| Sumario: | This article argues that criticism's aversion to obviousness is rooted in its construction of the particularly skilled author as the possessor of an informal, extralegal kind of intellectual property over a distinctive and nonobvious idea, technique, or style rather than simply over a specific text. This property form is distinct from the rights of authorship found in copyright law and more akin to the logic of patent law, with its formalized nonobviousness requirement that assesses whether a certain idea, technique, or method is unique enough to be protectable as private property. I begin with a new reading of Robert Hooke's writings, arguing that Hooke coined a new usage of obvious in order to both assert his principled right to a disputed patent as well as authorship over his valuable, tacit knowledge and articulations of scientific method. My reading shows that invocations of obviousness structure attempts to explicate and own one's tacit knowledge, particularly the special skill of noticing things that others overlook. I then apply these insights in a new reading of Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism , arguing that judgments of obviousness are foundational to criticism because criticism both assesses distinctiveness by a test of obviousness and must invoke obviousness to articulate its tacit knowledge. My article questions recent thinking in literary criticism that equates obviousness with manifestness, instead revealing obviousness to be a complex structure underlying critical judgments about value, skill, and intellectual property.
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