ABSTRACT
Writing is often contested terrain. Tracing the provenance, circulation, and reception of any substantive writing provokes questions that come to be debated fiercely by cantankerous critics, thoughtful theorists, and other curious readers. However, Scottish writing-and the signs that constitute the visible traces of its practices in manuscripts, codex books, and computers-has a history of particularly sharp debates about who wrote what for whom. What does it mean to be original? What is the relationship between personal identity and public performance of that self? Many Scottish writers, critics, and publishers between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries have been involved in colorful debates about textual ownership, intellectual property, plagiarism, and copyright. A close reading of Scottish literary history reveals that some Scottish writers have borrowed freely and feverishly from writers beyond their country’s borders. Starting with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649),1 some Scottish writers have been experts at writing the unacknowledged translation, assembling a pastiche of other writers’ work, and cobbling together the unattributed bricolage, or what Rebecca Howard has called, in another context, “patch-writing” (Howard, 1995). When we take a historical overview of Scottish literacy practices and events, we find a composing method that often relies (sometimes inordinately) on an expert hand that splices together the works and ideas of other writers, a hand whose only real genius is a capacity for the artful cut and paste. When the circulation of Scottish texts is amplified by the Internet, it is no surprise that new questions about textual origins arise. Specifically, reading Scottish daily newspapers (and watching Scottish readers read about the United States) on the Web reveals a new dimension of literacy practices, practices both familiar and newly evolved.
