Originality and Intellectual Property in the French and English Enlightenment

<p>Are legal concepts of intellectual property and copyright related to artistic notions of invention and originality? Do literary and legal scholars have anything to learn from each other, or should the legal debate be viewed as separate from questions of aesthetics? Bridging what are usually perceived as two distinct areas of inquiry, this interdisciplinary volume begins with a reflection on the "origins" of literary and legal questions in the Enlightenment to consider their ramifications in the post-Enlightenment and contemporary world. Tying in to the growing scholarly interest in connections between law and literature, on the one hand, and to the contemporary interrogation of "originality" and "authorship," on the other hand, the present volume furthers research in the field by providing a dense study of the legal and historical context to re-examine our current assumptions about supposed earlier Enlightenment and Romantic ideals of individual authorship and originality.</p> <p>Introduction <em>Reginald McGinnis </em>1. Plagiarism and Paternity in Dryden’s Adaptations <em>Robert W. McHenry, Jr. </em>2. Kidnapped and Counterfeit Characters: Eighteenth-Century Fan Fiction, Copyright Law, and the Custody of Fictional Characters <em>Elizabeth F. Judge </em>3. Copyright, Originality, and the Public Domain in Eighteenth-Century England <em>Simon Stern </em>4. On Plagiarism, Originality, Textual Ownership and Textual Responsibility: The Case of <em>Jacques le fataliste Anne Sechin </em>5. "Odd scratches and marks": Thomas Gainsborough and the Idiosyncrasy of the Brush <em>Cristina S. Martinez </em>6. Byron and the Scandal of Paternity: Anonymity, Plagiarism, and the Natural Rights of Authors <em>Tilar J. Mazzeo </em>7. Originality in the Enlightenment and Beyond <em>John Vignaux Smyth</em></p>