986

The en tire co rp us of exi sting lit erature should be rega rded as a limbo fr om w hic h d iscern ing a u tho rs co uld draw th eir charac ters as requir ed , crea ting on ly wh en they failed to find a sui ta ble existing puppet. The modern novel sho uld be largely a work of refer en ce. Fl ann O 'Brien , A t Swim-Twa-Bird s Recently we witnessed w ha t happen s tod ay in the literary " int erp retive communit y" wh en a modern no vel-The W hit e Hot el-is even in part a "work of reference." D. M. Thomas's sin, however, seem s to ha ve been th at of enlarg ing th e corp us from which a novelist d raws to include nonfictional , historical text s, in thi s case the testimony of D ina Proniche va, the sole su rvivor of Babi Yar. Although Thomas acknowledged his debt openly on the copyrigh t page of the novel, his more or less verbatim borrowing laun ched an int ense, but perhaps u ltimatel y fruitl ess, debate in th e pages of the Tim es Literary Supplem en t in M ar ch and April of 1982. Thomas's reply' to accusations of opportun istic, exploitive p lagiarism is an interesting one. After po inting out that his novelistic accou nt of Babi Yar is three times th e length of Dina's, th e novelist remarks that at this point in the novel his heroine changes from bein g an individ ual (w hose single unique life is of in teres t to "Sigm und Freud") to bein g only one of many anonymous victims of history. The text, Thomas felt , had to reflect th is chan ge from individual self-expression to common fate, an d it did so in th e modulation of the narrative voice from an authorial one (because, as he writ es, at the start " there is still room for fiction") to that of the recor din g of one who had been there-th e onl y appropriate and truthful voice possible, given the circu m sta nc es. The novel's mu ch m isread epigraph from Yeats underlines thi s progression from the private to the public : W e had fe d the heart on fa n tas ies, The H eart's gro wn brutal from the fa re; M ore sub sta nc e in our en m it ies T h an in ou r love... .

Frets about Plagiary: Changing Attitudes to Plagiarism in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century German Literature

Publications of the English Goethe Society, 2004

The celebration ifJtmitls artd originality in Gemwn literature if the late Enl((!htenment and Romarttic periods is accompanied by art increased concern with the question if plagiarism. Borrowing themes and forms from other national literatures is still advocated (most notably by Lessing), but perceived as problematic in art age which saw the development if copyright law and the modem conception ~f the literary author. The relatively insouciant attitude if the late Goethe towards such questions is set against two eme~qing traditions itt addressing the problem if plagiarism, termed Jreiful' and 'playful'. Examples of thefonner-self-consciously thematiziiiJ! the ttced to avoid plagiarism-arc fouttd in Lessing himself, Moritz and Tieck; the latter trend-sending up such concems and movitJg towards the (post)modem cottception if intertextuality-is exernplified by Lichtenberg, Barger, Jean Paul and Hoffmann. Parodying Jrets about plagiary' is seen as an important aspect if the development if the comic novel in German, and remarks from Heine indicate that the susceptibility if German writers to bein.l! plagiarized themselves is a measure if the degree if autonomy Gemwn literature had achieved by tlte end if the period under consideratiotl. So all my best is dressing old words new, Spending again what is already spent.

Plagium: an archaic and anomalous crime

The Juridical review, 2016

Questions, in light of the continued existence of the offence of plagium in Scotland, involving the aggravated theft of pre-pubescent children, whether children are considered as 'mere things' under Scots law. Examines the history of the crime of plagium and looks at how it is connected to the Scottish notion of 'property'.

Borrowers, Physicians and Literary Theoreticians

With the boundaries of time, space and distance being broken down so easily in recent times, it has become indispensable for us humans to attempt building the tower of Babylon again. Paradox is something we experience every day, the world has been shrunk to its minimal size and our reach and horizon has been amplified and diminished at the same time,.

Text Genetics in Literary Modernism and Other Essays

2018

On the front and back covers of this collection of essays is shadowed, and across the ensuing opening we discern, the entire evidence in writing of John Milton's composition of the poem he began under the title Song and developed by stages of revision into At a Solemn Musick. John Milton is not a modernist author. Yet this double-page spread in his autograph of his earlier writing preserved as 'The Milton Manuscript'' (shelfmark R.3.4) in the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, shows every characteristic of authorial drafts from later times in later hands.