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Literary forgeries are usually regarded as spurious versions of genuine literature. Faking Literature argues that the production of a literary forgery is an act that reveals the spurious nature of literature itself. Literature has long been under attack because of its alliance with rhetoric (the art of persuasion) rather than with logic and ethics. One way of deflecting such attacks is to demonize literary forgery: literature acquires the illusion of authenticity by being dissociated from what are represented as ersatz approximations of the real thing.
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This page intentionally left blank FAKING LITERATURE Literary forgeries are usually regarded as spurious versions of genuine literature. Faking Literature argues that the production of a literary forgery is an act that reveals the spurious nature of literature itself. Literature has long been under attack because of its alliance with rhetoric (the art of persuasion) rather than with logic and ethics. One way of de¯ecting such attacks is to demonise literary forgery: literature acquires the illusion of authenticity by being dissociated from what are represented as ersatz approximations to the real thing. Ruthven argues that literary forgery is the creative manifestation of cultural critique. As a powerful indictment of dubious practices in such activities as literary criticism, book-reviewing and the awarding of literary prizes, literary forgery merits serious attention from cultural analysts, and should be a key component of literary studies. This intriguing book will be of interest to all teachers, students and readers of English literature. k. k. r uth ve n has been a professor of English at the universities of Canterbury, Adelaide and Melbourne, and is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has published books on Ezra Pound and on myth, feminist literary studies, and nuclear criticism. After editing Southern Review from 1981 to 1985 he became general editor of Interpretations, a series of monographs on recent theories and critical practices in the humanities and social sciences. FAKING LITERATURE K. K. RUTHVEN The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © K. K. Ruthven 2004 First published in printed format 2001 ISBN 0-511-03322-2 eBook (Adobe Reader) ISBN 0-521-66015-7 hardback ISBN 0-521-66965-0 paperback To Marion Campbell Contents Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Page ix x Prologue 1 1 Sampling the spurious 5 2 Framing literary forgery 34 3 Cultivating spuriosity 63 4 Faultlines of authorship 91 5 Fantasies of originality 121 6 Rhetorics of authenticity 146 7 Fake literature as critique 171 Epilogue 195 Bibliography Index of names Index of subjects 201 227 232 vii Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Australian Research Council for funding, from 1990 to 1992, a related project that developed into this book; Elizabeth Day, Eleanor Hogan, Lisa O'Connell, Dominic Pettman and Ann Vickery, formerly postgraduate students in the University of Melbourne's Department of English with Cultural Studies, who located and obtained copies of the books and articles I requested; Derek Attridge, for his critique of the synoptic proposal for this book and his comments on