The Materiality of Literature
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- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Publication date:
- 19 December 2025
- 22 January 2026
- ISBN:
- 9781009654296
- 9781009654319
- Creative Commons:
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This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0.
https://creativecommons.org/creativelicenses - Dimensions:
- (228 x 152 mm)
- Weight & Pages:
- 0.447kg, 204 Pages
- Dimensions:
- Weight & Pages:
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Book description
This book retraces the emergence of conceptions of authorship in late-eighteenth-century Germany by studying the material form of Immanuel Kant's 1785 essay, 'On the Wrongfulness of Reprinting'. Drawing upon book history, media theory, and literary studies, Benjamin Goh analyses the essay's paratexts as indices of literary production in the German Enlightenment. Far from being an idealist proponent of intellectual property, Kant is shown to be a media theorist and practitioner, whose critical negotiation with the evolving print machinery in his time helps illuminate our present struggle with digital technology and the mounting pressures borne by copyright as a proprietary institution. Through its novel perspective on established debates surrounding authorship, this book critiques the proprietary conception of authorship in copyright law, and proposes an ethical alternative that responds to the production, circulation, and reading of literature. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Contents
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The Materiality of Literature
pp i-ii -
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Cambridge Intellectual Property and Information Law - Series page
pp iii-iii -
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Frontispiece
pp iv-iv -
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The Materiality of Literature - Title page
pp v-v - Rereading Authorship and Copyright with Kant
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Copyright page
pp vi-vi -
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Contents
pp vii-viii -
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Figures
pp ix-x -
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Acknowledgements
pp xi-xii -
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Introduction: Literary Materiality and the Question of Authorship
pp 1-20 -
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1 - Two Ways of Looking at a Printed Book
pp 21-51 -
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2 - From Paratexts to Print Machinery
pp 52-76 -
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3 - Materialities of Type
pp 77-115 -
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4 - A Biography of I. Kant
pp 116-166 -
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Conclusion
pp 167-186 - The Ethics of Digital Authorship
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Index
pp 187-187 -
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Cambridge Intellectual Property and Information Law - Series page
pp 188-192 -
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