Collaborative Authorship and Impersonation in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan

2018 ◽  
pp. 213-234
Author(s):  
Matthew H. Birkhold

How did authors control the literary fates of fictional characters before the existence of copyright? Could a second author do anything with another author’s character? Situated between the decline of the privilege system and the rise of copyright, literary borrowing in eighteenth-century Germany has long been considered unregulated. This book tells a different story. Characters before Copyright documents the surprisingly widespread eighteenth-century practice of writing fan fiction—literary works written by readers who appropriate preexisting characters invented by other authors—and reconstructs the contemporaneous debate about the literary phenomenon. Like fan fiction today, these texts took the form of sequels, prequels, and spinoffs. Analyzing the evolving reading, writing, and consumer habits of late-eighteenth-century Germany, Characters before Copyright identifies the social, economic, and aesthetic changes that fostered the rapid rise of fan fiction after 1750. Based on archival work and an ethnographic approach borrowed from legal anthropology, this book then uncovers the unwritten customary norms that governed the production of these works. Characters before Copyright thus reinterprets the eighteenth-century “literary commons,” arguing that what may appear to have been the free circulation of characters was actually circumscribed by an exacting set of rules and conditions. These norms translated into a unique type of literature that gave rise to remarkable forms of collaborative authorship and originality. Characters before Copyright provides a new perspective on the eighteenth-century book trade and the rise of intellectual property, reevaluating the concept of literary property, the history of moral rights, and the tradition of free culture.


PMLA ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 116 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-637
Author(s):  
Susan J. Leonardi ◽  
Rebecca A. Pope

We felt the first stirrings of collaborative desire fifteen years ago. since then, we have published one book (and some miscellaneous pieces) together and have finished another. They are very different, though related, books, and while producing them we have had different, though related, thoughts about our collaborative authorship. One thing that collaboration teaches you is that there is no last word on anything. Someone looking over your shoulder or over your draft is going to find a better word or cross out your word entirely.A story of origins: We began to talk about writing a book together while trying to finish our dissertations. It was helpful to fantasize such a project—it presumed that the dissertations would get finished and that when they did, we would be alive and well and still writing. But the fantasy of collaboration addressed other anxieties, especially over the word original in the demand that the dissertation be a “significant and original contribution to scholarship.” Each of us knew how much her work depended on the scholarship she had read and how much the shape of her work had been affected by conversations, in reading groups or over coffee, with other graduate students, professors, friends, bartenders. Worse, in our theory classes we were being rewarded for pontificating about the demise of the very author we were working so hard to become. The notion of solitary authorship on which intellectual authority depends seemed a lie. At least in our cases. We certainly felt like frauds, but then as women in programs in which the students and professors were no longer exclusively but still predominantly male, we were perhaps predisposed to feeling like frauds. To write a book that had two signatures, we mused, would formally acknowledge that authors depend on other authors and would as well trouble the notions of original and originary. Intellectual honesty seemed to require the candid dismantling of the solitary author, of the original and originary genius.


2021 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 2-29
Author(s):  
Marc Stein

This essay summarizes the methods and results of a collaborative student-faculty research project on the history of sexual politics at San Francisco State University. The collaborators collected and analyzed 160 mainstream, alternative, student, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans) media stories. After describing the project parameters and process, the essay discusses six themes: (1) LGBT history; (2) the Third World Liberation Front strike; (3) feminist sexual politics; (4) the history of heterosexuality; (5) sex businesses, commerce, and entrepreneurship; and (6) sexual arts and culture. The conclusion discusses project ethics and collaborative authorship. The essay’s most significant contributions are pedagogical, providing a model for history teachers interested in working with their students on research skills, digital methodologies, and collaborative projects. The essay also makes original contributions to historical scholarship, most notably in relation to the Third World Liberation Front strike. More generally, the essay provides examples of the growing visibility of LGBT activism, the intersectional character of race, gender, and sexual politics, the complicated nature of gender and sexual politics in the “movement of movements,” the commercialization of sex, and the construction of normative and transgressive heterosexualities in this period.


2021 ◽  
pp. 13-30
Author(s):  
Guelfo Margherita ◽  
Alexandre Patouillard ◽  
Federico Pone ◽  
Salvatore Rotondi ◽  
Loredana Vecchi
Keyword(s):  

Cosa succede se, in un Workshop esperienziale dentro un Seminario teorico, osiamo far convivere l'aspetto Simmetrico (Matte-Blanco, 1975) fusivo dell'essere insieme in quanto gruppo umano con l'aspetto Asimmetrico discernente del lavoro scientifico professionale? Se, attraverso un Setting basato sull'agito del gioco (Klein, 1932) e abbracciato in rêverie Bioniana, accettiamo di osservarci oscillare tra Unico e Molteplice, tra Intuizione e Interpretazione, tra il caos confusionale del protomentale continuo e lo strutturarsi di mito, identità, pensiero e senso discreti? Il risultato potrebbe essere un Workshop che scioglie le regole e logiche usuali in un gioco analitico creativo, capace di accettare il caos proprio in quanto materia ludica per eccellenza, un Workshop che non c'è dove poter oscillare tra Peter Pan e Capitan Uncino, sognatori e pensatori, gruppo e individui. L'articolo si propone di condividere l'esperienza di un Workshop così strutturato, realizzato ed esperito, anche con l'ausilio di materiale clinico, all'interno del Seminario Internazionale sul pensiero di Bion tenuto a Barcellona (2020). Gli autori intendono trasportare i lettori, con uno stile che mescola analogicamente diversi linguaggi, Campi e ambiti disciplinari, nel "manicomio" del gruppo Workshop colto nel suo tentativo di farsi gruppo capace di accettare, gestire e comprendere la sua confusione multilivello ("Io" nel "Noi", "Workshop" dentro "Seminario", Gruppo in oscillazione tra Adb e gruppo di lavoro) e sviluppare un'identità e ruolo propri all'interno del Seminario, dialogando magari con esso nell'apprendere a distinguerne la voce emergente dagli accadimenti e associazioni che attraversano sincronicamente tanto il gruppo Workshop che il Seminario stesso nel suo complesso. Con questo articolo gli autori si augurano di mostrare l'importanza fondamentale del riflettere sulla natura stessa di Workshop e Seminari in quanto Setting e sul come strutturarli per farne una parte coerente e propositiva tanto del lavoro di ricerca che dell'esperienza analitica in generale.


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