Book

French professor McGinnis edits essays on law and literature connections in the Enlightenment

Reginald McGinnis of the Department of French and Italian is editor of a volume of essays published this month by Routledge, Originality and Intellectual Property in the French and English Enlightenment. Bridging what are usually perceived as two distinct areas of inquiry, this interdisciplinary volume begins with a reflection on the "origins" of literary and legal questions in the Enlightenment to consider their ramifications in the post-Enlightenment and contemporary world. Tying in to the growing scholarly interest in connections between law and literature, on the one hand, and to the contemporary interrogation of "originality" and "authorship," on the other hand, the present volume furthers research in the field by providing a dense study of the legal and historical context to re-examine our current assumptions about supposed earlier Enlightenment and Romantic ideals of individual authorship and originality.