Crimes of Writing: Problems in the Containment of RepresentationFrom the origins of modern copyright in early eighteenth-century culture to the efforts to represent nature and death in postmodern fiction, this pioneering book explores a series of problems regarding the containment of representation. Stewart focuses on specific cases of "crimes of writing"--the forgeries of George Psalmanazar, the production of "fakelore," the "ballad scandals" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the imposture of Thomas Chatterton, and contemporary legislation regarding graffiti and pornography. In this way, she emphasizes the issues which arise once language is seen as a matter of property and authorship is viewed as a matter of originality. Finally, Stewart demonstrates that crimes of writing are delineated by the law because they specifically undermine the status of the law itself: the crimes illuminate the irreducible fact that law is written and therefore subject to temporality and interpretation. |
Contents
| 3 | |
2 Psalmanazars Others | 31 |
3 Notes on Distressed Genres | 66 |
4 Scandals of the Ballad | 102 |
Fragments of an EighteenthCentury Daydream | 132 |
Travel Writing the Incest Prohibition and Hawthornes Transformation | 173 |
Graffiti as Crime and Art | 206 |
8 The Marquis de Meese | 235 |
Reverse Trompe lOeilThe Eruption of the Real | 273 |
| 291 | |
| 311 | |
Other editions - View all
Crimes of Writing: Problems in the Containment of Representation Susan Stewart No preview available - 1994 |
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic anxiety appears articulation artifact artist authenticity authorship ballad Baroness Nairne Beatrice Cenci becomes Books Cambridge century claims concept context crime Critical Legal Studies culture daydream death discourse distressed genres dream edited eighteenth eighteenth-century epic essay fable fairy Fakelore figure Folklore forgeries Formosa Freud function gaze George Psalmanazar gesture Giovanni Battista Piranesi graffiti writer Hawthorne Hawthorne's hence Henry Chalfant Ibid imagination imitations imposture incest invention James John Lady Wardlaw language literary literature London Marble Faun materiality Meese Commission Memoirs metaphor minstrel narrative nature notion novel objects oral originality painting parody particular Percy Philadelphia Piranesi plagiarism poems pornography practice problem production proverb Psalmanazar regarding relation representation rhetoric Sade Sadian scene Scott Scottish sense sexual social temporal terton thematic theory thereby Thomas Chatterton tradition trans transcendent transformation Translated trompe l'oeil University Press writing York
Popular passages
Page 8 - any other thing to whom they are attributed, whether Truly or by Fiction.... When they are considered as his own, then is he called a Naturall Person: And when they are considered as representing the words and actions of an other, then is he a