The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature

by Martha Woodmansee (Editor), Peter Jaszi (Editor)

What is an author? What is a text? At a time when the definition of "text" is expanding and the technology whereby texts are produced and disseminated is changing at an explosive rate, the ways "authorship" is defined and rights conferred upon authors must also be reconsidered. This volume argues that contemporary copyright law, rooted as it is in a nineteenth-century Romantic understanding of the author as a solitary creative genius, may be inapposite to the realities of cultural production. Drawing together distinguished scholars from literature, law, and the social sciences, the volume explores the social and cultural construction of authorship as a step toward redefining notions of authorship and copyright for today's world.
These essays, illustrating cultural studies in action, are aggressively interdisciplinary and wide-ranging in topic and approach. Questions of collective and collaborative authorship in both contemporary and early modern contexts are addressed. Other topics include moral theory and authorship; copyright and the balance between competing interests of authors and the public; problems of international copyright; musical sampling and its impact on "fair use" doctrine; cinematic authorship; quotation and libel; alternative views of authorship as exemplified by nineteenth-century women's clubs and by the Renaissance commonplace book; authorship in relation to broadcast media and to the teaching of writing; and the material dimension of authorship as demonstrated by Milton's publishing contract.Contributors. Rosemary J. Coombe, Margreta de Grazia, Marvin D'Lugo, John Feather, N. N. Feltes, Ann Ruggles Gere, Peter Jaszi, Gerhard Joseph, Peter Lindenbaum, Andrea A. Lunsford and Lisa Ede, Jeffrey A. Masten, Thomas Pfau, Monroe E. Price and Malla Pollack, Mark Rose, Marlon B. Ross, David Sanjek, Thomas Streeter, Jim Swan, Max W. Thomas, Martha Woodmansee, Alfred C. Yen

Genres: Nonfiction

472 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1993

Reviews

[Stefanos Baziotis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The topic of the book is incredible. I return to this book from time to time. The whole book starts from the fact that authorship is a recent invention. And then it goes to all kinds of places. For example, writing is usually collaborative (how many single-author papers do we have in sciences?) but it is taught and evaluated in school individually. Perhaps my favorite essay is the one about sampling in music, and how it is one form of collaborative creation.

I'm giving it 4 stars just because it has more jargon than it needs to. But well, it's a collection of academic articles, so what else could we realistically expect? Let's see the positive side: the postmodernists---and there's a fair bit of postmodernism in this book---do not go crazy. I mean, you know... they are postmodernists, so don't expect e.g., the clarity of Chomsky or Sandel. But they could go into Foucault or Judith Butler mode, and they did not.

[Andy]

"From the middle ages right down through the renaissance, new writing derived its value and authority from its affiliation with the texts that preceded it, its derivation rather than its deviation from prior texts."

[Paul Mclaughlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh baby! The "Romantic Author"? Not so much. Love it, puts my own work in perspective.

[Lobo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doktorat in progress.
Z rzeczy, które mi do pisania nie potrzebne, ale fajnie się czytało, ostatni tekst o tym, jak współczesny system akademicki (i szerzej rywalistyczna, kapitalistyczna kultura) uniemożliwia funkcjonowanie kooperacyjnego systemu nauczania i pisania, chociaż dowiedziono, że wpływa on korzystniej na przyswajanie wiedzy i produktywność uczniów i studentów. A ja się śmieję, bo pisałam o tym już Harriet Taylor Mill. Ostatnio mam wrażenie, że jeśli o jakimś problemie współczesne kultury nie pisała Virginia Woolf, zrobiła to Taylor Mill.