Women’s Rewriting as Counter-memory: An ABC of ‘Stolentelling’ (Authorship, Branding, and Copyright)

Abstract

‘Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal’, T.S. Eliot said in a renowned aphorism (1928 [1920]: 125). Eliot’s distinction between imitation and theft identifies rewriting as a highly ambiguous practice that stands at the heart of the art and craft of writing: it is at once what writers do and should not do, or should not be seen to be doing, or do not want to acknowledge as having done. Pointing to a complex relationship between rewriting and plagiarism, Eliot’s aphorism suggests the distinction may be less obvious and tenable than its pithiness implies, troubling the opposition between good and bad, mature and immature.