Biggs on Jousting at Windmills: Cervantes and the Quixotic Fight for Authorial Control

Henry Parkman Biggs, Washington University, St. Louis, has published Jousting at Windmills: Cervantes and the Quixotic Fight for Authorial Control. Here is the abstract.

Achieving a fair balance between the rights of first and follow-on authors has long proved challenging. A less considered aspect of this tension involves the degree to which the first author may be creatively and productively compromised by the follow-on author and whether such interference diminishes creative production. A look at the early 17th century copyright landscape of Don Miguel de Cervantes proves instructive. Cervantes would dramatically change the second half of his masterpiece Don Quixote in terms both of plot and content because of an author who— perfectly legally—published a rival version of Don Quixote, Part II. The resultant war of words ultimately calls the very functioning of copyright’s protections into question: if greater creative production is ultimately the goal, is it purely financial gain that we believe engines that productivity? Or do we also believe protection of the author from creative interference plays a role in improving creative productivity? From a purity standpoint, are we concerned that without any rights of exclusion the author may write something substantially different than he might have without that interference? The copyright landscape and creative sparring that created the Don Quixote we read today provides an example of how deeply such interference can affect a final work.

The paper is not available for download.