Who says appropriation is OK? According to Chambers Compact Thesaurus, synonyms for 'appropriate' include seize, filch, misappropriate, nick, pinch, steal, swipe, thieve, etc. You can use other people's work provided you acknowledge and reference it.

Just look at T.S. Eliot work! And what about adaptations? Look at a lot of posr-modrn writers? How can you tell when the appropriation is legit and when is it it simply a theft?

It is a matter of how well we cite our sources. Ideas are offered by writers as a means to extend thought. I believe this is what writers most often have in mind. We read someething, agree or disagree and go from there making sure our argument is original.

I'm thinking more on literary appropriation.

Yes, that is hard.

Whether an appropriation of material produced by another person is to be judged as plagiarism depends a lot on cultural (and legal) conventions and conceptions of intellectual property. You might have to phrase your own differentiated and historically nuanced definition of plagiarism for your particular field of study, taking into account related terms like echo, intertextuality, imitatio, theft, fraud, pasticcio, collage, montage, quotation, counterfeit, sampling. Don't expect clear polar oppositions, rather work with a scale resp. different degrees of appropriation. Consider the amount and scope of the appropriated material, whether it is marked and recognizable as such and inhowfar it gains new specific functions compared to its original context.

I think a subjective definition of plagiarism will lead to chaos, confusion and interminable arguments, and hence to inconsistency and arbitrary injustice. It should be perfectly possible to have a universally agreed definition applicable to any country or discipline.

The problem is very difficult when concerning literary appropriation or plagierism. Even when considering the copyrights' law, there is no precise definition. When will you speak of influence or allusion oe intertextuality and when you will call it a plagierism? The copy rights' Law speak of a certain change, but what change is sufficient?

Mind you, I'm not pleading for a "subjective definition" of plagiarism, but for a culturally and historically well contextualized one. Plagiarism can only be plagiarism as long as its respective "matrix culture" perceives it as such.

"You might have to phrase your own differentiated and historically nuanced definition of plagiarism for your particular field of study"

Students are being expelled from universities and journalists are having their careers ended because of plagiarism. Notices warning of plagiarism are prominantly displayed on notice boards at universities (in London). This will only work if every student reading them understands the definition of plagiarism, and that there is a simple common definition irrespective of subject studied, so that each student recognises how the notice applies to them. It is obviously unfair to expel students who do not understand what they have done wrong, or for some students to argue for a more nuanced or culturally appropriate definition and that they are exempt form the general meaning of the term.

I guess 'literary appropriation' suggests using someone's idea/concept etc. as a raw material to produce something 'original' (is it really possible?!). Well, at least something evidently different. To give the cliched example, Shakespeare religiously borrowed the story of his plays from other authors/sources. But what glorious borrowings! We study their sources for savoring him more, and hardly the other way round. Do we really care about Giovanni Cinthio's 'Hecatommithi' when we rush breathlessly through 'Othello'?!

Plagiarism, as our friend Cornelia Remi has rightly said, has its own history written differently in different times and places. In our age, it suggests an unacknowledged lifting, quoting or paraphrase of someone's idea/concept/theory etc. which comprise his/her intellectual 'property' (there goes an historical pointer!). I think it is a fallout of our "Publish or Perish" age which has bred this syndrome of 'copy and paste' : done in haste, often without minimum civility or taste. O dear, such (intellectual, ethical, aesthetic) laziness is such a tragic waste!

:D

Anthony Gordon, apparently you understand the object of Anat's question in a completely different way than I do (science vs. humanities?). You refer to plagiarism exclusively as to a deviation from the generally accepted and standardized scholarly practices of our current global academic community. If we are moving only in this field, I might agree with you.

However, from Anat's contributions to this discussion so far I do not think that is the concept of plagiarism she actually has in mind (cf. her reference to the works of T.S. Eliot and to literary adaptations). I rather presume that she means to discuss the transfer respectively integration of "alien" literary material into new contexts, i. e. of literary and poetic processes and devices that must be judged differently than our practices of academic writing! Rajarshi Bagshi has delivered a fine example for this by referring to Shakespeare and his sources.

Cornelia Rémi is absolutly right. I didn't think of the academic aspect of plagiarism which is another problem altogether. I was refering to the literary aspect of the subject. Where is the line between what Julie Sanders names "sustained appropriation" and plagiarism. And another aspect of the problem: can we spaeak of an unconscious homage (as we can spaeal of unconscious intertextuality)?

"Unconscious homage" .. wow, that's a fine word Anat! I remember how the sad and sublime music of Keats's 'Ode to a nightingale' kept playing in each of my attempts to write a poem with a similar setting or mood. It both thrilled and exasperated me. My next experience of such inescapable enchantment was Pablo Neruda's poems. It is so difficult not to give in to such heady stuff! But were my attempts examples of plagiarism? Holy Lord, that would be too harsh an indictment!!

But we can take heart from Harold Bloom's theory of "anxiety of influence" : it happens to the best of bests! And I do not think it should be called plagiarism. Rather a very strong influence, a powerful spell cast by a genius on an apprentice's mind, on his budding skill. Of course one has to learn how to free oneself of such a spell, however pleasing or flattering such imprisonment may seem to be. But that is a different issue.

However, if I pretend to be the author of lines such as " To be or not to be, that is the question" or "My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains my sense", well then God save me! It would be a poor and miserable end to my writing aspirations, academic/creative or whatever. Ditto if I lift lesser known lines of lesser known authors and try to pass them off as felicitous accidents of my own creative pen! That is PLAGIARISM.

No offense, but I think this has become overly complicated. Plagiarism, very simply, is the use in an original text of previously published material without citation or attribution. If the material has not been published in a copyrighted forum, then it's fair game. One cannot copyright an idea or a concept, so those are always open to being "borrowed" or even "stolen." One cannot copyright a title, either. Confederate work is work that has been represented as the author's own but which actually was composed by another individual. Paraphrase of precise wording of published material is not plagiarism. If something is recast totally in one's own words, then it becomes fair use. However, if even a single word is directly appropriated from the source without attribution or citation, then the writers has stolen it. The use of on-line, uncopyrighted material is also fair use, although, only an idiot would use it. But the key words remain "published" and "copyrighted." That's about it.

I wish it was that simple! just look at fair use in the american law! If it was so clear - how come there were cases when two different courts gave different judgment for the same case?

You're going to ask a lawyer!? Lawyers live for plagiarism. It really is that simple. If you present it as your own and it's previously been published, then you stole it. Quod erat demonstrandum.

I'm not speaking of simple things as that. I'm speaking of border cases when only some parts resemble another work. When you cannot be sure if the amount of use should be called appropriation or did it pass the line and should be considered plagiarism.

This is a very old literary debate. Check Edgar Allan Poe's views on the matter for example.

TS Eliot made no bones about it - "Major poets steal" - I think the justification and excuse resides in the literary quality of the theft - does it add to our sum of literary 'knowledge'; our aesthetic treasure horde? That's the test.

I think it is called intertextuality

Without advancing my own definitions, I'd recommend the American novelist, Jonathan Lethem's recent, brilliant and eloquent exploration of plagiarism in literary (and other types of) creation - - "The Ecstasy of Influence." (http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/the-ecstasy-of-influence/)