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>> Home / Archives for textual scholarship

Electronic Texts – a bibliographic essay

September 30, 2009 by Roy Johnson

text, editing, and bibliography in the electronic age

Electronic textuality is a relatively recent concept, yet one that has already had a significant impact upon the practice of scholarly editing. Scholars have debated the subject of textual bibliography and the issue of copy-text throughout the twentieth-century without, it seems, reaching any firm conclusions. The term ‘copy-text’ was first coined by Ronald McKerrow almost one hundred years ago (McKerrow and Nash 1904) but there still remains disagreement about how a text can or should be established. The arrival of electronic texts make this problem even more complex.

Advances in information technology have meant that scholars now have access to new and ever more sophisticated tools to assist them in the preparation of traditional codex editions and to aid textual analysis. Increasingly however, some editors are choosing to exploit the potential of digitised material and the advantages of hypertext to produce texts in an electronic format in either editions or archives. This raises various issues including the role of the editor and the relationship of the reader to the text.

One of the most influential and oft quoted theses on the subject of textual scholarship and one which has provoked a significant amount of debate, is W. W. Greg’s paper entitled ‘The Rationale of Copy-Text’ (1950). In this article, Greg highlights the difficulties of the prevailing editorial practice of attempting to select whichever extant text is the closest to the words that an author originally wrote and using this as the copy-text. In the case of printed books, this is generally considered the first edition, but Greg argues that an over-reliance on this one text, to the exclusion of all others, is problematic.

He advocates that a distinction be made between ‘substantive’ and ‘accidental’ readings of a text and suggests that the two should be treated differently. (He uses these terms to distinguish between readings that affect the meaning and readings that only affect the formal presentation of a text.) Greg asserts that it is only when dealing with accidentals that editors should adhere rigidly to their chosen copy-text and that in the case of possible variants in substantive readings there is a case to be made for exercising editorial choice and judgement. He argues that it is only through being allowed to exercise judgement that editors can be freed from what he terms ‘the tyranny of the copy-text’ (p. 26).

This argument is taken up and developed by Fredson Bowers (1964; 1970). Bowers takes issue with some of the finer points of Greg’s argument, but agrees that whilst rules and theories are necessary, the very nature of editing means that a certain amount of editorial judgement will always be needed. G. Thomas Tanselle (1975) examines the arguments of both scholars, expands them and looks at how their work and theories have affected the practice of scholarly editing. Greg, Bowers, Tanselle and others have slight differences of emphasis. They are however, all in broad agreement with the principle of synthesizing two or more variant editions into one text that represents as closely as possible an author’s intention.

The debate about copy-text and its role in scholarly editing rests largely on the status of authorial intention and the extent to which this is possible to discern and represent in a text. Michael Foucault, in his paper entitled ‘What is an author?’ (1984), argues that even when there is little question about the identity of author of a text, there remains the problem of determining whether everything that was written or left behind by him should be considered part of a work. Do notes in a margin represent an authorial addition or amendment, or did the author simply scribble in the margins a sudden thought that he wanted to remember and refer to later? Such issues remain a subject of debate and are some of the many problems with which editors are faced.

Textual ScholarshipThe practice of editing will always generate problems that scholars need to address and this is the basis for David Greetham (1994) and Peter Robinson’s (1997) assertions that to a certain extent, all editing must be seen as conjectural. However, in his examination of the history of textual criticism, Greetham finds that there has been a fluctuation between two equally extreme schools of thought.

The first, he suggests, maintains that a correct reading of a text is discoverable ‘given enough information about the texts and enough intelligence and inspiration on the part of the editor’ (p. 352). The opposing position is one that claims that any speculation on the part of an editor is likely to result in a move away from authorial intention. Because of this, scholars that hold this belief argue that documental evidence should be given priority over editorial judgement and wherever possible this documental evidence should be in the form of only one document – that chosen as the copy-text.

Yet scholars have found that it is sometimes impossible to establish one ‘correct’ text. Jerome McGann (1983; 1996; 1997) believes the very notion to be a falsity and Peter Donaldson (1997) argues that traditional scholarly editions can be misleading as their very nature suggests that a text is fixed and authoritative when the reality is often very different.

Taking the plays of Shakespeare as an example, he suggests that the collaborative nature of life surrounding the London theatres in the Renaissance combined with the fact that the author did not intend his work to be published, means that variants cannot and should not be ignored. Moreover, he contends, in some cases a single original text may never have existed. Donaldson argues that technology can be used to create new forms of text that incorporate variants in a way that is not practical in a codex edition. Donaldson is himself involved in a project that seeks to do this and he refers to his own experiences in assembling an electronic archive of the works of Shakespeare.

Electronic texts provide some solutions to the problems of editing, but they also raise new issues and opinions are divided about the way in which they can best be used. Some scholars welcome digital texts as a tool to aid the preparation and production of traditional scholarly editions whilst others prefer to look to electronic textuality as a medium for the publication of a different type of edition – an electronic edition.

Several authors (Donaldson 1997; Greetham 1997; Hockey 2000; Robinson 1997) examine the way in which new developments in information technology affect the traditional process of scholarly editing. Robinson for example, examines the analytic functions of electronic text and provides examples of instances in which computer aided collation has assisted in the preparation of scholarly editions. He cites his own experiences in the production of Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue on CD-ROM and explains how he used the particular techniques of computerised cladistic analysis as a method of textual criticism. Further information about computerized collation can be found in Hockey (1980) and Robinson (1994).

(Cladistic analysis has been developed from systematic biology. Susan Hockey (2000) describes it as ‘software that takes a collection of data and attempts to produce the trees of descent or history for which the fewest changes are required, basing this on comparisons between the descendents’. Cladistics is particularly useful in cases where manuscripts are lost or damaged.)

In addition however, Greetham (1994) and Robinson (1993; 1997) discuss the way in which, in an electronic edition, hypertext can be used to solve the problem of textual variants. The term ‘hypertext’ was coined in the 1960s by Ted Nelson (Landow 1992) and it refers to a means of linking documents or sections of documents and allowing a reader to navigate his or her own way through a series of paths in a non-linear way. Bolter (1991), Landow (1992) and McGann (1997) all write in detail about the technology behind hypertext, its functions and the theories that surround it.

Greetham suggests that decisions that were once the responsibility of the editor can be largely transferred to the reader as hypertext allows all possible variants to be included and linked in an electronic edition. This means that editors do not have to wrestle with the problem of authorial intention or give priority to one text but can incorporate several variants, allowing readers to select the most appropriate text for their particular needs.

Electronic TextsThis type of editing is, as Greetham argues, distinct from the methods of either establishing a text or accurately reproducing a particular version of a work in a critical edition. The desired result with electronic editing is not, according to McGann (1983) and others, a single conflated text as advocated by the Greg / Bowers school of editing but one containing such multiple variants.

McGann believes that this type of edition frees the reader from the controlling influence of editors, and George Landow (1992) suggests that it facilitates a greater degree of interaction between the reader and the text.

Kathryn Sutherland (1997) however, warns that this type of text places greater demands on a reader than a traditional codex edition. A hypertext edition that contains multiple variants necessarily requires a reader to select material, choose from amongst the possible variants and, therefore, exercise discrimination. She also points out, in an allusion to Barthesian distinctions, that a hypertext edition offering choice amongst variants is, in effect, offering the reader the ‘disassembled texts’ rather than the ‘reassembled work’ (p. 9).

McGann (1996; 1997) suggests that scholarly editions in codex form have limitations because their structure is too close to that of the material that they analyse. He asserts that hypermedia projects such as the Rossetti Hypermedia Archive with which he is involved, offer a different type of focus that does not rely on one central document. He argues that hyperediting allows for greater freedom and has the added advantage of giving readers access to more than just the semantic content of a primary text.

Moreover, McGann believes that hypertext is functioning at its optimum level when it is used to create hypermedia editions that incorporate visual and audio documents. Robinson (1997) however, warns that editors working on major electronic editions are producing material that will not be used to its full potential until there are further developments in the field of textual encoding and software that is more widely available.

P. Aaron Potter (c1997) takes issue with McGann and Landow’s ideas. He argues that a Web page editor controls the material that appears on the screen to an even greater extent than does an editor working on a traditional codex edition. A hypertext document is not a non-sequential document because an editor has inserted links and chosen what he considers the most suitable places for those links to be. A reader can, therefore, only navigate to a part of a document to which an editor has chosen to offer a path.

Hypertext links, asserts Potter, are ‘no more transparent that any reasonable index’ and whilst offering a choice amongst variants, and allowing readers to share some of the editorial functions, electronic editions are far from being either authorless or editorless texts. Moreover, her refers to Foucault’s theories and suggests that, as is often the case, hypertext is an example of a concept that is purporting to offer greater freedom, when in reality it is just more successful at hiding the mechanisms by which it exerts control – in this instance, control of a reader.

Susan Hockey (2000) warns that whilst editors working on electronic editions are freed from many of the limitations of printed books, and the need to rely on one particular text or reading, there is a danger of such projects becoming overly ambitious. She asserts that the inclusion of too much source material can result in editions that have little scholarly value. She maintains that source material should not replace the critical material that makes scholarly editions valuable. Similarly, Sutherland (1997) suggests that a balance needs to be struck between the quantity and the quality of the material that electronic editors choose to include. Claire Lamont (1997) examines the specific problems of annotation and compares how they differ in a codex and electronic edition. Hypertext provides the promise of annotations which are easier to access and which conceivably, can contain greater quantities of material.

Electronic TextsLamont draws attention to the fact that hypertext editions also have the advantage over traditional editions because they can be updated whenever necessary without the need to prepare an entire new edition and without the cost and time that this inevitably involves. However, rather than solving the problems of annotation such as where, what, and how much to annotate, Lamont concludes that hypertext has simply resulted in ‘another arena in which the debate may continue’ (p. 63). Sutherland (1997) sums up the feelings of many less fervent supporters of electronic textuality by suggesting that the electronic environment is perhaps best thought of as ‘a set of supplementary possibilities’ (p. 7). These possibilities will be debated by editors, theorists and scholars in a comparable way to which they have debated and continue to consider the medium of the book.

Contrary to the optimistic note struck by writers such as McGann (1997), Landow (1992), Lanham (1993) and others concerning an electronic text’s facility to empower the reader, Sven Birkerts (1995) expresses concern at the effect of electronic texts in a book that is pessimistically entitled The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. Birkerts suggests that methods of electronic storage and retrieval have a detrimental effect upon a reader’s acquisition of knowledge. Information in an electronic medium, he believes, remains external – something to be stored and manipulated rather than absorbed.

Without claiming to support Birkerts’ theories, Sutherland (1997) suggests that if they do prove to be correct then the implications will be wide-ranging. The scholar who works for years seeking to become and expert in his chosen field for example, could conceivably be transformed by the computer into little more than a technician – able to locate and manipulate information, but without having any real understanding of it.

Rapid advances in information technology are increasingly becoming the source of debate amongst scholars who seek to determine both the best way of taking advantage of technology and the implications of so doing. Greetham (1997) rightly points out that digitisation is only one small stage in the evolution of texts and Sutherland (1997) remarks that computers, like books, are simply ‘containers of knowledge, information [and] ideas’ (p. 8).

However, as electronic textuality continues to emerge as a force to which the academic community will have to adapt there will, no doubt, be a continued explosion in the literature that addresses the issues that it raises. Jerome McGann is seen by more conservative scholars as too messianic in his endorsement of the electronic medium and it is possible that some of his predictions may well prove to have been extreme. However, in his claim that hyperediting is ‘what scholars will be doing for a long time’ (1997), it is likely that he will, ultimately, be proved right.

© Kathryn Abram 2002


Bibliography

Birkerts, Sven. 1995. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. New York: Fawcett Columbine.

Bolter, Jay David. 2001. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale, N.J. : L. Erlbaum Associates.

Bowers, Fredson. 1964. Bibliography and Textual Criticism: The Lyell Lectures, Oxford, Trinity Term 1959. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

______. 1970. ‘Greg’s “Rationale of Copy-Text” Revisited’. Studies in Bibliography Volume 31 , pp. 90-161.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. 1996. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue on CD-ROM. ed. Peter M. W. Robinson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Donaldson, Peter. 1997. ‘Digital Archive as Expanded Text: Shakespeare and Electronic Textuality’, in Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory. ed. Kathryn Sutherland, pp. 173-97. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1984. ‘What is an author?’, in The Foucault Reader. ed. Paul Rabinow, translated by Josue V. Harari, pp. 101-20. New York: Pantheon Books.

Greetham, D. C. 1994. Textual Scholarship: An Introduction. New York and London: Garland.

______. 1997. ‘Coda: Is It Morphin Time?’, in Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory. ed. Kathryn Sutherland, pp. 199-226. Oxford: Clarendon Press .

Greg, W. W. 1950. ‘The Rationale of Copy-Text’. Studies in Bibliography Vol. 3 (1950-1951), pp. 19-36.

Hockey, Susan M. 1980. A Guide to Computer Applications in the Humanities. London: Duckworth.

______. 2000. Electronic Texts in the Humanities: Principles and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lamont, Claire. 1997. ‘Annotating a Text: Literary Theory and Electronic Hypertext’, in Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory. ed. Kathryn Sutherland, pp. 47-66. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Landow, George P. 1992. Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Lanham, Richard A. 1993. The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press.

McGann, Jerome J. 1983. A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism. Charlottesville: University of Chicago Press.

______. 1996. ‘Radiant Textuality’. Accessed on 19 February 2002.

______. 1997. ‘The Rationale of Hypertext’, in Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory. ed. Kathryn Sutherland, pp. 19-47. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

______. 1997. ‘The Rossetti Hypermedia Archive’ [Web page]. Accessed on 19 March 2002.

McKerrow, Ronald B., and Thomas Nash. 1904. The Works of Thomas Nashe. Vol. 1. London: A.H. Bullen.

Potter, P. Aaron. c1997. ‘Centripetal Textuality’. Accessed on 19 February 2002.

Robinson, Peter M. W. 1993. The Digitization of Primary Textual Sources. Oxford: Office for Humanities Communication Publications.

______. 1994. ‘Collate: A Program for Interactive Collation of Large Textual Traditions’, in Research in Humanities Computing 3. eds. Susan Hockey, and N. Ide, pp. 32-45. Oxford: Oxford Universtiy Press.

______. 1997. ‘New Directions in Critical Editing’, in Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory. ed. Kathryn Sutherland, pp. 145-71. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Sutherland, Kathryn, ed. 1997. Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Tanselle, G. Thomas. 1975. ‘Greg’s Theory of Copy-Text and the Editing of American Literature’. Studies in Bibliography Volume 28, pp. 167-231.

 


Filed Under: 19C Literature, 20C Literature Tagged With: Bibliography, David Greetham, Electronic Texts, Kathryn Sutherland, Literary studies, Susan Hockey, Technology, textual scholarship

Print Culture bibliography

October 27, 2009 by Roy Johnson

book history, bibliographic studies, and textual culture

Abdurgham, Alison. Women in Print: Writing and Women’s Magazines from the Restoration to the Accession of Victoria. London: Allen & Unwin, 1972.

Altick, Richard Daniel. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900. 2nd ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1998.

Armbruster, Carol, ed. Publishing and Readership in Revolutionary France and America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993.

Anderson, Benedict R. O’Gorman. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991.

Anderson, Patricia. The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture 1790-1860. Oxford: Clarendon P of Oxford UP, 1991.

Armstrong, Adrian. Technique and Technology: Script, Print, and Poetics in France 1470-1550. New York: Oxford UP, 2000.

Barker, Hannah and David Vincent. Language, Print, and Electoral Politics, 1790-1832: Newcastle-under-Lyme Broadsides. Rochester, NY: Boydell P/Parliamentary History Yearbook Trust, 2001.

Baron, Naomi S. Alphabet to Email: How Written English Evolved and Where It’s Heading. London: Routledge, 2000.

Barton, David and Nigel Hall, eds. Letter Writing as a Social Practice. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2000.

Bazerman. Charles. The Languages of Edison’s Light. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology P, 1999.

—. Shaping Written Knowledge. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1988.

Bell, William, Laurel Brake, and David Finkelstein, eds. Nineteenth-Century and the Construction of Identities. New York: St. Martin’s P, 2000.

Besnier, Niko. Literacy, Emotion, and Authority. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1995.

Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. Winchester, MA: Faber and Faber, 1994.

Blaney, Peter W. M. The First Folio of Shakespeare. Washington, DC: Folger Library Publications, 1991.

Bobrick, Benson. Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext and the Remediation of Print. 2nd ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001

Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pp.295, 1999.

Borgmann, Albert. Holding on to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999.

Brewer, John. The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.

Burke, Sean, ed. Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1995.

Cadman, Eileen, Gail Chester, and Agnes Pivot. Rolling Our Own: Women as Printers, Publishers and Distributors. London: Minority P Group, 1981.

Carlson, David R. English Humanist Books: Writers and Patrons, Manuscript and Print, 1475-1525. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1993.

Cavallo, Guglielmo and Roger Chartier, eds. A History of Reading in the West. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1999.

Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984.

Chambers, Douglas. The Reinvention of the World: English Writing 1650-1750. London: Arnold/Hodder Headline Group, 1996.

Chambers, Douglas. The Reinvention of the World: English Writing 1650-1750. London: Arnold/Hodder Headline Group, 1996.

Chartier, Roger. The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1988.

—, ed. The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989.

—. The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe Between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994.

Chaytor, H. J. From Script to Print: An Introduction to Medieval Vernacular Literature. London: W. Heffer and Sons, 1945.

Crain, Patricia A. The Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from The New England Primer to The Scarlet Letter. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000.

Crosby, Alfred W. The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Cuddihy, John Murray. The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss, and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity. 2nd ed. Boston: Beacon P, 1987.

Darnton, Robert. The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France. New York: Norton, 1995.

Darnton, Robert and Daniel Roche. Revolution in Print: The Press in France, 1775-1800. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989.

Davidson, Cathy N. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. New York: Oxford UP, 1986.

DeRitter, Jones. The Embodiment of Characters: The Representation of Physical Experiences on Stage and in Print, 1728-1749. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1994.

Dock, Julie Bates. The Press of Ideas: Readings for Writers on Print Culture and the Information Age. Boston: Bedford Books/St. Martin’s P, 1996.

Dolan, Frances E. Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender and Seventeenth-Century Print Culture. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1999.

Eberly, Rosa A. Citizens Critics: Literary Public Spheres. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2000.

Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. Grub Street Abroad: Aspects of the French Cosmopolitan Press from the Age of Louis XIV to the French Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon P of Oxford UP, 1992.

—. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1979.

Eliot, Simon. Some Patterns and Trends in British Publishing, 1800-1919. London: Bibliographical Society, 1994.

Elsky, Martin. Authorizing Words: Speech, Writing, and Print in the English Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989.

Ezell, Margaret J. M. Social Authorship and the Advent of Print. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999.

Farrell, Thomas J. Walter Ong’s Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 2000.

Febvre, Lucien Paul Victor and Henri-Jean Martin. The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800. Trans. David Gerard. Ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and David Wootton. London: Verso, 1997.

Ford, Worthington Chauncey. The Boston Book Market, 1679-1700. New York: Burt Franklin, 1972. Reprint of 1917 ed.

Fox, Adam. Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500-1700. New York: Oxford UP, 2000.

Frasca-Spada, Marina and Nicholas Jardine, eds. Books and the Sciences in History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2000.

Freedman, Joseph S. Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700: Teaching and Texts in Schools and Universities. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999.

Fuller, Mary C. Voyages in Print: English Travel to America 1576-1624. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1995.

Gilmartin, Kevin. Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Gitelman, Lisa. Scripts, Grooves and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999.

Goggin, Maureen Daly, ed. Inventing a Discipline: Rhetoric Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Young. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000.

Goody, Jack. The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1986.

—. The Power of the Written Tradition. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution P, 2000.

Graff, Harvey J. The Labryrinths of Literacy: Reflections on Literacy Past and Present. Rev. ed. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1995.

—. The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions in Western Culture and Society. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.

—. Literacy in History: An Interdisciplinary Research Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1981.

—. The Literacy Myth: Cultural Integration and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century City. New York: Academic P, 1979.

—, ed. Literacy and Social Development in the West: A Reader. New York: Cambridge UP, 1981.

Grafton, Anthony, April Shelford, and Nancy G. Siraisi. New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery. Cambridge, MA: Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1992.

Gray, Floyd. Gender, Rhetoric, and Print Culture in French Renaissance Writing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2000.

Green, Ian. Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England. New York: Oxford UP, 2001.

Greetham, D. C. Textual Scholarship: An Introduction. New York: Garland, 1992. Includes extensive bibliography.

Gronbeck, Bruce E., Thomas J. Farrell, and Paul A. Soukup, eds. Media, Consciousness, and Culture: Explorations of Walter Ong’s Thought. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1991.

Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology P, 1989.

Harrison, Peter. The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1998.

Hart, James David. The Popular Book: A History of America’s Literary Taste. New York: Oxford UP, 1950.

Havelock, Eric A. The Muse Learns to Write. New Haven: Yale UP, 1986.

Hayes, Kevin J. Poe and the Printed Word. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2000.

Headrick, Daniel R. When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850. New York: Oxford UP, 2000.

Heim, Michael. Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987.

Hindman, Sandra L., ed. Printing the Written Word: The Social History of Books, circa 1450-1520. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991.

Hobart, Michael E. and Zachary S. Schiffman. Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998.

Howard-Hill, T. H. British Literary Bibliography and Textual Criticism, 1890-1969. Volume 6 of and index to British Literary Bibliography. Oxford: Clarendon P of Oxford UP, 1980.

Isaac, Peter and Barry McKay, eds. The Mighty Engine: The Printing Press and Its Impact. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll P, 2000.

Ivins, William. Prints and Visual Communication. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1953.

Jagodzinski, Cecile M. Privacy and Print: Reading and Writing in Seventeenth-Century England. Charlottesville: UP of Virgina, 1999.

Johns, Adrian. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998.

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Nostalgic Angels: Rearticulating Hypertext Writing. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1997.

Jordan, John O. and Robert L. Patten, eds. Literature in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century British Publishing and Reading Practices. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1995.

Kaestle, Carl F., Helen Damon-Moore, Lawrence C. Stedman, Katherine Tinsley, and William Vance Trollinger, Jr. Literacy in the United States: Readers and Reading Since 1880. New Haven: Yale UP, 1991.

Kaufer, David S. and Kathleen M. Carley. Communication at a Distance: The Influence of Print on Sociocultural Organization and Change. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993.

Keller-Cohen, Deborah, ed. Literacy: Interdisciplinary Conversations. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton P, 1994.

Kernan, Alvin. Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Print. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989.

Kilgour, Frederick G. The Evolution of the Book. New York: Oxford UP, 1998.

Kintgen, Eugene R. Reading in Tudor England. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1996.

Knoppers, Laura Lunger. Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait, and Print, 1645-1661. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2000.

Kramnick, Jonathan Brody. Making the English Canon: Print-Capitalism and the Culture of the Past, 1700-1770. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1998.

Lanham, Richard A. The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology and the Arts. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993.

—. Literacy and the Survival of Humanism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1983.

Laspina, James Andrew. The Visual Turn and the Transformation of the Textbook. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998.

Leith, Philip. Formalism in AI and Computer Science. Chichester, UK: Ellis Horwood, 1990.

Logan, Robert. The Alphabet Effect: The Impact of the Phonetic Alphabet on the Development of Western Civilization. New York: William Morrow, 1986.

—. The Sixth Language: Learning & Living in the Internet Age. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing, 2000..

Love, Harold. The Culture and Commerce of Texts: Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1998.

Luke, Carmen. Pedagogy, Printing, and Protestantism: The Discourse on Childhood. Albany: State U of New York P, 1989.

Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. New York: Penguin, 1996.

Marotti, Arthur F. Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995.

Marotti, Arthur F. and Michael D. Bristol, eds. Print, Manuscript, and Performance: The Changing Relationships of the Media in Early Modern England. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2000.

Martin, Henri-Jean, The History and Power of Writing, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, trns. Lynda G. Cochrane, pp.591, ISBN 0226508366

—. Print, Power, and People in Seventeenth-Century France. Trans. David Gerard. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1993.

Mayer, Thomas F. and D. R. Woolf, eds. The Rhetorics of Life-Writing in Early Modern Europe: Forms of Biography from Cassandra Fedele to Louis XIV. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P,1995.

Mazzio, Carla and Douglas Trevor, eds. Historicism, Psychoanalysis, and Early Modern Culture. New York: Routledge, 2000.

McGrath, Alister. In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language and a Culture. New York: Doubleday, 2001.

McIntosh, Carey. The Evolution of English Prose: Style, Politeness, and Print Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1998.

McKenzie, D. F. Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. New York: Cambridge UP, 1999.

—. Oral Culture, Literacy, and Print in Early New Zealand: The Treaty of Waitangi. Wellington, NZ: Victoria UP, 1985.

McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1962.

—. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.

Melendez, A. Gabriel. So All Is Not Lost: The Poetics of Print in Nuevomexicano Communities, 1834-1958. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1997.

Miller, Perry. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1939.

Milton, John. ‘A Fuller Course in the Art of Logic Conformed to the Method of Peter Ramus’. Ed. and Trans. Walter J. Ong and Charles J. Ermatinger. Complete Prose Works of John Milton: Volume 8. Ed. Maurice Kelley. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982. 206-407

Mitch, David F. The Rise of Popular Literacy in Victorian England: The Influence of Private Choice and Public Policy. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1992.

Mitchell, W. J. T. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.

—. Picture Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Founding of Harvard College. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,
1935.

—. Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,
1936.

Moss, Ann. Printed Commonplace Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought. Oxford: Clarendon P of Oxford UP, 1996. Also see Yeo; Rechtien.

Oliphant, Dave and Robin Bradford, eds. New Directions in Textual Studies. Austin: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, U of Texas.

Ong, Walter J. The Barbarian Within: And Other Fugitive Essays and Studies. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

—. Faith and Contexts. 4 vols. Ed. Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992-1999; now distributed by Rowman & Littlefield.

—. Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.

—. ‘Literature, Written Transmission of.’ The New Catholic Encyclopedia. Ed. William J. McDonald. 15 vols. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967. Reprinted in An Ong Reader; Challenges for Further Inquiry.

—. An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry. Ed. Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton P, forthcoming.

—. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen, 1982.

—. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. New Haven: Yale UP, 1967.

—. Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1958.

—. Review of Butler’s The Origin of Printing in Europe. The Historical Bulletin 19 (Mar. 1941): 68.

—. Review of McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy. America 107 (Sept. 15, 1962): 743, 747. Reprinted in An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry.

—. Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1971.

Perkinson, Henry J. How Things Got Better: Speech, Writing, Printing, and Cultural Change. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1995.

Peters, Julie Stone. Theatre of the Book 1480-1880: Print, Text and Performance in Europe. New York: Oxford UP, 2000.

Popkin, Jeremy D. The Press, Revolution, and Social Identities in France, 1830-1835. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2001.

—. Revolutionary News: The Press in France, 1789-1799. Durham: Duke UP, 1990.

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985.

Price, Leah. The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel from Richardson to George Eliot. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2000.

Radway, Janice A. A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1997.

Rechtien, John G. Thought Patterns: The Commonplace Book as Literary Form in Theological Controversy during the English Renaissance. Diss. St. Louis U, 1975. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1975.

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Woolf, Daniel. Reading History in Early Modern England. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2000.

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Yeo, Richard. Encyclopaedic Visions: Scientific Dictionaries and Enlightenment Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2001. Includes commonplace books.

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© Roy Johnson 2009


Reproduced with the permission of the author –

Thomas J. Farrell, Associate Professor, Department of Composition, University of Minnesota at Duluth; Duluth, MN


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Filed Under: How-to guides, Journalism, Publishing Tagged With: Bibliography, Book history, Literary studies, Print culture, textual scholarship

Textual Bibliography – selected reading

October 27, 2009 by Roy Johnson

recommended fundamental studies in textual scholarship

This is a short but highly selective list of studies in textual bibliography. That is, the classic theories and approaches related to the establishment of authoritative texts. These theories take into account multiple versions and editions of a single work; the ‘intentions’ of the author; printed variants in the text; and the issues arising from authorial revisions.

Textual BibliographyJaques Barzun, On Writing, Editing and Publishing, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

George Bornstein (ed), Representing Modernist Texts: Editing as Interpretation, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991.

Fredson Bowers, Textual and Literary Criticism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959.

Fredson Bowers, Bibliography and Textual Criticism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.

Fredson Bowers, Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975.

Peter Davison, The Book Encompased: Studies in Twentieth Century Bibliography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Philip Gaskell, From Writer to Reader: Studies in Editorial Method, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.

Ronald Gottesman and Scott Bennett, Art and Error: Modern textual editing, London: Methuen, 1970.

D.C. Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction, New York: Garland, 1994.

John Lennard, But I Digress: The Exploitation of Parentheses in English Printed Verse, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

G. Thomas Tanselle, A Rationale of Textual Criticism, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.

G. Thomas Tanselle, Textual Criticism since Greg: A Chronicle, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987.

[NB! Greetham’s excellent book Textual Scholarship contains a 106 page bibliography covering all aspects of the subject.]

© Roy Johnson 2009


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Filed Under: How-to guides Tagged With: Bibliography, English literature, Literary studies, Reference, textual scholarship

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