Any concept that has a history, philosopher Michel Foucault tells us, cannot have a fixed definition.

Plagiarism is a concept with a history, as the subtitle of Roger Kreuz’s Strikingly Similar: Plagiarism and Appropriation from Chaucer to Chatbots reminds us. But it might be close to perennial.

Review: Strikingly Similar: Plagiarism and Appropriation from Chaucer to Chatbots – Roger Kreuz (Cambridge University Press)

As a term describing literary, artistic or intellectual theft, “plagiarism” is derived from one of the epigrams of the ancient Roman poet Martial:

Quintianus, I commend you my little books – that is, however, if I can call them mine when your poet friend recites them. If they complain of harsh enslavement, come forward to claim their freedom and give bail as required. And when he calls himself their owner, say they are mine, discharged from my hand. If you shout this three or four times, you will make the kidnapper ashamed of himself.

Quintianus, I commend you my little books – that is, however, if I can call them mine when your poet friend recites them. If they complain of harsh enslavement, come forward to claim their freedom and give bail as required. And when he calls himself their owner, say they are mine, discharged from my hand. If you shout this three or four times, you will make the kidnapper ashamed of himself.

The Latin word for “kidnapper” Martial uses is plagiario, which gives us the English term “plagiarism”. Other Roman writers, like Cicero, already familiar with the phenomenon of literary theft, used different terms like furtum (a trick) and surripio (taking something secretly), which cover a range of connotations.

Much ink has been spilled over the question of whether the ways we understand plagiarism are continuous with the classical notions that gave us the term, or whether there has been a rupture (or several).

The most often cited candidate is the Statute of Anne (1710), the first effort by a government anywhere to codify copyright and make it enforceable under the law.

Copyright, the argument goes, emanates from the rumbustious commercial culture of Restoration England. It encourages us to think about literary texts as a form of capital, valuable for their ability to generate income for their creators and their creators’ descendants.

Medieval and early modern attitudes towards appropriation differed from later ones. Witness the........

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