Help me with a school project!

[HamsterDemocracy]

I was going to take care of this earlier this evening but then my department at work had an after-work meeting and I got held up for two more hours...so now I am finally home and need to get this done and figured some of you may be able to help if you are willing.

I need to find two examples of plagiarized work: the original and the plagiarized version. It has to be literature. I have been searching with no success.

I did not really procrastinate with this and I am not looking for someone to give me the answers (I still have to summarize what I find), but I figured some people here may know of famous plagiarized works that I could use. I know T.S. Eliot plagiarized but what I read did not give specific examples and ditto for Shakespeare.

Any ideas? 


Thanks guys!

[Doc Emmett Brown]

I remember reading about a recent scandal in the NYTimes - about a Harvard student who plagiarized some chick-lit novel for her own ethnic chick-lit novel.

If you google for 'Harvard plagiarism Opal', you'll get a bunch of news articles about it.

[HamsterDemocracy]

I remember reading about a recent scandal in the NYTimes - about a Harvard student who plagiarized some chick-lit novel for her own ethnic chick-lit novel.

If you google for 'Harvard plagiarism Opal', you'll get a bunch of news articles about it.

Thanks, although I would prefer something such as a poem that I may be able to find online - the project is due tomorrow and book stores are closed now. It was assigned Friday but due to my work schedule I have only had time to work on it now; do college professors not assume people have jobs?  I worked Saturday and Sunday and now it is due tomorrow! What a joke.  That is life I guess. I did start working a bit before work and after work last night but was mainly Googling and found little to nothing on the topic.

[Mama Kin]

Do it the easy way, find a poem, plagerize it yourself, sign it "Rusty Shackleford" and then hand it in.

[jazjme]

I believe there was anentesive artilce, a few yrs back, done by the NYtimes, but them again, I also remeber they had staff, that were pretty involved in the process and distrubution , I dunno if that helps?

[Jim]

Yann Martel was involved in some plagiarism business when he won the Booker Prize for Life of Pi I think.

[melissa]

you could write about Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, about the trial. he was cleared, i know, but still, you can debate about what plagiarism means.

[HamsterDemocracy]

Thanks guys, I stayed up till 4 last night but finally got it done, I just used T.S. Eliot because I finally found a site that gave examples of what he plagiarized. I appreciate the suggestions! 

[MCT]

I was going to take care of this earlier this evening but then my department at work had an after-work meeting and I got held up for two more hours...so now I am finally home and need to get this done and figured some of you may be able to help if you are willing.

You also figured there was some degree of merit in serving us a piece of slice of life pie. Interesting. Deliciously so, you and your department, your meetings, your pie...

Blah, blah, blah...plagiarism...blah, blah, blah.

At first glance, plagiarism appears to be the very antithesis of originality. But what is originality? Well, it's usually a revisitation of the past from an uncommon angle. And what exactly is plagiarism if not the same?

EDIT - "n".

[Doc Emmett Brown]

..... Well, it's usually a revisitation of the past from a uncommon angle. And what exactly is plagiarism if not the same?

You know the Boondocks comic by Aaron McGruder?  He had a couple of strips where Riley was intent on reinventing the old hollywood classics with an all-black cast and dialog manipulation to Riley-speak. Huey asks him about plagiarism and copyright violations...anyway, it was funny in the comic.  But the Harvard chick had a similar line of defense - that she had 'internalized' the words of her influences and made them her own by transplanting them to a new angle (the curry! the spices! Ellis Island Part Deux!).  I felt a tad sorry for her though as she's scarred with the letter P across her chest for years to come.

[MCT]

Does she wear it proudly, the P?

Hopefully you can forgive the generality, Doc ( ), I'm simply trying to incite some discussion. And God knows, we might get an original thought or three...

Originality. In terms of literature, originality can no longer be considered a state of existence for any particular piece of work. Rather, it's more the stance the writer takes when transferring his or her thoughts into words. See, it's all been done before. And simply put, to be original nowadays is to approach a subject from an uncommon angle.

Take poetry as an example. Sigmund Freud once quipped, "Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me." And that's very true. No matter where you tread, you're walking in the footsteps of those who have came before you. But what happened? Did poetry kill itself? No. It adapted. And today we have a much more condensed style (predominantly) that's much more organic, more human, more dirty than the arrant romanticism screaming out at us from the past. Why? Because of the prevailing societal paradigm. The sense of culture that could support such a wonderful bubble has long since become obsolete. Hell, the term "poet" has become obsolete! The very word has connotations of ethereal beings who spit honey and shit rose petals. And while it may have applied to a dusty caste of individuals who have long since retired to graveland, it's now as valid as the stamp of originality that most people mistakenly believe can be applied to any piece of work that differs slightly from the norm.

So that's the key, understanding that not only has literature itself changed, but so has its many annotations. Essentially, people have changed. And most professional dilettantes fail to realize that.

The end.

Oh, and for your amusement:

Plagiarism.