Our group would like to thank everyone for participating in the discussions and doing the group assignments. It was good to hear everyone’s ideas and thought’s on what the readings meant to you and how you felt about literary forgery.
In class we discussed two writers James MacPherson and Thomas Chatterton. They are the two most popular literary figures known for forgery during the 18 century. It was important for this to be discussed because it had an impact on how literature began to be reviewed and read. As discussed in class, though these works were known forgeries people still felt the need to go out and purchase their works and indulge in them. Someone in the class mentioned that these works could be viewed “as a guilty pleasure”. This was an agreeable and interesting comment because it expressed how one looked at their works from a reader’s point of view instead of a critic or another literary writer.
When we discussed MacPherson and the class was broken up into groups it was good when we came back together and were able to hear and understand the classes’ thoughts on the work. One person referred to work as resembling Shakespeare because of the complicated plot. Thought the plot was complicated and the works were known to be forgeries the class felt as if it did not take away from the works purpose seeing as it was fiction and it used as a source of entertainment. We were able to have a great discussion about MacPherson as well as Chatterton and come up with several ideas of how and why they chose to write forgeries and what affects it had on the readers.
To end, something that everyone seemed to feel the same about it that though these writers were forgers they did have talent themselves. This was more elaborated on when we discussed Thomas Chatterton because the group tried to point out imperfections with his poem that made it a forgery and this task was rather complicated to do. After this it was pointed out the same errors that helped identify the forgery was due to spelling, grammar, and the uses of different words. Skilled writers had to decipher between what was forged or not therefore we know that these writers had to be knowledgeable enough to know who to manipulate their way around older works in order to pass them off. This was mostly agreed upon by the class.
For a final remark……If anyone has any questions about literary forgery that was not answered or discussed in class feel free to post.
Question: Do you think that MacPherson or Chatterton lost respect or gained respect by writers and reader after their work was exposed as being forgery's? What would have been your stance on the situation if you were the critic?
9 comments:
I would be curious to learn how people reacted when they discovered it was forgery. Critics or the average reader, and if responses varied between different social classes.
In response to your final question, I'm not really sure how I'd feel if I was a critic. I'll give a modern day example I was just discussing with someone earlier this week. This person was looking for a job for about a year, and picked up some tricks along the way. (I am not encouraging/discouraging this by the way)...When you send a resume to a company, sometimes they have computers that filter the resumes before an actual person ever looks at it. So, a trick is to type magical words such as Harvard or MBA but in white text so it's invisible to the reader but it will go through the filters. I am not sure how cheat proof this technique is, but apparently it works sometimes! You could argue it from different perspectives: It shows confidence and innovation. The ability to think out of the box. Of course, to some recruiters, they may be disgruntled regardless of superb qualities the applicant may possess. I think the same perspectives could be applied to this situation. Literary forgery could have been those authors' way of saying "Hey, you know I have talent, but I had to find a way to get myself looked at". Knowing myself, I would probably be annoyed at first but smirk at their guts because I can be pretty gutsy myself. However, I'd be more bothered in certain circumstances. For example, trying to say it was Gaelic history when it wasn't is pushing it. As one classmate said, if I was Gaelic I'd be disappointed to learn it was false! If it was done under other means (such as a false name or pretending to be a medieval poet) I would be more forgiving.
I think that the scholars of the time might have lost respect for Chatterton or MacPherson. This is only a guess but my reasoning stems from something that was mentioned in class. At least a couple people did not publish Chatterton's work. Thus I am assuming that when his credibility fell so did his value. However, if the works were originally valued for entertainment purposes, I can imagine that people would still value the work. They might even value it more than before because they can appreciate the author's talent for writing outside the current conventions. If I were a critic I think my opinion would have stayed the same because, outside of the classroom, I tend to read things for their aesthetic qualities and those do not decrease when learning about the forgery.
I like what 217 had to say about innovation and creative of writers to distinguish themselves. I would like to make a comparison to pop-culture today. There are so many horrifying tabloids about famous people and people's commentary is that it is appalling and those people are awful role models. BUT, they are the most widely talked about people. Isn't that proving the same point? Is it better to be talked about in a somewhat negative light than to not be talked about at all? So, if McPhearson and Chatterton got reputations for being forgers, but clever, innovative, creative, masterful forgers, then their subsequent works will have a built-in readership because people will be curious. Of course some forgers are more talented and creative than others, and I'm sure some had a fan base and a repertoire.
Also, we did not discuss the differences in opinion about forgery depending on class. It is more believable that lower class people wouldn't care because they read books based on their entertainment factor. But, critics and nobility most likely were more offended based on 1) that they were not reading legitimate manuscripts and 2) that they had been duped!! How dare you to double-cross the nobles!!
I definitely admire MacPherson and Chatterton for the creativity and innovation. Along these lines, some hard work and preparation must have gone into the poems they attempted to recreate, as they had to study the style of the words they were trying to emulate, which I also can respect.
However, on some level I can't help but believe that both MacPherson and Chatter lost some respect when they were discovered to be forgers. To falsify your work leads to a loss of credibility, and while in class we all agreed that the works were still interesting and valuable on their own, the fact that they were not what they appeared to be causes them to lose some merit for me on some level.
One question that I would like to pose is this: these authors were obviously very talented, so why did they feel the need to publish forgeries instead of creating works that they could publicly call their own?
The only way I could see MacPherson and Chatterton gaining respect from critics would be for how closely they were able to replicate 15th century writing, other than that I think that forgery would still be looked down upon. I think that they would have lost respect from both the readers and the critics because they are essentially lying and fooling the public. This brings to mind, as the group mentioned in class, James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces”. When it came out that he was lying, Oprah was outraged because she had been emotionally invested in his story and had supported his book by adding it to her book club. From this example, I could see how people who paid for Chatterton and MacPherson’s works would feel duped or disappointed since perhaps they wanted to read it for its authenticity. Frey’s book was also supposed to shed light on the reality and consequences of drug addiction, and if it is all a lie then it delegitimizes everything he has said and it won’t have the same effect as it would if it were a true story. I feel like this would be the similar situation of what would happen with MacPherson and Chatterton’s works, if their works are forged then they are not authentic and won’t have the same impact on the audience. If I were a critic I would be aggravated with the two writers since they deceived me and led me to believe that the works were from the 15C when they really weren’t.
I feel as though MacPherson and Chatterton would have lost respect when their readers found out that their writings were forgeries. I think readers would have felt lied to and cheated by being made to think that they were reading something authentic and then realized that peers of their current time were actually creating the works. I think that once these original thoughts passed, the writers could have been respected for the works that they created in the sense that their writings were good and entertaining. Saying this, I still do not believe that they would have gained the same type of respect that they would have gotten had they actually found these stories like they said, rather than lied about it.
If I were in the situation of the people in the 18th century, I believe i would be upset with writers such as MacPherson and Chatterton. I think I could not have been OK with the fact that I was lied to about what I was reading, thus making it difficult for me to believe other readings in the future I came across.
I am curious as to how people really did react at the time. I don't really understand how this is so much different than publishing a work under a pen name. They are not taking credit for someone else's work. And, as a writer I find it much harder to write from a perspective that I might not fully understand. So in that sense they have really excelled at their craft. However, they did falsify documents and out and out lie about the orgins of their own work, probably as a means to become rich. I guess I am not exactly sure where i stand on the subject.
I think that both these authors lost respect after they were exposed as forgery's. Readers would feel cheated and the works would lose their significance and reputation. I think critics viewed this more harshly than the general public for many reasons. The readers of these poems found them entertaining and different, which attracted them to the texts. Critics couldn't get passed the fact these were forgeries and some people refused to publish the poems. As a reader in the 18th century, I would not be able to enjoy these texts if I knew they were forgeries, and would most likely force me to cast doubt upon a lot of other literature.
I personally agree with Westyn's post. By lying to their readers, Chatterton and MacPherson are breaking a wall of trust that exists between the author and reader. As a reader, we expect an author to be responsible for the truth, not so much in the text itself, but in the content of the author's character. Without that, there is no foundation for a relationship. It is difficult to read Chatterton and MacPherson's texts and try to block out the fact that they are forgeries--it is a constant roadblock between the reader's understanding of the text and the text itself.
I too am intrigued to know what C18 readers thought of these texts. Did they feel the same way as we do today? Were the forgeries interpreted as lies or as more of an "inside joke" between reader and author?
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