Crimes of Writing: Problems in the Containment of Representation

by Susan Stewart

Book Overview

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;...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822315459
• ISBN13: 9780822315452
• Release Date: October 1994
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 8.2"

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.