Imitating Authors is a major study of the theory and practice of imitatio (the imitation of one author by another) from antiquity to the present day. It extends from early Greek texts right up to recent fictions about clones and artificial humans, and illuminates both the theory and practice of imitation. At its centre lie the imitating authors of the English Renaissance, including Ben Jonson and the most imitated imitator of them all, John Milton. Imitating Authors argues that imitation was not simply a matter of borrowing words, or of alluding to an earlier author. Imitators learnt practices from earlier writers. They imitated the structures and forms of earlier writing in ways that enabled them to create a new style which itself could be imitated. That made imitation an engine of literary change. Imitating Authors also shows how the metaphors used by theorists to explain this complex practice fed into works which were themselves imitations, and how those metaphors have come to influence present-day anxieties about imitation human beings and artificial forms of intelligence. It explores relationships between imitation and authorial style, its fraught connections with plagiarism, and how emerging ideas of genius and intellectual property changed how imitation was practised. In refreshing and jargon-free prose Burrow explains not just what imitation was in the past, but how it influences the present, and what it could be in the future. Imitating Authors includes detailed discussion of Plato, Roman rhetorical theory, Virgil, Lucretius, Petrarch, Cervantes, Ben Jonson, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, and Kazuo Ishiguro.

About the Author
Colin Burrow was a Fellow and Tutor and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, before he took up a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, in 2006. He has written extensively about classical and early modern British and European literature, and has edited the complete poetry of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and (forthcoming) John Marston. He is an editor of Review of English Studies, and (with Jonathan Bate) General Editor of the Oxford English Literary History for which he is writing the Elizabethan volume. He is a regular reviewer for The London Review of Books.

Reviews
Any scholar interested in literary imitation would profit from reading Imitating Authors, while those interested in Renaissance literary culture will find it particularly valuable. I know of no better introduction to the long, intricate history of imitatio. * William Ramsay, Ben Jonson Journal *
Burrow's home turf is early modern English literature, but he is an early modernist of exceptional range, extending across to the Continent, back to classical antiquity, and forward to contemporary poetry and fiction. He is also uncommonly good at explaining recondite matters in plain English. * Tobias Gregory, London Review of Books *
one of the finest authors of the English language in this century...this is a book of intoxicating depth that will leave many intelligent readers astonied at their own ignorance in comparison...I highly recommend a full engagement with Burrow's text. * Dr Clifford Cunningham, University of Southern Queensland, Sun News Tucson *
There is a genuine challenge to our presumptions about creation and authorship. * Geoffrey Heptonstall, P.N. REVIEW *
Burrow's book is probably the best book on the reproduction of Anglocentric elite male literary culture. * Margaret Tudeau Clayton, Modern Language Review *
Imitating Authors offers lessons for creative writers as well as critics, signalling a world of literary predecessors, practices and forms waiting for a knowingly imitative literary culture to inherit it once again. * Charles Green, University of Chichester *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198838081
Author Prof Colin Burrow
Format Hardback
Page Count 496
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 866g
Dimensions(mm) 141mm * 158mm * 31mm