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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.2907  Friday, 28 December 2001

From:           Mari Bonomi <mbonomi@snet.net>
Date:           Thursday, 27 Dec 2001 10:15:40 -0500
Subject: 12.2894 Re: Plagiarism
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.2894 Re: Plagiarism

Thomas Larque refers to his particular writing style as a problem for
tutors attempting to block those who plagiarize.

Thomas, PLEASE do not take this the wrong way... I am in no way
impugning your integrity, nor questioning the quality of your writing.
I’m simply describing an effect I noticed when I used that method.

For a graduate course on Elizabethan literature, I wrote a paper on
homoeroticism in Shakespeare.  I read extensively first, and I kept a
complete and accurate Works list of that reading.  I made no notes, just
sort of absorbed understandings.

Then I did as you described, writing the paper (and I am always revising
as I write, so that I also would not usually have a series of “drafts”
preliminary to the main paper) and grabbing the appropriate books for
citations.

What I found was that I had absorbed understandings from other sources,
understandings that were not truly mine (though they helped create my
own understandings!) and that in writing the paper I could not attribute
them as I would have preferred to do.  And since I had not noted
anywhere the page(s) on which author X discussed concept Y, I could not
really go back and recreate the sources as I otherwise do when writing
researched papers.

I have always been uneasy about that paper, though it is one of my
better writing efforts in many ways... b/c I have never been completely
comfortable w/ the scholarship/attributions behind it.
If you are better able than I to manage the process, I sincerely salute
you... and again, I am in NO WAY commenting on your scholarship, merely
describing my foray into that approach.

Mari Bonomi

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