Product Description

From the origins of modern copyright in early eighteenth-century culture to the efforts to represent nature and death in postmodern fiction, this book explores a series of problems regarding the containment of representation. Stewart focuses on specific cases of "crimes of writing"—the forgeries of George Psalmanazar; the production of "fakelore"; the "ballad scandals" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the imposture of Thomas Chatterton; and contemporary legislation regarding graffiti and pornography. She emphasizes the issues that arise once language is seen as a matter of property, and authorship is viewed as a matter of originality. Finally, Stewart demonstrates that crimes of writing are delineated by the law because they specifically undermine the status of the law itself: the crimes illuminate the irreducible fact that law is written and therefore subject to temporality and interpretation. This valuable and pioneering work, originally published in 1991 (Oxford University Press), will be of interest to literary and legal theorists, folklorists, anthropologists, and scholars of eighteenth-century and postmodern culture.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #275564 in Books
• Published on: 1994-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
"A brilliant study."--Winterhur Portfolio

"It has become an article of faith in history and literary studies that the best way of understanding the text is to look at the margins, the best way to understand the norm is to look at that which is designated abnormal, deviant and reprehensible. The difficulty with applying this article of faith, is that it requires an extraordinary patience and skill with texts and historical records if it is not to be a justification for self-indulgent grotesquerie. In this book, Susan Stewart shows how fascinating this technique can be when applied by a careful and lucid scholar. In a series of meticulously researched essays, she helps us to understand authorship and text by focusing on a variety of "crimes of writing"--graffiti, pornography, forgery and literary imposture. At the same time, she shows how law is both implicated in and threatened by "the containment of representation."--James Boyle, Washington College of Law, American University

"Stewart's formidable scholarship enables her to range over a broad range of case studies without losing theoretical substance or analytical depth."--Canadian Folklore

"Stewart's formidable scholarship enables her to range over a broad range of case studies without losing theoretical substance or analytical depth."--Comptes Rendus

"Stewart's work provides an oasis in contemporary criticism, a place where theory and poetry, systematic reflection and the essayistic plunge into particular cases, come together in a refreshing synthesis. Crimes of Writing is a worthy successor to Nonsense and On Longing.--W.J.T. Mitchell

"Susan Stewart is one of the most extraordinary cultural critics writing in America today. Her rich and detailed accounts of the symbolic texture of cultural life are at once always surprising and unfailingly persuasive."--Stanley Fish, Duke University


"It has become an article of faith in history and literary studies that the best way of understanding the text is to look at the margins, the best way to understand the norm is to look at that which is designated abnormal, deviant and reprehensible. The difficulty with applying this article of faith, is that it requires an extraordinary patience and skill with texts and historical records if it is not to be a justification for self-indulgent grotesquerie. In this book, Susan Stewart shows how fascinating this technique can be when applied by a careful and lucid scholar. In a series of meticulously researched essays, she helps us to understand authorship and text by focusing on a variety of "crimes of writing"--graffiti, pornography, forgery and literary imposture. At the same time, she shows how law is both implicated in and threatened by "the containment of representation."--James Boyle, Washington College of Law, American University
"Susan Stewart is one of the most extraordinary cultural critics writing in America today. Her rich and detailed accounts of the symbolic texture of cultural life are at once always surprising and unfailingly persuasive."--Stanley Fish, Duke University
"Stewart's work provides an oasis in contemporary criticism, a place where theory and poetry, systematic reflection and the essayistic plunge into particular cases, come together in a refreshing synthesis. Crimes of Writing is a worthy successor to Nonsense and On Longing.--W.J.T. Mitchell
"Stewart's formidable scholarship enables her to range over a broad range of case studies without losing theoretical substance or analytical depth."--Canadian Folklore
"Stewart's formidable scholarship enables her to range over a broad range of case studies without losing theoretical substance or analytical depth."--Comptes Rendus

From the Back Cover
"Stewart’s work provides an oasis in contemporary criticism, a place where theory and poetry, systematic reflection and the essayistic plunge into particular cases, come together in a refreshing synthesis. Crimes of Writing is a worthy successor to Nonsense and On Longing."—W. J. T. Mitchell, University of Chicago

About the Author
Susan Stewart is at Temple University.

Customer Reviews

yes, it's smart
Ok, so the prose is dense, and she's read more books than you, and sometimes there's a bit of untranslated French (a pet peeve, I'll admit). Still, this is brilliant stuff. The chapter on graffiti is a classic-- the best theoretical treatement of graffiti available, and worth the price of the book by itself.

Lots of promise, impenetrable prose
I was very excited about this book. Unfortunately it reads as though it were written by a graduate student has gone mad on speed. The simplest ideas are obfuscated by hideous prose. Here's an example: "In order to maintain imposture as a notion, we must also maintain a ficiton of seamless subjectivity." Otherwise stated: In order to act you have to pretend convincingly. Try it yourself, each page is packed with enough tangled syntax, overwrought diction, and unnecessary allusions to give a decent editor nightmares. Who is in charge of those grants, anyway? This is smart??!!