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Literary forgery

Literary forgery (also known as literary mystification, literary fraud or literary hoax) is writing, such as a manuscript or a literary work, which is either deliberately misattributed to a historical or invented author, or is a purported memoir or other presumably nonfictional writing deceptively presented as true when, in fact, it presents untrue or imaginary information or content.

Cover of The Songs of Bilitis (1894), a French pseudotranslation of Ancient Greek erotic poetry by Pierre Louÿs

History edit

Literary forgery may involve the work of a famous author whose writings have an established intrinsic, as well as monetary, value. In an attempt to gain the rewards of such a reputation, the forger often engages in two distinct activities. The forger produces a writing which resembles the style of the known reputable author to whom the fake is to be attributed. The forger may also fake the physical alleged original manuscript. This is less common, as it requires a great deal of technical effort, such as imitating the ink and paper. The forger then claims that, not only is the style of writing the same, but also that the ink and paper are of the kind or type used by the famous author. Other common types of literary forgery may draw upon the potential historical cachet and novelty of a previously undiscovered author.

Literary forgery has a long history. Onomacritus (c. 530 – 480 BCE) is among the most ancient known literary forgers. He invented prophecies, which he ascribed to the poet Musaeus.[1]

In the 3rd century CE, a certain Septimius produced what appeared to be a Latin translation of an eyewitness account of the Trojan War by Dictys of Crete. In the letter of dedication, the translator gave additional credence to the document by claiming the Greek original had come to light during Nero's reign when Dictys' tomb was opened by an earthquake and his diary was discovered. Septimius then claimed the original had been handed to the governor of Crete, Rutilius Rufus, who gave the diary to Nero during his tour of Greece in 66-67 CE. According to historian Miriam Griffin, such bogus and romantic claims to antiquity were not uncommon at the time.[2]

One of the longest lasting literary forgeries is by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a 5th-6th century Syrian mystical writer who claimed to be a disciple of Paul the Apostle. Five hundred years later, Abelard expressed doubts about the authorship, but it was not until after the Renaissance that there was general agreement that the attribution of the work was false. In the intervening 1,000 years, the writings had much theological influence.[3]

Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770), the English poet and letter writer, began his brilliant medieval forgeries when little more than a child. While they brought him praise and fame after his death, his writing afforded little in the way of financial success and he committed suicide aged 17, penniless, alone and half-starved.

The English Mercurie appeared to be the first English newspaper when it was discovered in 1794. This was, ostensibly, an account of the English battle with the Spanish Armada of 1588, but was, in fact, written in the 18th century by Philip Yorke, 2nd Earl of Hardwicke, as a literary game with his friends.[4]

Literary forgery was promoted as a creative method by Charles Nodier and, in the 19th century, many writers produced literary forgeries under his influence, notably Prosper Merimee and Pierre Louys.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an antisemitic forged document first published in Russia in 1903–1904. The work purports to be details of a Jewish plan for world domination, and describes how Judaism will overthrow Christianity via control of the media, financial institutions, subverting the social order, and so on. The document was exposed as a forgery by English journalist Philip Graves in 1921. Graves showed the work drew as a source an 1864 political satire by Maurice Joly, The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, except presenting it as real. Similar exposes were published in other languages, but it did not matter; the Protocols were immensely popular among anti-semitic circles, who took it as proof of the evilness of the Jews.[5]

The Hitler Diaries were an example of a 20th-century forgery for money: Konrad Kujau, an East German forger, created diaries purportedly written by Adolf Hitler. His forgeries passed initial scrutiny enough for the magazine Stern to purchase them at great expense, but various errors and closer forensic analysis revealed them as fakes. Kujau was subsequently sent to prison for fraud, theft and forgery.[6]

Related issues edit

Fake memoirs edit

Some pieces' authors are uncontested, but the writers are untruthful about themselves to such a degree that the books are functionally forgeries – rather than forging in the name of an expert or authority, the authors falsely claim such authority for themselves. This usually takes the form of autobiographical works as fake memoirs. Its modern form is most common with "misery lit" books, in which the author claims to have suffered illness, parental abuse, and/or drug addiction during their upbringing, yet recovered well enough to write of their struggles. The 1971 book Go Ask Alice is officially anonymous, but claims to be taken from the diary of an actual drug abuser; later investigation showed that the work is almost certainly fictitious, however. A recent example is the 2003 book A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, wherein Frey claimed to experience fighting drug addiction in rehab; the claimed events were fictional, yet not presented as such.[7]

Other forms considered literary hoaxes are when an author asserts an identity and history for themselves that is not accurate. Asa Earl Carter wrote under the pseudonym Forrest Carter; Forrest Carter claimed to be a half-Cherokee descendent who grew up in native culture, but the real Asa Earl Carter was a white man from Alabama. Forrest Carter's persona thus possessed a similar false authenticity as a forged work would, in both their memoir and their fiction.[8] Similarly, Nasdijj and Margaret Seltzer also falsely claimed Native American descent to help market their works.[9][10] Danny Santiago claimed to be a young Latino growing up in East Los Angeles, yet the author (whose real name was Daniel Lewis James) was a Midwesterner in his 70s.[11]

Transparent literary fiction edit

Occasionally, it is unclear whether a work is fiction or a forgery. This generally occurs when a work is written intended as a piece of fiction, but through the mouthpiece of a famous historical character; the audience at the time understands that the work is actually written by others imagining what the historical persona might have written or thought. With later generations, this distinction is lost, and the work is treated as authoritatively by the real person. Later yet, the fact that the work was not really by the seeming author resurfaces. In the case of true transparent literary fictions, no deception is involved, and the issue is merely one of misinterpretation. However, this is fairly rare.

Examples of this may include several works of wisdom literature such as the book of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon in the Hebrew Bible. Both works do not directly name an author, but are written from the perspective of King Solomon, and feature poetry and philosophical thoughts from his perspective that can switch between first and third-person perspectives. The books may not have intended to be taken as actually from the hand of Solomon, but this became tangled, and many later generations did assume they were directly from Solomon's hand. The fact that it is not clear if any deception was involved makes many scholars reluctant to call the work forgeries, however, even those that take the modern scholarly view that they were unlikely to have been written by Solomon due to the work only being quoted by others many centuries after Solomon's death.

For more disputed examples, some New Testament scholars believe that pseudepigrapha in the New Testament epistles can be explained as such transparent fictions. Richard Bauckham, for example, writes that for the Second Epistle of Peter, "Petrine authorship was intended to be an entirely transparent fiction."[12] This view is contested. Bart Ehrman writes that if a religiously prescriptive document was widely known to be not actually from the authority it claimed, it would not be taken seriously. Therefore, the claim of authorship by Peter only makes sense if the intent was indeed to falsely claim the authority of a respected figure in such epistles.[13]

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ B. Ehrman, Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are, HarperOne (2011)ISBN 0062012614, pp. 39-40
  2. ^ Nero: The end of a Dynasty, Miram T. Griffin, 1984. Chapter 9. ISBN 0415214645
  3. ^ Sarah Coakley (Editor), Charles M. Stang (Editor), Re-thinking Dionysius the Areopagite, Wiley-Blackwell (2009), ISBN 978-1405180894
  4. ^ Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Volume 9, January 18, 1840, pp. 17-19
  5. ^ Graves, Philip (1921). The Truth about the Protocols: A Literary Forgery. The Times of London.
  6. ^ Hamilton, Charles (1991). The Hitler Diaries. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-1739-3.
  7. ^ "A Million Little Lies". The Smoking Gun. July 23, 2010.
  8. ^ Randall, Dave (September 1, 2002). "The tall tale of Little Tree and the Cherokee who was really a Klansman". The Independent.
  9. ^ William McGowan, Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means, pp. 160-161, Encounter books, 2010, ISBN 978-1594034862
  10. ^ Menand, Louis (2018). "Literary Hoaxes and the Ethics of Authorship". The New Yorker. Condé Nast.
  11. ^ Folkart, Burt A. "OBITUARIES : Daniel James : Writer Who Masqueraded as a Latino."Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 21 May 1988. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://articles.latimes.com/1988-05-21/news/mn-2879_1_daniel-james>
  12. ^ Jude-2 Peter, Volume 50, Word Biblical Commentary.
  13. ^ Ehrman, Bart (2012). Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. Oxford University Press. p. 141–145. ISBN 9780199928033.

Bibliography edit

  • Bart D. Ehrman Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics, Oxford University Press, USA (2012) 978-0199928033
  • James Anson Farrer Literary Forgeries. With an Introduction by Andrew Lang, HardPress Publishing (2012) ISBN 978-1290475143
  • Anthony Grafton Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) ISBN 0-691-05544-0
  • Ian Haywood The making of history: a study of the literary forgeries of James Macpherson and Thomas Chatterton in relation to eighteenth-century ideas of history and fiction, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1986, ISBN 978-0838632611
  • Lee Israel Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (2008)ISBN 978-1416588672
  • Melissa Katsoulis Telling Tales: A History of Literary Hoaxes (London: Constable, 2009) ISBN 978-1-84901-080-1
  • Richard Landon Literary forgeries & mystifications, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library U. of Toronto, 2003, ISBN 978-0772760456
  • Robin Myers Fakes and Frauds: Varieties of Deception In Print & Manuscript (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press 1996) ISBN 0-906795-77-X
  • K. K. Ruthven Faking Literature Cambridge University Press (2001) ISBN 978-0521669658
  • John Whitehead This Solemn Mockery: The Art of Literary Forgery (London: Arlington Books 1973) ISBN 0-85140-212-7
  • Joseph Rosenblum Practice to Deceive: The Amazing Stories of Literary Forgery's Most Notorious Practitioners (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 2000) ISBN 1-58456-010-X

External links edit

  • Books about literary forgery 2008-05-15 at the Wayback Machine at About.com
  • The Recourse of Hoax: Orthodox Modern Readings of Araki Yasusada and Alan Sokal


literary, forgery, also, known, literary, mystification, literary, fraud, literary, hoax, writing, such, manuscript, literary, work, which, either, deliberately, misattributed, historical, invented, author, purported, memoir, other, presumably, nonfictional, w. Literary forgery also known as literary mystification literary fraud or literary hoax is writing such as a manuscript or a literary work which is either deliberately misattributed to a historical or invented author or is a purported memoir or other presumably nonfictional writing deceptively presented as true when in fact it presents untrue or imaginary information or content Cover of The Songs of Bilitis 1894 a French pseudotranslation of Ancient Greek erotic poetry by Pierre Louys Contents 1 History 2 Related issues 2 1 Fake memoirs 2 2 Transparent literary fiction 3 See also 4 References 4 1 Bibliography 5 External linksHistory editLiterary forgery may involve the work of a famous author whose writings have an established intrinsic as well as monetary value In an attempt to gain the rewards of such a reputation the forger often engages in two distinct activities The forger produces a writing which resembles the style of the known reputable author to whom the fake is to be attributed The forger may also fake the physical alleged original manuscript This is less common as it requires a great deal of technical effort such as imitating the ink and paper The forger then claims that not only is the style of writing the same but also that the ink and paper are of the kind or type used by the famous author Other common types of literary forgery may draw upon the potential historical cachet and novelty of a previously undiscovered author Literary forgery has a long history Onomacritus c 530 480 BCE is among the most ancient known literary forgers He invented prophecies which he ascribed to the poet Musaeus 1 In the 3rd century CE a certain Septimius produced what appeared to be a Latin translation of an eyewitness account of the Trojan War by Dictys of Crete In the letter of dedication the translator gave additional credence to the document by claiming the Greek original had come to light during Nero s reign when Dictys tomb was opened by an earthquake and his diary was discovered Septimius then claimed the original had been handed to the governor of Crete Rutilius Rufus who gave the diary to Nero during his tour of Greece in 66 67 CE According to historian Miriam Griffin such bogus and romantic claims to antiquity were not uncommon at the time 2 One of the longest lasting literary forgeries is by Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite a 5th 6th century Syrian mystical writer who claimed to be a disciple of Paul the Apostle Five hundred years later Abelard expressed doubts about the authorship but it was not until after the Renaissance that there was general agreement that the attribution of the work was false In the intervening 1 000 years the writings had much theological influence 3 Thomas Chatterton 1752 1770 the English poet and letter writer began his brilliant medieval forgeries when little more than a child While they brought him praise and fame after his death his writing afforded little in the way of financial success and he committed suicide aged 17 penniless alone and half starved The English Mercurie appeared to be the first English newspaper when it was discovered in 1794 This was ostensibly an account of the English battle with the Spanish Armada of 1588 but was in fact written in the 18th century by Philip Yorke 2nd Earl of Hardwicke as a literary game with his friends 4 Literary forgery was promoted as a creative method by Charles Nodier and in the 19th century many writers produced literary forgeries under his influence notably Prosper Merimee and Pierre Louys The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an antisemitic forged document first published in Russia in 1903 1904 The work purports to be details of a Jewish plan for world domination and describes how Judaism will overthrow Christianity via control of the media financial institutions subverting the social order and so on The document was exposed as a forgery by English journalist Philip Graves in 1921 Graves showed the work drew as a source an 1864 political satire by Maurice Joly The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu except presenting it as real Similar exposes were published in other languages but it did not matter the Protocols were immensely popular among anti semitic circles who took it as proof of the evilness of the Jews 5 The Hitler Diaries were an example of a 20th century forgery for money Konrad Kujau an East German forger created diaries purportedly written by Adolf Hitler His forgeries passed initial scrutiny enough for the magazine Stern to purchase them at great expense but various errors and closer forensic analysis revealed them as fakes Kujau was subsequently sent to prison for fraud theft and forgery 6 Related issues editFake memoirs edit Main pages Fake memoir List of fake memoirs and journals and Category Written fiction presented as fact Some pieces authors are uncontested but the writers are untruthful about themselves to such a degree that the books are functionally forgeries rather than forging in the name of an expert or authority the authors falsely claim such authority for themselves This usually takes the form of autobiographical works as fake memoirs Its modern form is most common with misery lit books in which the author claims to have suffered illness parental abuse and or drug addiction during their upbringing yet recovered well enough to write of their struggles The 1971 book Go Ask Alice is officially anonymous but claims to be taken from the diary of an actual drug abuser later investigation showed that the work is almost certainly fictitious however A recent example is the 2003 book A Million Little Pieces by James Frey wherein Frey claimed to experience fighting drug addiction in rehab the claimed events were fictional yet not presented as such 7 Other forms considered literary hoaxes are when an author asserts an identity and history for themselves that is not accurate Asa Earl Carter wrote under the pseudonym Forrest Carter Forrest Carter claimed to be a half Cherokee descendent who grew up in native culture but the real Asa Earl Carter was a white man from Alabama Forrest Carter s persona thus possessed a similar false authenticity as a forged work would in both their memoir and their fiction 8 Similarly Nasdijj and Margaret Seltzer also falsely claimed Native American descent to help market their works 9 10 Danny Santiago claimed to be a young Latino growing up in East Los Angeles yet the author whose real name was Daniel Lewis James was a Midwesterner in his 70s 11 Transparent literary fiction edit Occasionally it is unclear whether a work is fiction or a forgery This generally occurs when a work is written intended as a piece of fiction but through the mouthpiece of a famous historical character the audience at the time understands that the work is actually written by others imagining what the historical persona might have written or thought With later generations this distinction is lost and the work is treated as authoritatively by the real person Later yet the fact that the work was not really by the seeming author resurfaces In the case of true transparent literary fictions no deception is involved and the issue is merely one of misinterpretation However this is fairly rare Examples of this may include several works of wisdom literature such as the book of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon in the Hebrew Bible Both works do not directly name an author but are written from the perspective of King Solomon and feature poetry and philosophical thoughts from his perspective that can switch between first and third person perspectives The books may not have intended to be taken as actually from the hand of Solomon but this became tangled and many later generations did assume they were directly from Solomon s hand The fact that it is not clear if any deception was involved makes many scholars reluctant to call the work forgeries however even those that take the modern scholarly view that they were unlikely to have been written by Solomon due to the work only being quoted by others many centuries after Solomon s death For more disputed examples some New Testament scholars believe that pseudepigrapha in the New Testament epistles can be explained as such transparent fictions Richard Bauckham for example writes that for the Second Epistle of Peter Petrine authorship was intended to be an entirely transparent fiction 12 This view is contested Bart Ehrman writes that if a religiously prescriptive document was widely known to be not actually from the authority it claimed it would not be taken seriously Therefore the claim of authorship by Peter only makes sense if the intent was indeed to falsely claim the authority of a respected figure in such epistles 13 See also editAnthony Godby Johnson B Wongar Clifford Irving Dave Pelzer False document Ghostwriter Hitler Diaries Journalistic scandal JT LeRoy Outline of forgery PseudepigraphaReferences edit B Ehrman Writing in the Name of God Why the Bible s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are HarperOne 2011 ISBN 0062012614 pp 39 40 Nero The end of a Dynasty Miram T Griffin 1984 Chapter 9 ISBN 0415214645 Sarah Coakley Editor Charles M Stang Editor Re thinking Dionysius the Areopagite Wiley Blackwell 2009 ISBN 978 1405180894 Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Volume 9 January 18 1840 pp 17 19 Graves Philip 1921 The Truth about the Protocols A Literary Forgery The Times of London Hamilton Charles 1991 The Hitler Diaries Lexington The University Press of Kentucky ISBN 978 0 8131 1739 3 A Million Little Lies The Smoking Gun July 23 2010 Randall Dave September 1 2002 The tall tale of Little Tree and the Cherokee who was really a Klansman The Independent William McGowan Gray Lady Down What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means pp 160 161 Encounter books 2010 ISBN 978 1594034862 Menand Louis 2018 Literary Hoaxes and the Ethics of Authorship The New Yorker Conde Nast Folkart Burt A OBITUARIES Daniel James Writer Who Masqueraded as a Latino Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times 21 May 1988 Web 24 Apr 2012 lt http articles latimes com 1988 05 21 news mn 2879 1 daniel james gt Jude 2 Peter Volume 50 Word Biblical Commentary Ehrman Bart 2012 Forgery and Counterforgery The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics Oxford University Press p 141 145 ISBN 9780199928033 Bibliography edit Bart D Ehrman Forgery and Counterforgery The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics Oxford University Press USA 2012 978 0199928033 James Anson Farrer Literary Forgeries With an Introduction by Andrew Lang HardPress Publishing 2012 ISBN 978 1290475143 Anthony Grafton Forgers and Critics Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship Princeton Princeton University Press 1990 ISBN 0 691 05544 0 Ian Haywood The making of history a study of the literary forgeries of James Macpherson and Thomas Chatterton in relation to eighteenth century ideas of history and fiction Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 1986 ISBN 978 0838632611 Lee Israel Can You Ever Forgive Me Memoirs of a Literary Forger Simon amp Schuster 1st edition 2008 ISBN 978 1416588672 Melissa Katsoulis Telling Tales A History of Literary Hoaxes London Constable 2009 ISBN 978 1 84901 080 1 Richard Landon Literary forgeries amp mystifications Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library U of Toronto 2003 ISBN 978 0772760456 Robin Myers Fakes and Frauds Varieties of Deception In Print amp Manuscript New Castle Oak Knoll Press 1996 ISBN 0 906795 77 X K K Ruthven Faking Literature Cambridge University Press 2001 ISBN 978 0521669658 John Whitehead This Solemn Mockery The Art of Literary Forgery London Arlington Books 1973 ISBN 0 85140 212 7 Joseph Rosenblum Practice to Deceive The Amazing Stories of Literary Forgery s Most Notorious Practitioners New Castle Oak Knoll Press 2000 ISBN 1 58456 010 XExternal links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Literary forgeries Books about literary forgery Archived 2008 05 15 at the Wayback Machine at About com The Recourse of Hoax Orthodox Modern Readings of Araki Yasusada and Alan Sokal Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Literary forgery amp oldid 1202247365, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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