Retelling Copyright: The Contributions of the Restatement of Copyright Law

The provisions at issue in the draft Restatement of Copyright Law on which ALI membership will vote at ALI’s upcoming annual meeting are central to copyright doctrine and have been the subject of numerous court decisions over the past several decades of technological and industry change: originality, fixation, categories of copyrightable subject matter, the idea-expression distinction, and authorship and ownership. This abundance of legal activity on copyright law demonstrates the value to the profession of this project retelling copyright. In contrast to the dramatic criticism of this Restatement project alleging political capture or illegitimate law reform, the draft’s provisions are routine and straightforward. They will surprise no one and are almost boring in their adherence to and synthesis of the copyright statute and judicial interpretations of it. Far from being radical or ill-advised, the Restatement of Copyright Law is a reasonable and welcome addition to the work of the ALI. Part I of this Article situates the current Restatement of Copyright Law in the historical context of other ALI projects, drawing parallels in their purposes, processes, and political tensions. Part II describes the controversy over a “retelling” of copyright law as misguided insofar as it fails to account for the practice of interpretation as part of the practice of law that is constrained by professional standards. Part III describes the analysis and exposition of the provisions of the draft portions of the Restatement of Copyright Law presented to the ALI membership for discussion and vote this year as unremarkable but also beneficial, achieving the ALI’s goals of clarification and simplification of the sprawling federal case law interpreting and applying the 1976 Copyright Act.

On the Art of Dramatic Probability: Elizabeth Inchbald's Remarks for The British Theatre

In 1806, Longman & Co. publishers commissioned the accomplished actress, playwright, and novelist Elizabeth Inchbald to compose a series of prefatory remarks for the plays to be included in their British Theatre series. One hundred and twenty-five in all, each of the plays for Longman's British Theatre was originally published and sold separately at a rate of about one per week. Once the series was complete, the plays were bound together and sold as a twenty-five-volume set. As the surviving diary entries from the two-year period during which she wrote her Remarks testify, the task proved both arduous and unrelenting for Inchbald, especially as she had no hand in selecting the plays to be included and no control over the order in which she was asked to compose her critical commentaries. Working almost constantly, no sooner had she read one play, drafted her remarks, and copyedited the proof, than she had to turn to the next play sent by Longman, collect her thoughts, and start the process all over again. For the most part, as Annibel Jenkins has noted, “[T]here seems to be no pattern of publishing by date or genre; a tragedy by Shakespeare came out one week and a contemporary comedy the next.” At one point, the strain of this process was so unbearable that Inchbald even tried to renege on her contractual obligations, writing to Longman, “begging to decline any further progress.” This request, as her first biographer, James Boaden, records, Longman “could not be expected to permit; and she was therefore compelled to remark through the whole year.” In the event, and however “dreadful” the task may have been for Inchbald, the widely advertised series proved a “great commercial success,” and Inchbald's Remarks have come down to us as one of the first great achievements in English dramatic criticism of the early nineteenth century.

L’ITALIANO DEI FRANCESI NEI PRIMI ANNI DELL’OTTOCENTO

During the 19th Century, many French literary works exhibit the fascination and appeal of Italy and contain numerous insertions written in Italian. On the other hand, during their stay in Italy, French writers and intellectuals often contributed to local periodicals or were welcomed into Italian Academies. Among these authors, Giovanni Salvatore De Coureil and Aimé Guillon, who are the object of this study, are famous mainly for their controversies with Monti and Foscolo. However, they also published interesting works the different linguistic and aesthetical, (both Italian and French), codes, examined with reference to the various political events relating to both Countries, from the First French Empire to Bourbon Restauration. A brief analysis of these writings illustrates their thematic variety that deals with literary and dramatic criticism as well as translation issues, in which heteroglossia phenomena intertwine with interculturalism.

Features of Volodymyr Morskoy’s theatrе criticism (1920–1940 years)

Background. Today, analyzing the Ukrainian theatrical movement of the first half of XX century, we can’t bypass V. Morskoy’s critical legacy. Volodimir Saveliyovich Morskoy (the real name – Vulf Mordkovich) is one of the providing Ukrainian theatrical and film critics of the first half of the XX century. He left us his always argumentative, but sometimes contradictious evaluations of dramatic art masters: the directors of Kharkiv Ukrainian drama theatre “Berezil” (from 1935 it named after T. Shevchenko) L. Kurbas, B. Tyagno, L. Dubovik, Yu. Bortnik, V. Inkizhinov, M. Krushelnitsky, M. Osherovsky; the producers of Kharkiv Russian drama theatre named after A. Pushkin – O. Kramov, V. Aristov, V. Nelli-Vlad and many others. Due to the critic’s persecution by the repressive machine of USSR, his evaluations of theatrical process were not quoted in soviet time researches. They still were not entered to the professional usage, were not published and commented in the whole capacity. Methods and novelty of the research. The research methodology joints the historical, typological, comparative, textual, biographical methods. The first researcher, who made up incomplete description of the bibliography of dramatic criticism by V. Morskoy, became Kharkiv’s bibliographer Tetyana Bakhmet. She gave maximally full list of critic articles (more than eighty positions) for the 1924, 1926–1929, 1937, 1948–1949 years. Kharkiv’s theater scientist Ya. Partola [16] in the first encyclopedic edition, that contains the article about V. Morskiy, gave the description of the only publication by critic known for today, in Moscow newspaper “Izvestiya”. Forty six critical articles, half of which didn’t note in bibliographies of both scientists, were collected and analyzed in periodical funds of Kharkiv V. Korolenko Central Scientific Library by the author of this article. Objectives. V. Morskoy was writing the reviews about the new films; the programs of popular and philharmonic performers; was researching the musical theater. This article has the purpose to characterize the features of V. Morskoy’ critical reviews on the dramatic theater performances. Results. It was managed to find out the articles by V. Morskoy hidden for the cryptonym “Vl. M.”, which dedicated to the performances of the “Berezil” theater of the second half of 1920th: “Jacquery”, “Yoot”, “Sedi“. The critic wrote about the setting “Jacquery ” by director V. Tyahno : “Berezil in setting of ‘Jacquery’ emphases it’s ideology, approaching ‘Jacquery’ to nowadays viewer” [2]. Perceiving critically some objective features of avant-garde stylistic, such as cinema techniques, V. Morskoy remarks: “The pictures are discrete, too short, some of them are lasting for 2–3 minutes, they made cinematographically” [2]. In the same time, the young critic already demonstrates the feeling and flair to the understanding of acting art. So, he accurately pointed out the first magnitude actors from the “Berezil” ensemble: A. Buchma, Yo. Ghirnyak, M. Krushelnitsky, B. Balaban [2]. V. Morskoy connected his view to “Jacquery” with the tendency of the second half of the 1920th: “For recently the left theaters became notably more right, and the right one – more left”[2], that reveals his theatrical experience. His contemporaries due to the author’s sense of humor easily recognized the style of V. Morsky’s reviews. Critical irony passes through the his essay about the setting by director V. Sukhodolskiy “Ustim Karmelyuk” in the Working Youth Theatre: “Focusing attention to Karmelyuk, V. Sukhodolskiy left the peoples in shade. Often they keep silence – and not in the Pushkin sense “[14]. Despite on the “alive” style, one of the features of V. Morskoy journalism was adherence to principles. His human courage deserves a high evaluation. In 1940, after the three years after the exile of Les Kurbas, the leader director of “Berezil” Theater, to Solovki, the critic published in the professional magazine the creative portrait of this disgraced director’s wife – the actress Valentina Chistyakova [15]. V. Morskoy arguments on the relationship between the modern works and the tradition of prominent predecessors has always been ably dissolved in an analysis of a performance. Each time V. Morskoy was paying attention to the distinctions of principals of playwriting, stage direction and even creative schools, in the second half of 1930th – 1940th, when the words “stage direction”, “currents”, in condition of predomination the so-called “social realism” method, in the soviet newspapers practically were not mentioning. For example, the critic saw of realistically-psychological directions in the O. Kramov’s performance “Year 1919”[9]. In 1940, V. Morskoy made a review of the performance of the then Zaporizhhya theater named after M. Zankovetska “In the steppes of Ukraine”, insisting on the continuity of the comedies of O. Korniychuk in relation to the works of Gogol and others of playwrights-coryphaeuses: “The play of O. Korniychuk is characterized by profound national form...” [7]. However, in the fact that in the Soviet Union at that time reigned as the doctrine the methodology of the “socialist realism”, the tragedy of honest criticism comprised. In controversy with the critic O. Harkivianin, V. Morskoy expressed the credo about the ethics and fighting qualities of the reviewer: “Apparently, Ol. Kharkivianin belongs to the category of peoples, who see the task of critic in order to give only the positive assessments. The vulgar sociological approach to the phenomena of art could be remaining the personal mistake of Ol. Kharkivianin. But when he presents him as the most important argument, everyone becomes uncomfortable”[8]. In 1949, the political regime fabricated the case of a “bourgeois cosmopolitan” against the honest theatrical critic and accused him in betraying of public interests adjudged V. Morskoy to untimed death at a concentration camp (Ivdellag, 1952). However, the time arbitrated this long discussion in favor of V. Morskoy. Conclusions. For the objective analysis of theater life of the city and the country as a whole, it is imperative to draw from the historical facts contained in the reviews of V. Morskoy, and the methodology of the review while investigating studies of theatrical art and theatrical thought of 1920–1940th. Thus, the gathering of the full kit of the critical observations of the famous Kharkov theater expert of the first half of the XX century is the important task for further researchers.

Bodily difference, interdependence, and toxic half-lives : representations of disability in D.W. Gregorys Dirty Pictures, The Good Daughter, and Radium Girls

People with disabilities have been a part of theatre for thousands of years. But typically they are represented as metaphors, where blindness or a limp symbolizes something about their character and has nothing to do with how they live their lives. When disability is reduced to a mere metaphor, it influences the way audiences perceive real people with real disabilities. D.W. Gregory is a contemporary playwright who is challenging the way people with disabilities are represented on stage. My research uses traditional dramatic criticism and close textual readings to analyze three plays by D.W. Gregory: Dirty Pictures, The Good Daughter, and Radium Girls. I use a number of theories from the field of Disability Studies to unpack these plays and learn how the disabled characters are crafted, how they interact with their worlds, and what implications they might have on wider culture. My results indicate that D.W. Gregory is writing characters with disabilities in ways that challenge traditional understandings of disability. Using Disability Studies as a way to analyze play texts is a powerful tool that has significant implications for social justice. Understanding these theories can change the way that artists create, and as a result, change the way that culture understands disability. Perhaps these ways of thinking and these plays can influence the way people with disabilities are treated, and improve the lives of all people. All our lives are interdependent upon each other.