Wednesday, September 10, 2014

The Ecstasy of Influence summary

Denise Diokno
AVT 180-006
Summary
In Lentham’s article, he begins by showing the overlap and similarities between Nabakov’s popular novel Lolita, with a previous work by Heinz von Lichberg published 40 years prior. He continues to show that there is no completely pure and original idea; music, movies and poetry (and he believes it may apply to all of art) all borrow elements of each other. Could other things be viewed as “borrowing” rather than “plagiarism.” For example, things that one draws upon from their culture, or when a photographer take a photograph of something. Lentham  continues to prove that there really is no such thing as an original idea or intellectual property. Everything was from either from our culture, given to us, or from an old unknown text. We unconsciously draw from other sources. He makes this metaphor that life, and art is this huge collage. It is woven in with each other and sourced and cited. Towards the end of his article, Lentham proves exactly this. He cites, and shows that the majority of this article is borrowed from other text. The main idea of his article is supported and summarized by using Donne’s quote “All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. . . .”

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