Pragmatic plagiarism : authorship, profit, and power / Marilyn Randall.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this illuminating study, Marilyn Randall takes on the question of why some cases of literary repetition become great art, while others are relegated to the ignominy of plagiarism.

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CHOICE Review

Randall (French, Univ. of Western Ontario) presents a very interesting and detailed examination of plagiarism. Many libraries will likely have Laura Rosenthal's Playwrights and Plagiarists in Early Modern England (CH, Jun'97), which covers some of the same ground and suggests parallel conclusions--especially that claims to ownership of literary property follow from status. But whereas Rosenthal limits her study to the period of her title and views plagiarism in part as an aspect of gender, Randall is much less restricted. In her view, plagiarism has two controlling features: it is in the eye of the beholder (more properly, an act of reading) and it is power, an aspect of literary struggle. Randall's intention is not to examine particular cases to determine whether accusations of plagiarism are just, but to consider plagiarism's "discursive construction and effects." The book is wide-ranging in its references and vigorously and clearly written. At the same time, by virtue of its topic, it is necessarily discursive; plagiarism does not advance, decline, or disappear even while its uses might be Protean. Likely the book will appeal mostly to graduate students and faculty. J. Wilkinson emeritus, Youngstown State University