ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the historical underpinnings of authorship, and shows how it has evolved through key eras and movements. It describes how the disruptive and productive power of remix and its predecessors are evolving understanding of authorship. In the West, the origins of authorship are often traced back to Homer, the earliest of the epic Greek poets. Given Albert Lord's analysis, the Homeric notion of authorship should be appreciated as a communal one, where songs, poems, forms, and linguistic structures are handed down, remade anew with each performance, and reinserted back into the to and fro of tradition. Aristotle had a more productive understanding of mimesis and, by association, of authorship. Further buttressing the connection between authorship and ownership, were emerging Enlightenment-era revelations about possession and private property. The Romantic era had a profound and long-lasting impact on our contemporary notion of authorship. The "cut/copy and paste" practice of remix is, like authorship, forged from tradition.
