Talk:Literary forgery

examples?

should there be more examples of literary forgeries?? mb337

Kinds of Forgery

• I'm adding the title today: --Ludvikus 01:11, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

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What's the difference between a "literary" forgery and any other sort? The definition here says, Literary forgery purtains to some writing, such as a manuscript, presented as an original, when in fact it is a fake. But forgery says, Forgery is the process of making or adapting objects or documents (see false document), with the intention to deceive.. A forgery (noun) is the result of the act of forgery; seems to me there's no need for this article at all. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 22:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

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Agreed. Even if there was a difference this could also be included in the regular article on forgery rather then create a pointless stub.--Caranorn 22:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

You guys may agree, nevertheless, the distinction exists.

So your personal Point of View is not relevant to reversion.

Today there was a broadcast on Channel Thirteen (New York City), on the topic of antisemitism in the 21st century. In discussing the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the commentator described the this text as a literary forgery. I intend to defend this stub, as well as contribute towards its development. --Ludvikus 01:11, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

False document

By the same argument as Jpgordon's's one may ask/say: What's the difference between a "false document" and "forgery? The definition there says:

    A false document is a form of verisimilitude
    that attempts to create in the reader (viewer, audience, etc.)
    a sense of authenticity beyond the normal and expected suspension of disbelief.
    That is, it wants to fool the audience briefly into thinking
    that what is being presented is actually a fact.
    This is not to be confused with a mockumentary,
    an admittedly fictional film done in the manner of a documentary.
    
    In practice, the device takes a very simple form.
    The work of art (be it a text, a moving image, a comic book or whatever)
    usually is composed of or includes some piece of forgery.
    The false document effect can be achieved in many ways
    including faked police reports, newspaper articles,
    bibliographical references and documentary footage.
    The effect can be extended outside of the confines of the text
    by way of supplementary material such as badges,
    ID cards, diaries, letters or other objects.

Clearly, there's a whole article false documents which are also, or involve, forgery.

Accordingly, the mere fact that a literary forgery involves forgery does not deny it the entitlement to a useful WP Article any less that the United States is to be denied an article because there already exists an article for states. Yours truly, Ludvikus 01:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Literary forgeries and mystifications

• Literary forgeries and mystifications is also a subject category of the US Library of Congress, for classification purposes, of its holdings. Ludvikus 03:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

• • Added the following 2nd sentence:

    Furthermore, in the case of a plagiarism, it is the authorship which is in dispute.
    Whereas in the case of a literary forgery, the text itself is not what it purports to be
    according to its meaning — rather, it is a fabrication which merely appears authentic.

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151.202.87.159 20:16, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I am doing a final project in my humanities class that involves my "engagement" with the Wikipedia community. As such, I have researched the "literary forgery" topic and found some information that I think would help add a bit more depth to the page. First, I found information on Onomacritus in Andrew Lang's Books and Bookmen and summed up the info like this:

“Onomacritus was caught by Lasus, son of Hermiones, inscribing a prophecy after the event had already happened. As a result, Onomacritus was exiled from Athens and his name became synonymous literary forgery. Whenever a prophecy did not hold, the oracle in question would claim it is another one of Onomacritus’s false prophecies.”

If it is relevant enough to the page, I would like to add it because there is only one line regarding Onomacritus and I thought it needed expanding. Plus, this adds a bit of context as to why he is even mentioned in the first place. In addition, I found some information on Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, something I think belongs in the misery lit section. Using an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer, I wrote:

"Another recent example would be of author Frank McCourt and his memoir Angela’s Ashes. Based on the Limerick locals reactions to the book, there seems to be some discrepancies between the way the locals remember that time and how McCourt portrays that time. According to the editor of the Limerick newspaper Jimmy Woulfe, "the forensic evidence… doesn't add up." McCourt is even quoted say that his text is "a memoir, not an exact history" acknowledging the fact that he embellished elements to make his childhood seem more miserable than it really was.”

Let me know if any of this would belong on the page. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NJIT HUM fb (talk • contribs) 21:19, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Copyediting

I did some copyediting and was reverted, probably because my removal of content was thought of as vandalism. Thus, while reinstating the changes, I'll explain them in detail:

• The italics in second paragraph are unnecessary, there's no need for special emphasis.
• Whether "Literary forgeries and mystifications" is a Library of Congress subject category is utterly irrelevant. Wikipedia is not the Library of Congress catalog.
• The spelling of "antisemitic" follows the precedent of the linked article.
• The "About.com list of books" about literary forgery is not encyclopedic content; it may indeed be a copyright violation. It's one of the external links anyway, so an interested reader will be able to find it. At best, we might list some books under a "further reading" heading, but at least one of those ten books isn't about a literary forgery, but is itself a literary forgery.
• I removed those "See also" entries that were already linked in the article's text. Listing them under "See also" would be uselessly redundant.
• The article was categorized in Category:False documents twice. I removed one of the instances.

If someone still thinks that some or all of these changes are vandalism, feel free to revert me again, but please also discuss it here. Huon (talk) 19:13, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Fake memoirs

The protocols of Zion is already mentioned under False document. In what way would it classify as memoirs? I would rather have expected an entry on fake memoirs from the holocaust, like Herman Rosenblat's Angel at the fence, Misha Defonseca's Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years and Binjamin Wilkomirski’s (or rather Bruno Doessekker's) Fragments. Source Ssscienccce (talk) 20:15, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Why is the novel Famous All Over Town by Danny Santiago listed under "Fake Memoirs" when it is a work of fiction? Indeed, why is it even included in this article at all? Writing under a fictitious name, pen name, or pseudonym, is a common and accepted literary practice, as is writing from the point of view of a fictitious character that may have a different background, race, sex, or ethnicity than the author. In any event, how can a work of fiction ever be considered a forgery if it is an original work unless it has been deliberately misattributed to a historical author?DSiegfried (talk) 22:34, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

deleted some of the unproven and unrelated data

Firstly, about the protocols of the elders of Zion, it was claimed that they were written by the members of the Russian Secret Police, there was no source provided to prove that and the wiki article about those protocols doesn't mention it too. In fact, the only one notion about any secret police in that article it's about the Prussian secret police. I deleted the sentence. Secondly, it had a paragraph about George Elliot who used a man pen name being a woman. Pen names, when they are not used to pretend to be an already known person, aren't literary forgery, they are very popular, and the more so they aren't fake memoirs in which chapter that paragraph was, it is completely unrelated to the article. It also had a direct lie that women had no other way to publish their works in the Victorian times, it's not hard to name, for instance, sisters Bronte, also check this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Victorian_women_writers in fact George Elliot was the only example, at least the only notable example, of a woman who used a man pen name and she might have other reasons except the supposed criticism, she might like it. Anyway it's all unrelated since pen names when they are not an imitation of an already established author, don't belong to the literary forgery, so I removed that paragraph completely.217.118.64.55 (talk) 04:48, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Fake memoirs section

Why is that in this article? It seems like an entirely different phenomenom being added as a "by the way." Nobody contests that James Frey wrote "A Million Little Pieces", so it's not a forgery, it's just fiction-presented-as-fact. Are there sources that connect this and back up the claim in Fake memoir that this is a type of "forgery"? I mean, good sources, not merely ones looking for any random term to insult such fake memoir authors with. I think this article should be restricted to the usual definition of forgery - either creating a false document in someone else' name, or altering a real document to include new material or edit out disliked old material. SnowFire (talk) 02:10, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Image?

@Andrew Dalby, I was looking for an image to add to this page, and the main results on Commons are your uploads, File:Rabelais ed Cuspidii testamentum item Contractus 1532 Gryphius colophon.jpg and File:Rabelais ed Cuspidii testamentum item Contractus 1532 preface.jpg. Because of the translation issue, though, I can't figure out what to write for the caption. Could you assist? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:31, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Update, I think I might have found something suitable with The Songs of Bilitis, but feel free to chime in if you or others have ideas on anything better. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:38, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I think the Bilitis image is fine (although it's not from 1894, it's from a 1922 edition of the book).

If you want to use the Rabelais book as well, it's an odd story. The two Roman law documents that appeared in this book, edited by Rabelais, were both modern (i.e. 16th century) forgeries by Italian Latinists. The publisher himself gave Rabelais the manuscripts, and appears to have known their real origin, but whether Rabelais ever knew is not clear. You never know with Rabelais. The book itself gives no clue, and he had edited genuine texts in similar format with the same publisher.

I uploaded three images, in fact: this is the third File:Rabelais ed Cuspidii testamentum item Contractus 1532 tp.jpg, the title page, the only one I finally used at la:Franciscus Rabelaesus. If I were you I'd choose this one: typical format for a student text from this publisher, the publisher knew it was a forgery and the editor didn't. Or did he? Andrew Dalby 22:12, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Methods of analysis ?

This article should include the methods that are used to detect literary forgeries. For example, how was The Poems of Ossian by James Macpherson (1736 – 1796) determined to be a forgery?

Has text analysis been applied to suspect text(s) and to valid text that's known to have been written by the author? For example, analysis of the frequency and types of contractions, the use of punctuation, vocabulary, sentence lengths, etc.

VexorAbVikipædia (talk) 02:42, 21 May 2022 (UTC)