Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship

by Anthony Grafton

Book Overview

The close links between forgery and criticism throughout history In Forgers and Critics, Anthony Grafton provides a wide-ranging exploration of the links between forgery and scholarship. Labeling... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691055440
• ISBN13: 9780691055442
• Release Date: March 1990
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

anecdotal

A short book on the history of forged historical documents, and efforts to detect them, from ancient to modern times. It skips around too much, without giving enough context for most of its anecdotes. Part of its larger message is that both practices are age-old, and that the higher criticism of 19c Germany was not as new as it seemed. Also, forgery was always considered wrong; epistemological concepts haven't changed that much. Another message is that the two are intertwined, and even some of the "gravest" opponents and critics of forgery, such as Erasmus, at times were forgers themselves.