Logie – I Have No Predecessor to Guide My Steps: Quintilian and the Roman Construction of Authorship

Logie, John. “‘I Have No Predecessor to Guide My Steps’: Quintilian and the Roman Construction of Authorship.” Rhetoric Review 22.4 (2003): 353-73. 20 Summary: Logie argues that Quintilian – despite being pretty derivative in his works – stakes out a claim to authorial originality in Book XII of Institutio Oratoria; in doing so, Q.s claim to authorial authenticity and proprietarian ideology is voiced in surprising modern terms.  Logie... Read More

Behme – Isocrates on the Ethics of Authorship

Tim Behme.  “Isocrates on the Ethics of Authorship.”  Rhetoric Review 23 (3). Behme argues that Isocrates is a central figure in the early history of authorial ethics in the Western World.  He claims this because of Isocrates’ emphasis on “discursive originality as a virtue” and unoriginality as a vice.  B. claims that Isocrates defined originality as “a competitive enterprise whereby one seizes the opportunity to assert something... Read More

WRT624 – Logie – The (Re)Birth of the Composer

Logie – “The (Re)Birth of the Composer” from Composition and Copyright Logie notes that composition is the antitheological activity par excellance because it dissolves the author into an accumulation of public ideas, interpretations and claims (176).  In this sense, composition challenges God “and his hypostases – reason, science, law.” “Classic [humanist] criticism has obscured the networked composer in order to celebrate the Author:... Read More

CCR601 – Textual Machinery – Kennedy

Kennedy, Krista. “Textual Machinery:  Authorial Agency and Bot-Written Texts in Wikipedia.” The Responsibilities of Rhetoric. Ed. Michelle Smith and Barbara Warnick. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2010. 303-309. Executive Summary: Kennedy discusses the notion of authorship and authorial agency in the context of theoretical and legalistic arguments about authorship in bot-driven encyclopedic texts (Wikipedia).  Theoretically speaking,... Read More