Anne and collleagues,
It's probably fatal to extend this, but I can't resist recounting my own
experience last year. On being asked by a tutor to verify her suspicions of
plagiarism in a first-year _Beowulf_ essay, I discovered, with fascinated
horror (by typing in strings in Google Advanced Search) that the student had
composed it entirely of passages from no fewer than NINE websites, artfully
interwoven.
Pat Coughlan
Cork
-----Original Message-----
From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 01/06/2005 20:40
Subject: Re: (false) sprezzatura
Deceptively simple style indeed! My own horrible pedagogical experience
this term is THREE cases of serious plagiarism and I've wasted time I
should be spending on overdue scholarly work just tracking it down.
Since
this was a Renaissance course it's peculiar to see so many friends in
this
context. So far I've seen bits stolen from, let's see, Mary Ellen Lamb,
Catherine Bates, Elizabeth McCutcheon, Judith Owens, Harry Berger,
Alison
Chapman, and Ashgate's promo material for Dana Gibbs. No Prescott, which
sugests minimal prudence; no Quitslund, Beth, which suggests that your
stuff is too deceptively simple? Deceptively complex? What gets me is
the
stitching together of so many sources (and those are just the ones with
named authors). Wouldn't it be easier just to think? One set of
plagiarisms appeared on an in-class exam; the assistant dean of students
(a Renaissance scholar himself) points out to me that with modern
handheld
and way cool electronic devices you can access the web from right there
in
the back of the classroom. Obviously, I need to get with the times. It's
good to see the names of colleagues in Renaissance studies whom I know
or
at least admire, but not in this context! Anne Prescott.
> Being on the quarter system, and thus neck-deep in final papers, II
just
> came across an essay from my Renaissance survey that opened with the
> following sentence: "Spenser's Faerie Queene is written in a
deceptively
> simple style."
>
> It does make me wonder what else she was reading this quarter.
>
> Beth
>
>
>
>
> ==============================================
>
> Beth Quitslund
> Assistant Professor of English
>
> Department of English
> Ohio University
> Athens, OH 45701
> phone: (740) 593-2829
> FAX: (740) 593-2818
>
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