Hot Property: The Stakes and Claims of Literary Originality - Softcover

Meltzer, Françoise

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226519767 ISBN 13: 9780226519760

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1997

Synopsis

But is it original? The question, on which so much of writing stakes its claim to greatness, may be more interesting than the answer. In this provocative book, Francoise Meltzer takes a subtle and incisive look at the anxiety of origins at the heart of the literary enterprise. Using four case studies, Meltzer reveals the shaky status of originality as a founding principle of the critical establishment.

Freud, inventor of "dream work," turns a blind eye upon the dreams that were the starting point of his predecessor Descartes's famous methode, the one man's obsession with originality mirroring the other's fear of plagiarism. The Holocaust poet Paul Celan, whose sense of identity and place resided in his work, is devastated by a charge of plagiarism. Colette's husband Willy outdoes himself, and his "lazy" wife as well, with his enactment of literary seriousness. Walter Benjamin's early interpreters, notably Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno, insidiously undermine the originality of his project . In each of these cases, Meltzer shows how a threat to a writer's status as creator betrays the larger fraud of the originality myth itself.

Fascinating for its insights into the ways originality is both at risk and at work in Western literary culture, Hot Property will engage all those who have an interest in questions of authorship, textual soveriegnty, and the legitimacy of the critical establishment.

About this title

From the Back Cover

But is it original? The question, on which so much of writing stakes its claim to greatness, may be more interesting than the answer. In this provocative book, Francoise Meltzer takes a subtle and incisive look at the anxiety of origins at the heart of the literary enterprise. Using four case studies, Meltzer reveals the shaky status of originality as a founding principle of the critical establishment. Three dreams were the starting point for Descartes's famous methode. In the short shrift given to these nightly visions by the author of The Interpretation of Dreams, Meltzer sees a symptom of Freud's overwhelming anxiety about originality and authorship, an obsession that mirrors Descartes's own fear of plagiarism. Turning next to the Holocaust poet Paul Celan, who was actually accused of plagiarism by another poet's widow, Meltzer takes us through the minority discourse on the European Jew - in which "the Jew" is seen as having no homeland except for the text - to show us why such an accusation was so devastating for Celan. The question of originality becomes even trickier in the case of Colette, whose early books were published under her husband Willy's name. Scrutinizing Willy's elaborate promotion of himself as a serious writer, unlike his "lazy" wife, Meltzer questions our investment in the working notion of a writer, and in the way that notion is gendered. Finally she considers the case of Walter Benjamin, whose early interpreters, especially Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno, challenged his seriousness and originality by alluding to his supposed 'feminine' qualities of vagabondage and sloth. In each of these cases, Meltzer shows how a threat to a writer's status as creator betraysthe larger fraud of the originality myth itself. Fascinating for its insights into the ways originality is both at risk and at work in Western literary culture, Hot Property will engage all those who have an interest in questions of authorship, textual sovereignty, and the legitimacy of the critical establishment.

About the Author

Françoise Meltzer is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, where she is also professor at the Divinity School and in the College, and chair of the Department of Comparative Literature. Meltzer is the author of five books, most recently of Seeing Double: Baudelaire's Modernity, and a coeditor of the journal Critical Inquiry.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0226519767
• ISBN 13: 9780226519760
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 179