Unit Paper!

Okay guys, so here is my very rough draft of my paper. As such, feel free to rip it to shreds, I won't be offended. Plus it will help out my paper a lot!!! Drum roll, please...

The Benefits of Plagiarism

The advent of the printing press brought a whole new perspective on plagiarism. With the printing press came the idea that a living could be made out of the art of writing (Lindey 72). Before this, writing was a hobby that was practiced on the author’s spare time. Plagiarism ran rampant throughout England, and the act was not considered morally wrong. However, in 1710, copyright was first introduced into British law, changing the way that authors were perceived (Alastair 205). Although many opponents of plagiarism believe that it is a crime, plagiarism is beneficial to the human race because it allows more room for creativity, has helped preserve knowledge, and humans are natural imitators.

According to an experiment conducted by Jesse Preston and Daniel Wagner of the departments of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario and Harvard University, “people inadvertently plagiarize three to nine percent of the time, either by regenerating the other person’s though or by recalling the other’s thought as their own” (576). Humans constantly learn from what is going on around them, and this naturally overflows into their thinking and writing. Because of this, plagiarism can occur accidentally.

Thomas Mallon, novelist and critic, stated that “we take pleasures in imitations of life, and our imitative capacities make us want to imitate not only life, but life’s imitations too” (72). Of all the animals, human beings are the most imitative. From the moment that a child is born, he or she continually learns by example. This never stops throughout the child’s life: it is continually learning and picking up new things from what is around it.

Stephen Orgel of Stanford University reasoned that artists during the Renaissance were taught to be imitative and a poet’s masterpiece was expected to be on the scale of Virgil’s Aeneid (479). Imitation was seen as a high form of praise for the original author of the work in this way, and it was just as likely for an author to be offended by being plagiarized as to be offended. Those who plagiarized also had little room to criticize, as they copied the works of others as well.

Along with this, Pennycock Alastair of the University of Melbourne stated that “for both Plato and Aristotle, imagination remained largely a reproductive rather than a productive activity”, a viewpoint that did not change until the Enlightenment (204). After the Enlightenment, invention of ideas became more prominent.

 Alexander Lindey, lawyer and author, indicated that the viewpoint during the Renaissance was that “much time and effort can be lost…in mere invention. Given a plot, characters, and incidents, a writer can concentrate on the task of combining them and animating the result” (64). A writer could focus on intriguing his readers instead of spending countless hours brainstorming. This idea is used to some extent today, where stories are created with similar ideas and principles to earlier books.

Lindey referenced The Canterbury Tales as an example in which Chaucer borrowed from sermons, accounts of miracles performed by saints, romances, and fables “and yet, no matter what he took, what he gave back was pure Chaucer (72). Because of the use of plagiarism, Chaucer and other authors were able to simultaneously be more creative with the ideas they borrowed while creating their own style.

Putting too much emphasis on the crime of plagiarism today, according to Alastair, causes a decrease in creativity because teachers become suspicious of student’s papers that are with little or no error (reference and paragraph pending until I can re-find my paper with page numbers!)

According to Lindey, “borrowing kept the low-flickering torch of learning from going out altogether” (67). Without the expected need to have works seem like others, there would have been little to base written works off of. Older works and classics set a precedent for others to follow when learning to read and write were skills being developed by others.

Lindey also says that works such as Aesop’s fable can be traced back to papyrus works in Egypt (64). Many works were plagiarized across cultures, from one language to the next. There are likely many works that were plagiarized that were not caught because they do not exist anymore today. Many works that exist today have not disappeared because they were plagiarized by authors during the Renaissance period.

Plagiarism was used for many years before it became an immoral act. Yet, it still remains an area of ambiguity. Thomas Mallon compares the crime of plagiarism and running a red light, saying that the defenses to plagiarism are “what exactly do you mean by a light?” and “define run” instead of saying that one didn’t run it (2). This has caused much confusion over the years as there has not been a hard and fast rule of what is plagiarism and what is not. 

 And I'm still working on the conclusion! But thanks for reading and any input! Good luck on each of your papers!