Tradition
and Plagiarism
Dr. Aya Mo'nes Helmi
The issue of plagiarism has witnessed
variable degrees of importance along its history and so is the term itself. Their
being focused upon or highly crucial has been increasingly developing with the
development of human civilization, literary production and literary criticism. With
the change of man’s limits of freedom, some insecurity in the literary field
was detected due to the reproduction and reuse of some ancient texts or texts
whose authors were not identified. As a result, many poets and writers were
charged with plagiarism and this normally affected their literary reputation. This
widening scale of plagiarism accusations did necessitate a redefinition of the
proper bordering of plagiarism. Two of the well-established writers of their
age did handle the issue seeking to defend the accused, redefine the notion of
plagiarism and explain some crucial necessities regarding the value and effect
of traditional writings. Thus, it is proved important that literary critics
would consider some rules during their criticism in order that it would be
justifiable for them to charge him with being a plagiarist.
The development of the attention
given to plagiarism started to be notably increasing after man gained his
individuality as an entity which is almost entirely separated or rather cut off
from cults, any sort of religious belongings or collective identities. During
the middle ages, poet’s and writer’s talents were totally devoted to Churches
and religious services. Many hymns and poems were produced and spread with no
clear author identified and thus the individual independent voice was not
counted for or even aspired for by any poet. (“Medieval Literature”) Similarly,
in ancient Arab times, poets had no separate character from that of their
tribal groups. The poet was believed, when he writes or speaks, to be the
mouthpiece of his tribe speaking their ideas and pronouncing their beliefs. After
man’s separation from churches in Europe and
the collapse of the tribal-based societies, poets started producing their
individual writings that are free from any institutional dominance.
(Al-Jurjani) Themes that were almost fully neglected appeared, and they were
similar to some texts produced elsewhere or anciently by non-famous writers whose
texts presented same themes; this lead, as a result, to the spread of a wide trend of accusations
against those poets who borrowed from their past ancestors or reproduced the
works of unknown writers. As Johnson states in “Adventurer 95”:
It is often
charged upon writers, that with all their pretensions to genius and
discoveries, they do little more than copy one another; and that compositions
obtruded upon the world with the pomp of novelty, contain only tedious
repetitions of common sentiments, or at best exhibit a transposition of known
images, and give a new appearance to truth only by some slight difference of
dress and decoration.
The spread of these accusations of
plagiarism that damaged the literary reputations of so many poets necessitated
the redefinition of plagiarism and providing a detailed account of the standards
necessary to prove a poet guilty of literary plagiarism. Al-Jurjani in his book
The Meditation between Al-Mutanabi and His Rivals defines plagiarism as
the case when, out of malice and lack of confidence in one’s poetic abilities, contemporary
writers take each other’s ideas, or the ideas of their known or un-known
ancestors and claim them to be theirs. In this case they would be plagiarizing.
But he gives an example of the adaptation from the texts of the past. He argues
that when a poet adapts a canonical idea he not only benefits the idea itself
but he helps in the reestablishment of the idea itself (Al-Jurjani 1).
Advocating this same belief, Johnson says that the canonical sets of imagery
and wordings are “planted by the ancients in the open road of poetry for the
accommodation of their successors.” (The Rambler 143) This,
according to him, grants the contemporaries the right to pluck them without
causing any damage. Johnson in The Rambler 143 argues that “the author
who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and
elegancies out of the same general magazine of literature, can with little more
propriety be reproached as a plagiary…” (Johnson)
In defense of poets against
plagiarism, both Al-Jurjani and Johnson attributed this accusation to the
unawareness of some important facts that should not be put away while a critic
starts thinking of directing the serious accusation to any poet. Al-Jurjani on
his part stresses the fact that the spirit
of tribal belonging led to producing texts that were very similar to each
other in their sets of words, themes forms and metaphors. (Meditation
145) In this regard Johnson states: “No writer can be fully convicted of
imitation, except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be
imagined to have happened by chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined
without any natural series or necessary coherence, or where not only the
thought but the words are copied.” (Johnson). This proves Randal’s argument in Pragmatic
Plagiarism, Authorship, Profit, and Power
true when it is stated that Plagiarism is in the eye of the beholder and
that it is the function of the reader to name, compile, and criticize either
plagiarism or its critics; (Randal I-XV) for in some cases there is no actual
act of plagiarism but it is the mere similarity between texts and ideas that
suggest this accusation.
Both Al Jurjani and Johnson finally
agree upon the fact that producing similar or even almost identical
literary texts is sometimes inevitable. Al-Jurjani argues that the human heart
is one and it is possible that it’s reaction and ways of expression regarding
specific situations or incidences would be similar or even identical. Johnson
also in “Adventurer 59” states this: “Writers of all ages have had the
same sentiments, because they have in all ages had the same objects of
speculation; the interests and passions, the virtues and vices of mankind, have
been diversified in different times, only by unessential and casual varieties:
and we must, therefore, expect in the works of all those who attempt to
describe them, such a likeness as we find in the pictures of the same person
drawn in different periods of his life.” This not only shows the possibility of the repetition and
reoccurrence of some ideas, images or techniques, but it also draws some
attention to the unity of the human element producing these literary texts. But
this argument about the ancestral works goes in accordance with Eliot’s
“Tradition and Individual Talent” in which he argues that:
No poet and no artist has his
complete meaning alone; hence you can not value him alone- you must set him,
for contrast and comparison among the dead. The poet has a necessity towards
the past works that he shall conform, cohere; it is not a mono-sided process.
Any new work of art is the result of all what came before it. Thus it is
inseparable of its ancestors. The past should be altered by the present as much
as the present is directed by the past. (“Tradition and Individual Talent”)
In another position he states this clearly and briefly: The
business of the poet is not to find new emotions but to use the ordinary ones.
In Plagiarism
and literary property in Romantic period, Mazzeo distinguishes two
important types of “plagiarism”: ‘culpable’ plagiarism and ‘poetic’ plagiarism.
As it is explained, a writer could be persuasively charged with poetical
plagiarism if borrowings were unacknowledged and unimproved. “Plagiarisms of
this sort were not culpable and, therefore, did not carry with them moral
implications. Rather, the charges conveyed an aesthetic violation of the
conventional norms by which literature was evaluated as distinct from other
forms of expression, and authors found guilty of poetical plagiarisms were
simultaneously guilty of writing badly.” (Mazzeo 5) Authors who acknowledged
their borrowings and failed to improve upon them were not typically charged
with plagiarism. On the other hand, writers who did not acknowledge their
borrowings, even implicitly, were not considered plagiarists, no matter how
extensive the correspondences, if they have improved upon their borrowed
materials. ” Finally, Improvement was understood as a “de facto” transformation
of the borrowed materials. (Mazzeo 6)
There are many
conflicting views when it comes to discussing the issue of plagiarism. Handling
the issue of ‘originality’ Johnson assures his readers there are some forms of
originality despite the fact that we came to the world too late to produce
something new of our discovery or creation (Rambler 143). He states also
in “Adventurer 95”:
“There are … many modes of composition,
by which a moralist may deserve the name of an original writer: he may
familiarize his system by dialogues after the manner of the ancients, or
subtilize it into a series of syllogistick arguments: he may enforce his
doctrine by seriousness and solemnity, or enliven it by sprightliness and
gaiety: he may deliver his sentiments in naked precepts, or illustrate them by
historical examples: he may detain the studious by the artful concatenation of
a continued discourse, or relieve the busy by short strictures, and unconnected
essays.”
Further more, Stuart Green argues in “Plagiarism, Norms, and
the Limits of Theft law,” that plagiarism can be defined as the failure to
acknowledge the “source of facts, ideas, or specific language.” (Stuart Green
qtd in Mazzeo 6) In “Adventurer 95” the only solution left after coming to this
world too late to invent is to “notice” and “observe” the alterations
which time is always making in the modes of life, that they may gratify every
generation with a picture of themselves.” Accordingly, this is the only possible
chance left for man to add something new to the big bulk of the ancestors.
Plagiarism is
thus proved to be a dangerous charge that requires an intensive study of the
literary text before accusing its author of plagiarizing. All the views herein
mentioned advocate this careful study before issuing such harmful judgments. All of them defend those who have
been accused of plagiarism against this fatal charge. Taking from ancestors or
being similar to them in form or theme is not a reasonable reason that is
supposed to encourage critics to accuse poets or writers. As explained, this
similarity is expected, as Johnson and Al-Jurjani stated, due to the one heart,
one reason and one sentiment that produces these literary works. They do also
justify and allow taking the seeds of ideas from canonical works simply because
they are the reliable roots and also the only choice left for the
contemporaries to learn how to write.
Works cited
Al-Jurjani, Al-Qadi. The
Meditation Between Al-Mutanabi and His Rivals.
Eliot, T. S.. “Tradition and the
individual talent.” 1920. Quotidiana. Ed.
Patrick
Madden. 23 Jan 2008. 27 Apr 2011
<http://essays.quotidiana.org/eliot/tradition_and_the_individual/>.
Johnson, Samuel. “Adventurer”
095. 27 April 2011
-- --. The Rambler 143. 27
April 2011
Mazzeo, Tilar J. Plagiarism and literary property in
Romantic period.
“Medieval Literature” 23 April 2011
Randall, Marilyn. Pragmatic Plagiarism, Authorship,
Profit, and Power.
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