Possible Plagiarism

[Tine Roesen]

Hello,

Have you tried Google Scholar (www.scholar.google.com)?
I just plotted in some words from your citation, and FM Borras: Maxim 
Gorky the Writer: An Interpretation (1967) came up. Maybe its the one?

Best,
Tine Roesen
Bergen/Copenhagen

Emily Saunders wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I tried the method that has worked for me in the past -- entering in  
> parts of sentences that I didn't think the student could have written  
> into Google -- but it didn't turn up anything.  I agree that the  
> excerpt sounds plagiarized.  I don't think I ever used the word  
> "unflinching" in any piece of undergraduate writing I ever turned 
> in.   Perhaps one possible solution is to double check the quotes 
> included.   If there have been more than one translator of this work, 
> and the  quotes do not match the edition that you gave your students 
> to work  from (or the copy that the student in question has back in 
> his/her  dorm room), then you may be able to prove plagiarism without 
> first  determining the source it was taken from.
>
> A somewhat long-shot suggestion,
>
> Emily Saunders
>
> On Apr 4, 2008, at 5:29 AM, Kevin M. F. Platt wrote:
>
>> Dear SEELANGers:
>>
>> One of my students turned this piece of writing in for a weekly  
>> reading response question about Gorky's "26 men and a girl" (I asked  
>> them what they thought the significance of Tanya is in the story). I  
>> am 95% certain that it is plagiarized, but I can't figure out from  
>> where. Does anyone recognize it as their own or as something on  
>> their shelves? Let me know off line, please.
>>
>> This short story, published in 1899 in a collection entitled,  
>> “Creatures that Once Were Men,” is an unflinching look at the manner  
>> in which men react to a crushing, stifling regime and how their  
>> humanity is essentially dissolved over time. Tanya plays the role of  
>> innocence, of hope, and of the possibility of redemption for the  
>> twenty-six men in this narrative. Though “dull beasts,” the twenty- 
>> six are “still men, and, like all men, could not live without  
>> worshipping something or other.” Living in a situation that offered  
>> no returns for their labor, Tanya was something they could possess:  
>> “…we all regarded her as something of our own, something existing as  
>> it were only by virtue of our kringels.” She carries the burden of  
>> unrequited love without the knowledge or responsibility, a love so  
>> deep it could just as easily crush its receiver as its giver.
>> The capitalistic exploitation in this story appears to extend  
>> forever – the prisoners appear to be eternally trapped in a static  
>> state, where nothing changes around them. Their humanity is kept  
>> intact by Tanya’s fleeting presence, the hope she represents  
>> flitting in and out of their lives, only taking, never giving. At  
>> the end of Gorky’s tale, Tanya is revealed to be nothing more than a  
>> servant to the gold-embroiderers’ next door, the innocence she  
>> represents extinguished in a moment of sexual passion. The men  
>> return to their state of perpetual labor as Tanya is thrown aside,  
>> crushed by their desire for an ideal.
>>
>>
>>
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