Copy Cat

Amie Thomasson contends that two different writers who create the same work, word for word, have not created the same piece of literature. This is because "a literary work is best conceived not as an abstract sequence of words but as an artifact that had to be created in those original circumstances in which it was created" (Thomasson 146). This seems to rely too heavily on the theory of New Historicism, which contends that one must understand the historical context and zeitgeist of when a work was written in order to understand the work. While this may be more important for some books than for others (it is, as Thomasson says, crucial to understand that Animal Farm is a satire), I think this does not leave room for modern readings of a text. While it is important to understand the age a work was written in, it is also important to understand the context and zeitgeist of the age in which the modern reader is reading.