Meter, Identity, Voice: Untranslating Christabel

This essay poses a riddle: what can be plagiarized, but not copyrighted? It answers by connecting the technical management of meter with the property of "voice" which, in turn, responds to the problem of defining poetic "identity" in copyright law. The essay proceeds, first, to discuss how Coleridge links meter with the idealized identity he calls "untranslatableness." Next it contextualizes this understanding of identity in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century copyright debates, arguing that one strain of anglophone law grounds "identity" in nonsemantic aspects of form, such as meter. Taking Coleridge's Christabel as a case study, the essay's third section discusses how Walter Scott's "plagiarism" of Christabel's meter in The Lay of the Last Minstrel ultimately affirms the identity of Coleridge's poem. The essay concludes with speculations on how literary materiality relates to transmission.