Traditional Vampirism

[tigerpatronus]

No: HPFGUIDX 88837

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Campbell, Anne-TMC-Rcvg" 
<silverthorne.dragon at v...> wrote:
> 
> Actually, I had taken a stance last week on this...and am under the 
firm belief that Severus is not a vamp, based on the original legends 
and folklore. As you have put it, Rowling tends to hearken back to 
the original myths and legends and rebuild from that ground base as 
opposed to 'borrowing' innovations to the legends that have occurred 
since their original inception (which , according to law, is 
plagiarism anyway--not something authors like to deal with on either 
end. Tends to make it difficult to put food on the table through 
their chosen profession). 

TigerPatronus here: 

Not wanting to quibble too much about legal definitions, but I will 
anyway. I think the term you're looking for here is "copyright 
infringment." "Plagerism" is a very specific legal term that means 
that you steal words, quite a few words, in their original order, 
from another source that is currently legally protected by copyright 
without permission. I don't think either Sophocles or Stoker are 
still under copyright. 

For example, if Shakespeare were still under copyright, and I wrote 
in a published story for which I received money and was not a satire 
of the original work: "O for a muse of fire that would transcend the 
brightest heaven of invention," (or the actual quote, I'm at work 
right now) that might be enough to get me tagged for plagerism. 
Usually, it takes pages and pages of incorporating another's work to 
set off alarm bells. (Not that I'm advocating such a horrendous 
deed.) And even so, post-modernism is tossing much of that definition 
out the proverbial courthouse window. Now, it's *reference.* And the 
referral is more important than the referent. 

Anyway, my point is that JKR is *not* plagerizing. She's utilizing 
ideas and images that are in the public domain and as referrals to 
other sources. You can't copyright ideas. The reason that JKR won the 
lawsuit against the Tanya Grotter people is that they were infringing 
on the Hogwarts/HP copyright, which Warner Brothers vigorously 
defended, not because they were committing plagerism, which AFAIK, 
they weren't. 

It may seem like a picky point, but plagerism is a crime and morally 
wrong. It bothers me when people toss it around. And I'm a nitpicker. 
Sorry for the nitpicking. 


<snip> 
> As for reproduction---that was not presented as a possibility until 
after I Am Legend (in which the vampirism is a type of bacterial 
infection, and not all the victims died of it...in fact, at the end 
of the book, there was a perfectly happy, healthy, living population 
of vamp-virus infected folks ready to make the world their own...). 

THere's also a fabulous book, I think it's by Brian Aldiss, that 
suggests that Stoker's vampirism was a metaphor for syphilis, passed 
by blood and sex, etc. 


> 
> <snip> > 
> Much as Rowling does with her own interpretations of the various 
legendary creatures she uses....

Ah! We agree! 


TK -- TigerPatronus