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 pioneering 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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195066170
• ISBN13: 9780195066173
• Release Date: August 1991
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.8" x 8.6"

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.