Tom Jones and the Economies of Copyright
Simon Stern, University of California
Volume 9, no. 4, July 1997
©McMaster University, 2015. All articles published on the Eighteenth-Century Fiction website are protected by copyright held by Eighteenth-Century Fiction, a journal published by the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University.
ABSTRACT
Despite the extraordinary outpouring of research in recent years on the interrelations of literature and law, literary critics have had little to say about what is, perhaps, the most forceful pronouncement on imaginative power in the history of English law, Blackstone’s assertion that “nothing … so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.” Not the least notable feature of this sweeping declaration is its inaccuracy: as Robert Gordon has observed, the legal doctrine of the time affords “very few plausible instances of absolute dominion rights.” Blackstone’s vision of autocratic control at once rationalizes and illuminates the remarkably captivating force of the property right, implicitly deriving its powerful effects — its ability to “strike” and “engage” the human mind — from the despotic power it confers on the owner, while evidently producing that despotism itself as a hallucinatory effect of the right in question. Whatever this passage tells us about the scope of property rights, it suggests that property is so inextricably bound up with imagination, so thoroughly shrouded in its nimbus, that even the logic of doctrinal analysis may grow hazy under its irresistible sway. The right of property, it seems, may convert the legal commentator into a writer of fiction.
Other ECF articles on the topic of “Henry Fielding” include:
Henry Fielding Reinvents the Afterlife
by REGINA M. JANES (ECF 23.3, Spring 2011)
La Place’s Histoire de Tom Jones, ou l’enfant trouvé and Candide
by E.M. LANGILLE (ECF 19.3, Spring 2007)
Social Rank, “The Rise of the Novel,” and Whig Histories of Eighteenth-Century Fiction
by NICHOLAS HUDSON (ECF 17.4, July 2005)
©McMaster University, 2015. This copyright covers the exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute the article, including in electronic forms, reprints, translations, photographic reproductions, or similar. While reading for personal use is encouraged, Eighteenth-Century Fiction articles may not be reproduced, broadcast, published, or re-disseminated without the prior written permission of Eighteenth-Century Fiction at McMaster University. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a web site or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material is not allowed. The copyright in this website includes without limitation the text, computer code, artwork, photographs, images, music, audio, video, and audio-visual material on this website and is owned by McMaster University. ©McMaster University 2015.