Fake It : Fictions of Forgery

Osteen, Mark

ISBN 10: 0813946271 / ISBN 13: 9780813946276

Published by University of Virginia Press, 2021

About this Item

Unread book in perfect condition.

Seller Inventory # 42858230

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Fake It : Fictions of Forgery
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813946271
• ISBN 13: 9780813946276
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

How many layers of artifice can one artwork contain? How does forgery unsettle our notions of originality and creativity? Looking at both the literary and art worlds, Fake It investigates a set of fictional forgeries and hoaxes alongside their real-life inspirations and parallels. Mark Osteen shows how any forgery or hoax is only as good as its authenticating story―and demonstrates how forgeries foster fresh authorial identities while being deeply intertextual and frequently quite original.

From fakes of the late eighteenth century, such as Thomas Chatterton’s Rowley poems and the notorious "Shakespearean" documents fabricated by William-Henry Ireland, to hoaxes of the modern period, such as Clifford Irving’s fake autobiography of Howard Hughes, the infamous Ern Malley forgeries, and the audacious authorial masquerades of Percival Everett, Osteen lays bare provocative truths about the conflicts between aesthetic and economic value. In doing so he illuminates the process of artistic creation, which emerges as collaborative and imitative rather than individual and inspired, revealing that authorship is, to some degree, always forged.

About the Author

Mark Osteen, Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Humanities at Loyola University Maryland, is author of Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream.