Literary ownership and creativity

Can you imagine our modern literary world without copyright laws? Without ownership, authorship would truly become secondary - if ordered at all - to our literature identification system. Perhaps, especially, we'd depend upon works' titles for sole identification. The poem wouldn't be a "Wordsworth" or the story a "Poe" or the novel a "Tolkein." Very odd conceptualize, actually.

On the flip side, it'd spare us the obnoxious works cited labor.

In "The Author" Andrew Bennett cites Martha Woodmansee in stating that "'our laws of intellectual propriety . . . are rooted in the century-long reconceptualization of the creative process which culminated in high Romantic pronouncements . . . to the effect that this process ought to be solitary, or individual, and introduce 'a new element into the intellectual universe'." I'm growing convinced of our inescapable deep-rootedness in Romanticism. Will we ever be able to escape those tendencies, and should we even attempt it? At this point in my studies I can identify my own Romantic tendencies and influences - noting my tendency toward solitude, my desire to create innovative pieces, my frustration over restriction and conformity - yet I don't know how to escape them. Not that I necessarily need to. But I do wonder what our literary education would be were it shaped by something other than Romanticism.

and I was pondering the "creative reading" to which my Barthes blog alluded. What if, in school, we learned to encounter texts for the first time together? What if our initial encounters were communal? As in, for example, reading books aloud in classrooms. (Would that environment be too controlled?) In elementary and high school, I only recall reading plays aloud in class. Every other reading assignment occurred outside of class, in solitude. But what if we learned to talk through a first reading together?

Is reading too much of a solitary act that to suggest any other method would be too forceful?

Somewhere along the line we stopped reading aloud in class. A shame, for I actually enjoyed it. But I suppose many teachers consider it a poor use of time. They're probably right in assuming so. Reading through, say, Huckleberry Finn alone would require almost an entire semester. Not very efficient.

But what if efficacy wasn't the goal? What if, instead, we endeavored to emphasize the creative process of encountering text? Not just the 'creative process' of analyzing text, or reacting to text, but actually encountering it on a first-response basis?

I've read that, while filming the movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the director restricted the child actors from seeing the finished sets before filming. That way, they preserved their initial reactions - unfeigned wonder and awe - on camera. Fresh and honest. What if we encountered our literature that way - without prior filters, without our predetermined interpretations?

Tonight I'll see a version of Valerie Rae Smith's new play Between Two Chairs. As I understand it, she has performed the play before, but it's still in the 'construction' stages. To me, the potential of engaging in and reacting to a progressing work is so exciting. It still changes. It's still fluid. That, to me, indicates real creativity.