The literary forgeries of Thomas Chatterton and William Henry Ireland

Abstract

The paper presents an assessment of the particular proclivity toward artistic expression in the form of literary mystification characteristic of the English literature of the XVIII century, i.e., the era of a significant transformation in thinking patterns, diversified literary styles and specific inclinations regarding the artistic means of representing the past via artistic insight, thereby creating mystifications as ingenious as the Rowley poems of Thomas Chatterton and as mediocre as William-Henry Ireland’s Shakespearean forgeries.