Posted by Matthew Townend on September 25, 1997 at 13:39:38:
In Reply to: Re: hic liber est meus posted by Kathryn Lawrence on September 24, 1997 at 06:38:21:
Peter is of course right, and indeed too mild in his disapproval of such
an idea. To presume to add to AR's work? Three million NOs.
Forrest's appeal to Shakespeare is really not comparing like with like -
the entire circumstances of literary culture were different, with of course
much more fluidity of tradition and much less notion of the fixed text,
let alone literary copyright and 'intellectual property'. A more pertinent
comparison would be with Dickens (who did, admittedly, die at his desk):
what true Dickensian would dream of reading 'Edwin Drood' in any other
version than Dickens' own incomplete fragment?