Course Description
This course is an introduction to textual scholarship, the scholarly study of the various ways by which texts and the physical documents that contain them have been produced, transmitted, and subsequently reconstituted in the humanities. By "text," I mean primarily abstract sequences of linguistic symbols such as words and punctuation. By focusing on the reciprocal relationship between different theories of textuality and the reality of textual instability and the material means of textual production--for example, manuscript, print, or electronic information technology, we will examine 1) how such theories produce not only different interpretive practices but also different stabilized texts and 2) how different theories of textuality have been shaped by different textual situations and material means of texual production. My central goal is to show that the constitution of texts is an interpretive as well as empirical activity that precedes their study. In these days of heightened theoretical literacy, my aim is to make us textually literate as well: that is, skeptical about the origins of the texts and documents that come down through history to us.
We will spend the semester looking at a broad range of traditional and contemporary discussions of textual scholarship and editorial theory and the textual theories such as intentionalism, feminism, deconstruction, formalism, old and new historicism, reader-response, structuralism, and social materialism that they rest upon. Visiting speakers will comment on issues of textual scholarship in history, painting, music, philosophy, and electronic hypertext literature. Although my own emphasis will be on linguistic texts, these speakers will help expand our study of text-constitution beyond linguistic or literary texts to include concrete texts in media where the distinction between text and form or document breaks down. Generally, student presentations, reports, and seminar papers will deal with different textual situations or histories--non-linguistic as well as linguistic--different schools of literary and editorial theory, and different means of textual production. Our emphasis throughout the semester will be on the dialectical relationship between the intrinsic instability of texts within a set of historical forms and their means of production and theories of textuality.
One's final grade will be based upon two short oral reports (10% each), one 7-9 page paper (30%), and one 15-20 page seminar paper (50%).
Course Policy
This course will be a seminar class with students participating in presenting and analyzing some of the material. One's final grade will be based upon two 15-minute oral reports (10% each), one 7-9 page paper (30%), one 1-page seminar paper prospectus (not graded), and one 15-20 page seminar paper (50%).
Your two 15-minute oral reports will be concise summaries and critiques of some of our assigned readings. You should summarize underlying assumptions and arguments, drawing our attention to significant passages. Your critiques should include discussion of both positive and negative features of the readings. Your report should aim for twice as much critique as summary. You should feel free to draw upon or refer us to other class readings and discussions. If you are reporting on two essays or on a book, you may take more than 15-minutes.
Due on October 20th, your 7-9 page paper, I would like you to study the textual situation or history of a work of your own choosing. You should discuss the significance of this textual situation and perhaps its textual medium for theorizing about textuality and for critical discussion of the work. You should feel free to choose a non-literary work as well as a literary one and works transmitted by oral tradition, papyrus rolls, manuscript, and electronic technology as well as by print. Please talk to me early in the semester about your selection so that I may approve your choice and offer advice on how to proceed. If you like, I would be happy to suggest possible works by writers like Shakespeare, Dickinson, Whitman, Twain, Crane, Dreiser, Hemingway, Faulkner, T. S. Eliot, Lawrence, Woolf, Fitzgerald, Barth, and Erdrich. Time permitting, I may ask you at some point in the second half of the semester to discuss your findings with the class in a short presentation.
Due on December 1st, your 15-20 page seminar paper (exclusive of notes and lists of works cited) should examine some aspect of our topic. For example, you may draw upon the semester's readings to investigate the theoretical and critical significance of the textual situation or medium of a particular work, whether literary or non-literary. You may examine one or several material means of textual production. You may explore the theoretical premises underlying different editorial schools and generate different procedures from alternative assumptions. You may do straight interpretive criticism of the textual situation of your work and the work's reception You may use a work to think about some of the issues and debates in contemporary editorial and critical theory. You may utilize any theoretical approach or approaches in the humanities you find congenial such as New Criticism, Structuralism, Russian Formalism, Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, Reader-Response, Feminism, Marxistm New Historicism, etc. You should try to make clear in your paper how your argument relates to the scholarly conversation on the subject. I would especially like your paper to deal with both empirical and theoretical concerns.
Due on October 13th, your prospectus for your seminar paper simply a 1-page proposal that specifically addresses the following: your subject, your argument about the subject, your critical approach or methodology, the significance or value of the argument, and some of the relevant scholarship. Sample research papers from other graduate classes may be consulted at my 206 Carlisle office.
Documentation for your papers must be presented according to the new MLA style of parenthetical citation with a Works Cited page found in _The MLA_. A paper which is not prepared according to this format will not be accepted. Consult me if you are unsure of how to use this MLA style. Your papers must be professionally executed: honest margins, honest spacing, no onionskin paper, no exhausted printer ribbons, etc. Please make a xerox of all written work you hand in to me.
I do not have an attendance policy. You are, however, responsible for all work done and all materials handed out in class. I am on campus throughout the week, and I expect and welcome your telephone calls at my office and at home to discuss possible topics and to arrange office appointments. Please plan to discuss outlines and rough drafts of your paper with me Assignments are due on the date indicated on the syllabus. Late assignments will be marked down one full letter grade. If you cannnot finish an assignment on time, please contact me before class starts.
Important: be sure to get the packet of xeroxed required readings at Joe's Copy Center, 305 S. West St. (Northeast corner of West and Border), #275-3992.
Required Texts
Bornstein, George, ed. _Palimpsest: Editorial Theory in the Humanitiest_. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1993.
Cohen, Philip, ed. _Devils and Angels: Textual Editing and Literary Theory_. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1991.
Gibaldi, Joseph. _The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers_. 4th ed. New York: MLA, 1995.
Landow, George P. _Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology_. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992.
McGann, Jerome J. _A Critique of Modern Textual Scholarship_. 1983. Rpt. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1992.
Parker, Hershel. _Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons: Literary Authority in American Fiction_. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1984.
Williams, William Proctor and Craig S. Abbott. _An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies_. 2nd ed. New York: MLA, 1989.
Syllabus
September 1: Introduction: Discussion of Syllabus and Scheduling of Presentations
September 8 Modern Anglo-American Textual Scholarship (1950-1980): Fredson Bowers, "Recovering the Author's Intentions" and "Textual Criticism," Copy Center; W.W. Greg, "The Rationale of Copy-Text," Copy Center; James Thorpe, "The Aesthetics of Textual Criticism," Copy Center; G. Thomas Tanselle, "Textual Scholarship," Copy Center ; William P. Williams and Craig S. Abbott, _An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies_.;
Examine Walter Blair and Victor Fischer's edition of Mark Twain's _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ and James L. W. West's editions of Theodore Dreiser's _Jennie Gerhardt _ and _Sister Carrie_
September 15: No Class
September 22: Contemporary Literary Theory and Textual Scholarship: Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text," Copy Center; Michel Foucault, "What Is An Author?" Copy Center; Stanley Fish, "Introduction," Copy Center; David Greetham, "Textual and Literary Theory: Redrawing the Matrix," "Textual Scholarship," Copy Center; David Greetham, "Editorial and Critical Theory: From Modernism to Postmodernism," _Palimpsest_; Michael Groden. "Contemporary Textual and Literary Theory," Copy Center; Philip Cohen, "Textual Instability, Literary Studies, and Recent Developments in Textual Scholarship," Copy Center; Philip Cohen, "Introduction," _Devils and Angels_; Ralph G. Williams, "I Shall Be Spoken: Textual Boundaries, Authors, and Intent," _Palimpsest_; Gary Taylor, "The Renaissance and the End of Editing." _Palimpsest_; OR Both Greethams: OR Groden and Taylor:
September 29: Revisionary Intentionalism and Textual Scholarship Hershel Parker, _Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons_, 1-114.; Philip Cohen, "'The Key to the Whole Book': Faulkner's _The Sound and the Fury_, the Compson Appendix, and Textual Instability," Copy Center; Paul Eggert. "Textual Product or Textual Process: Procedures and Assumptions of Critical Editing," _Devils and Angels_; James McLaverty. "Issues of Identity and Utterance: An Intentionalist Response to 'Textual Instability,'" _Devils and Angels_; James Murphy. "A 'Very Different Dance': Intention, Technique, and Revision in Henry James's New York Edition," Copy Center; Stillinger, Jack. "Implications for Theory," Copy Center; OR Parker: OR Eggert and McLaverty: OR Murphy and Stillinger:
October 6 Jerome J. McGann, Historical Materialism, and the Social Contract School of Editing: Jerome McGann, _A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism_; Jerome McGann, "Literary Pragmatics and the Editorial Horizon," _Devils and Angels_; Jerome McGann, "What Is Critical Editing?" Copy Center; George Bornstein, "What is the Text of a Poem by Yeats?" _Palimpsest_; Peter Shillingsburg, "The Autonomous Author, the Sociology of Texts, and the Polemics of Textual Criticism," _Devils and Angels_; Peter Shillingsburg, "An Inquiry Into the Social Status of Texts and Modes of Textual Criticism," Copy Center; OR McGann, _Critique_:; OR 2nd and 3rd McGann: OR 1st and 2nd Shillingsburg:
Examine McGann's _New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse_
October 13 Peter Shillingsburg and Democratic Pluralism: Peter Shillingsburg, _Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age_, 1-123, Copy Center; Peter Shillingsburg, "Text as Matter, Concept, and Action," Copy Center; Peter Shillingsburg, "Textual Variants, Performance Variants, and the Concept of Work," Copy Center; OR Shillingsburg, _Scholarly Editing_:; OR 2nd and 3rd Shillingsburg:
Examine Shillingsburg's edition of Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_ Prospectus Due
October 20 French and German Textual Scholarship: Louis Hay, "Does 'Text Exist?'"; Klaus Hurlesbusch, "Conceptualisations for Procedures of Authorship"; Hans Zeller, "A New Approach to the Critical Constitution of Literary Texts," Copy Center; Hans Walter Gabler. "The Synchrony and Diachrony of Texts: Practice and Theory of the Critical Edition of James Joyce's _Ulysses_," Copy Center; Hans Walter Gabler, "The Text as Process and the Problem of Intentionality," Copy Center; Hans Walter Gabler, "Unsought Encounters," _Devils and Angels_; Hans Walter Gabler, "On Textual Criticism and Editing: The Case of Joyce's Ulysses," _Palimpsest_; Jerome J. McGann, "Ulysses as Postmodern Text," Copy Center; OR Zeller: OR Hay and Hurlebusch: OR 2nd and 4th Gabler:
Examine Hans Walter Gabler's synoptic and critical edition of Joyce's _Ulysses _ and his critical edition of Joyce's _Dubliners_ Short Papers Due
October 27 Textual Scholarship and Reader Response Criticism, Old and New Historicism, and Feminism: Steven Mailloux, "Textual Scholarship and 'Author's Final Intention,'" Copy Center; Betty Bennett, "Feminism and Editing Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: The Editor And?/Or? the Text," _Palimpsest_; Susan Stanford Friedman, "The Return of the Repressed in Women's Narrative," Copy Center; Barbara Oberg, "Benjamin Franklin's Correspondence: Whose Intent? What Text? I Don't Know's the Author," _Palimpsest_; Margreta DeGrazia, "Introduction," _Shakespeare Verbatim_, Copy Center; Gerald MacLean, "What is a Restoration Poem? Editing a Discourse, Not an Author," Copy Center; Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, "The Early Printing of Shakespeare's Plays" and "The Modern Editor's Task," Copy Center; OR Bennett and Friedman: OR MacLean and Wells / Taylor:
November 3 Deconstruction and Textual Scholarship: Terry Eagleton, "Post-Structuralism," Copy Center; Stephen Carr, "Illuminated Printing: Toward a Logic of Difference," Copy Center; Robert N. Essick, "How Blake's Body Means," Copy Center; Joseph Grigely, "The Textual Event," _Devils and Angels_; William E. Cain, "Making Texts New," _Devils and Angels_; OR Essick and Carr: OR Grigely and Cain:
November 10 No Class
November 17 Round Table Discussion With CLA Faculty Charles Hope, "Restoration or Ruination?" Copy Center; Brandt, Kathleen Weil-Garris, "The Grime of the Centuries is a Pigment of the Imagination: Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling," _Palimpsest_; Cathy Davidson, "The Life and Times of _Charlotte Temple_: The Biography of a Book," Copy Center; James E. G. Zetzel, "Religion, Rhetoric, and Editorial Technique: Reconstructing the Classics," _Palimpsest_;
December 1 Electronic Information Technology, Textuality, and Hypertext: George P. Landow, _Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology_.; Peter Shillingsburg, "Polymorphic, Polysemic, Protean, Reliable, Electronic Texts," _Palimpsest_; Charles Ross, "The Electronic Text and the Death of the Critical Edition," Copy Center; Richard Lanham, "The Electronic Word: Literary Study and the Digital Revolution," Copy Center; Bolter, Jay David. "Introduction" and "Interactive Fiction." In_Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing_," Copy Center; OR Landow: OR Shillingsburg and Lanham: OR Bolter and Ross:
December 8 Cynthia Haynes-Burton, Director of the Writing Center will join us. Seminar Papers Due
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