The Author: A Preliminary Definition
First, work with a partner to define the term "author." What is an author; how does "author" differ from "writer"? What sorts of texts do authors write? There are many texts in our world to which no authorship is attributed. Please list a few.
We'll put your responses in this space:
Authorship as recent cultural construct:
Ede and Lunsford note that “…the concept of individual authorship, which strikes most people as commonsensical but also somehow inevitable, is actually a cultural construct, and a recent one at that" (77).
What does it mean to say that authorship is a construct? If this is so, what are the implications of this idea?
Take a look at p. 82. You'll see Ede and Lunsford cite a definition of a book circa 1753:
Book, either numerous sheets of white paper that have been stitched together in such a way that they can be filled with writer; or a highly useful and convenient instrument constructed of printed sheets variously bound in cardboard, paper, vellum, leather, etc.. for presenting the truth to another in such a way that it can be conveniently read and recognized. Many people work on this book before it is complete and becomes an actual book in this sense. The scholar and the writer, the paper maker, the type founder, the typesetter and the printer, the proofreader, the publisher, the book binder, sometimes even the gilder and brass-woer, etc. Thus many mouths are fed by this branch of manufacture (Zinck col. 442, cited in and trans by Woodmansee, "Genius" 425).
Based on the above quotation, what can you infer about the "commonsensical" view of authorship in the 18th century?
So how did ideas of authorship change?
On copyright laws and intellectual property:
Before copyright laws could seem not only just but inevitable, society had to accept the idea that there is a crucial distinction between the production of literary texts and, say the raising and selling of apples and that the writer’s role in creating a book is somehow privileged—different from that of the printer or the bookbinder (82).
Those opposed to the establishment of copyright laws did so on two main grounds: (1) a book, being a physical object, becomes the publisher’s property (and then the buyer’s) once it is purchased from the writer; and (2), ideas, once expressed, belong to all, not just to the person who first articulated them (83).
The Printing Press:
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Johannes Gutenberg invents the printing press around 1440. Over time, this technology was improved. Whereas early manuscripts needed to be transcribed by hand, the press made reproduction available on a mass scale.
| Illuminated Manuscript and Printing Press | |||
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Two videos about the book. The first one is funny.
Here's a short documentary regarding the rise of the printing press. It's available via our library's Films on Demand database. I've set up a URL but if it doens't work, just go to the database and search "Printing Press."
http://digital.films.com/play/FMEN4T
Based on what you've seen, what role did the printing press and copyright laws play in the development of the modern concept of "authorship." How does this concept differ from medieval or renaissance concepts of the the author?
Romanticism and the Solitary Author
This painting is by Casper David Friedrich (oil on canvas, 37.3 in × 29.4 in, 1818).
Take a moment to study it. What does the painting have to say about authorship and creativity?
Wordsworth and other’s descriptions of the author’s responsibility and achievement guaranteed a privileged place for both authors and their creations: “Genius is the introduction of a new element into the intellectual universe: or, if that be not allowed, it is the application of powers to objection which they had not before been exercised, or the employment of them in such a manner as to produce effects hitherto unknown (85).
What role does Descartes play in this story?
Take a look at the top of page 79 (top) and page 89 (middle). It seems pretty clear that Descartes' ideas, particularly the oft-referenced idea cogito ergo sum, are important to the development of contemporary ideas of authorship. Take a moment to review the material on the above pages; write a sentence in which you explain the the significance of Descartes to the definition of authorship.
