Prospero and plagiarism : Early Modern Studies and the rise of Wikipedia

In recent years, Wikipedia has emerged as one of the most prominent sources, of any sort, of information and ideas relating to what one might call early modern studies. This article considers Wikipedia's troubled relationship with conventional academic authority, and also the paradox whereby Wikipedia articles are at the same time very mutable and very persistent. As case studies, it looks in detail at the evolution and dissemination of two Wikipedia articles, on The Tempest and on the minor writer Gervase Markham. Wikipedia, it will be argued, is a project whose conflicted attitudes to knowledge and authority have parallels with the early modern.