Faking Literature

by K. K. Ruthven

Overview

Literary forgeries are usually regarded as spurious versions of genuine literature. Faking Literature argues that the production of a literary forgery is an act that reveals the spurious nature of literature itself. Literature has long been under attack because of its alliance with rhetoric (the art of persuasion) rather than with logic and ethics. One way of deflecting such attacks is to demonize literary forgery: literature acquires the illusion of authenticity by being dissociated from what are represented as ersatz approximations of the real thing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521660150
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/30/2001
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.67(d)

Table of Contents

Prologue; 1. Sampling the spurious; 2. Framing literary forgery; 3. Cultivating spuriosity; 4. Faultlines of authorship; 5. Fantasies of originality; 6. Rhetorics of inauthenticity; 7. Fake literature as critique; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...a contentious and important book for students of the literary period credited with instituting ideas of literary originality." The Wordsworth Circle

From the Publisher