Plagiarism and Proprietary Authorship in Early Modern England, 1590-1640

The first rule of writing is an important one: writers should not plagiarize; what they write should be their own. It is taken for granted. But who made the rule? Why? And how is it enforced? This dissertation traces the history of proprietary authorship from the earliest distinctions between imitation and misappropriation in the humanist schoolroom, through the first recorded uses in English of the Latin legal term plagiary (kidnapper) as a metaphor for literary misappropriation, to an inchoate conception of literary property among a coterie of writers in early modern England. It argues that the recognition of literary misappropriation emerged as a result of the instrumental reading habits of early humanist scholars and that the subsequent distinction between authors and plagiarists depended more upon the maturity of the writer than has been previously recognized. Accusations of plagiarism were a means of discrediting a rival, although in this capacity their import also depended largely upon one’s perspective. In the absence of established trade customs, writers had to subscribe to the proprieties of the institutions with which they were affiliated. They were deemed plagiarists only when their actions were found to be out of place. These proprieties not only informed early modern definitions of plagiarism; they also helped define the perimeters of proprietary authorship. Authors who wished to make a fair profit from labours in print had to conform to the regulations of the Stationer’s Company, just as authors who maintained a proprietary interest in their manuscripts had to draw upon legal rhetoric, such as plagiary, in the absence of a legally recognized notion of authorial property. With new information technologies expanding the boundaries of proprietary authorship everyday, the proprieties according to which these boundaries were first defined should help teachers and researchers not only better to understand the nature of Renaissance authorship but also to equip their students for the future.

Department dc:contributor.department

English

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Cook, Trevor

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Galbraith, David

• Renaissance Studies
• Early Modern English Literature
• History of the Book
• Law and Literature
• Authorship Studies
• Composition Studies
• Plagiarism
• History of Copyright
• Intellectual Property
• Metaphor

Language dc:language.iso

en_ca

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/35725

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/35725