Bédier, Joseph. “La tradition manuscrite du Lai de l’Ombre: réflexions sur l’art
d’éditer les anciens textes.” Romania
54 (1928): 161-196, 321-356.
Bédier advocates best-text conservatism
and rejects the subjectivity of Lachmann’s method (see Maas) with its emphasis
on the lost authorial text, resulting remarkably often in two-branch stemmata.
Instead, Bédier focuses on manuscripts and scribes, reducing the role of
editorial judgment.
Blecua, Alberto. “Defending Neolachmannianism: On the Palacio Manuscript of La Celestina.” Variants. Eds. Peter Robinson and H.T.M. Van Vliet. Turnhout:
Brepols, 2002. 113-33.
A clear position statement by the author
of the noteworthy Spanish Manual de
Critica Textual (1983) in defence of the neolachmannian method. Blecua
argues that stemmatic analysis is superior to the methods based on material
bibliography and that only the construction of a stemma can detect the presence
of contaminated texts.
Bornstein, George, and Ralph G.
Williams, eds. Palimpsest: Editorial
Theory in the Humanities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
On the assumption that texts are not as
stable or fixed as we tend to think they are, these essays examine the
palimpsestic quality of texts, emphasizing the contingencies both of their
historical circumstances of production, and of their reconstruction in the
present. They mark a theoretical period of transition, shifting the focus from
product to process in editorial theory and practice.
Bowers, Fredson. “Some Principles for Scholarly Editions
of Nineteenth-Century American Authors.” Studies
in Bibliography 17 (1964): 223-8.
Concise and systematic elaboration of
W.W. Greg’s theories, arguing that “when an author’s manuscript is preserved,”
this document rather than the first edition has paramount authority and should
serve as copy-text. Bowers’ principles for the application of analytical
bibliography in an eclectic method of editing, have been most influential in
Anglo-American scholarly editing.
Cohen, Philip, ed. Devils and Angels: Textual Editing and Literary Theory. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991.
The “increasingly theoretical
self-consciousness” characterizing textual criticism and scholarly editing
marks an impasse, indicative of a paradigm shift. Assumptions that have been
self-evident for several decades are rethought in eight stimulating essays and
three responses.
de Biasi, Pierre-Marc. “What is a Literary Draft? Toward a
Functional Typology of Genetic Documentation.” Yale French Studies 89: Drafts (1996): 26-58.
In a continuous effort to present
manuscript analysis and critique
génétique as a scientific approach to literature, de Biasi designs a
typology of genetic documentation, starting from the bon à tirer moment (“all set for printing”) as the dividing line
between the texte and what precedes
it, the so-called avant-texte.
Eggert, Paul. “Textual Product or Textual Process:
Procedures and Assumptions of Critical Editing.” Editing in Australia. Ed. Paul Eggert. Canberra: University College
ADFA, 1990. 19-40.
Starting from a comparison with new
techniques of X-raying paintings, Eggert proposes a valuable ideal for a
critical edition that allows the reader to study both the writing process and
the finished product.
Ferrer, Daniel. “Production, Invention, and Reproduction:
Genetic vs. Textual Criticism.” Reimagining
Textuality: Textual Studies in the Late Age of Print. Eds. Elizabeth
Bergmann Loizeaux and Neil Fraistat. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
2002. 48-59.
Ferrer defines the difference between
genetic and textual criticism on the basis of their respective focus on
invention and repetition. He pleads for a hypertextual presentation as the best
way to do justice to the diverse aspects of the writing process.
Finneran, Richard J., ed. The Literary Text in the Digital Age. Editorial Theory and Literary
Criticism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.
The availability of digital technology
coincides with a fundamental paradigm shift in textual theory, away from the
idea of a “definitive edition.” Fifteen contributions reflect on the shift
toward an enhanced attention to nonverbal elements and the integrity of
discrete versions.
Gabler, Hans Walter, George
Bornstein, and Gillian Borland Pierce, eds. Contemporary
German Editorial Theory. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995.
With its representative choice of
position statements, this thorough introduction to major trends in German
editorial theory in the second half of the twentieth century marks the
relatively recent efforts to establish contact between German and
Anglo-American editorial traditions.
Gabler, Hans Walter. “The Synchrony and Diachrony of Texts: Practice and Theory of the
Critical Edition of James Joyce's Ulysses.”
TEXT 1 (1981): 305-26.
The work’s “total text,” comprising all
its authorial textual states, is conceived as a diachronous structure that
correlates different synchronous structures. A published text is only one such
synchronous structure and not necessarily a privileged one.
Gaskell, Philip. From
Writer to Reader: Studies in Editorial Method. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1978.
In 1972, with A New Introduction to Bibliography replacing McKerrow’s, Gaskell
had already criticized Greg’s copy-text theory, arguing that authors often
expect their publishers to correct accidentals. From Writer to Reader zooms in on the act of publication and the
supposed acceptance of the textual modifications this may involve.
Greetham, David C. Textual
Scholarship: An Introduction. New York and London: Garland, 1992.
Impressive survey of various textual
approaches: finding, making, describing, evaluating, reading, criticizing, and
finally editing the text, i.e. biblio-, paleo- and typography, textual
criticism and scholarly editing. The book contains an extensive bibliography,
organized per discipline.
Greetham, David C., ed. Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research. New York: The Modern
Language Association of America, 1995.
The most comprehensive survey of current
scholarly editing of various kinds of literatures, both historically and
geographically, with elucidating contributions by textual scholars from
different traditions.
Greg, W. W. “The Rationale of Copy-Text.” Studies in Bibliography 3 (1950-1):
19-37.
This pivotal essay has had an
unparallelled influence on Anglo-American scholarly editing in the twentieth
century. Greg proposes a distinction between substantive readings (which change
the meaning of the text) and accidentals (spelling, punctuation, etc.). He
pleads for more editorial judgment and eclectic editing, against “the fallacy
of the ‘best text’” and “the tyranny of the copy-text,” contending that the
copy-text should be followed only so far as accidentals are concerned, but that
it does not govern in the matter of substantive readings.
Grésillon, Almuth. Eléments de critique génétique: Lire les manuscrits modernes. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1994.
Introduction to
textual genetics or critique génétique,
which was developed in the 1970s and became a major field of research in
France. In spite of correspondences with textual criticism, it sees itself as a
form of literary criticism, giving primacy to interpretation over editing.
Groden, Michael. “Contemporary Textual and Literary
Theory.” Representing Modernist Texts:
Editing as Interpretation. Ed. George Bornstein. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1991: 259-86.
Important plea for more contact between
textual and literary theorists by the general editor of The James Joyce Archive facsimile edition of Joyce’s works.
Hay, Louis. “Passé et avenir de l’édition génétique:
quelques réflexions d’un usager.” Cahier
de textologie 2 (1988): 5-22; trans. “Genetic Editing, Past and Future: A
Few Reflections of a User.” TEXT 3
(1987): 117-33.
Genetic editing, presenting the reader
with a “work in progress,” is a new trend, but it revives an old tradition. The
founder of the Paris institute for modern texts and manuscripts (ITEM-CNRS)
points out that editing has always reflected the main ideological and cultural
concerns of its day.
Maas, Paul. Einleitung in die Altertumswissenschaft vol. 2: “Textkritik.”
Leipzig & Berlin: Teubner, 1927; Textual
Criticism. Trans. Barbara Flower. Oxford: Clarendon, 1958.
One of Karl Lachmann’s main disciples,
Maas systematizes Lachmannian stemmatics, requiring thorough scrutiny of
witnesses (recensio) before emending
errors and corruptions (emendatio,
often involving a third step of divination or divinatio).
Martens, Gunter and Hans Zeller, eds. Texte und Varianten: Probleme ihrer Edition und Interpretation.
Munich: Beck, 1971.
Epoch-making collection of German essays
with important contributions by, amongst others, Hans Zeller (pairing “record”
and “interpretation,” allowing readers to verify the editor’s decisions),
Siegfried Scheibe (on fundamental principles for historical-critical editing),
and Gunter Martens (on textual dynamics and editing). The collection’s central
statement is that the apparatus, not the reading text, constitutes the core of
scholarly editions.
McGann, Jerome J. Critique
of Modern Textual Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Repr. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992.
Textual criticism does not have to be
restricted to authorial changes, but may also include the study of posthumous
changes by publishers or other agents. McGann sees the text as a social
construct and draws attention to the cooperation involved in the production of
literary works.
McGann, Jerome J. The
Textual Condition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
McGann makes several valuable and
innovating suggestions, from the idea of a “continuous production text” to a
clear distinction between a text’s bibliographical and linguistic codes (in the
important essay “What Is Critical Editing?”).
McGann, Jerome J. “The Rationale of HyperText.”
<http://www.iath.virginia.edu/public/jjm2f/rationale.html>; repr. TEXT 9 (1996): 11-32; repr. Electronic Text: Investigations in Method
and Theory. Ed. Kathryn Sutherland. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. 19-46;
repr. radiant textuality: literature
after the world wide web. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 53-74.
Conceived in an expressly revisionist
relation to Greg’s rationale, McGann’s ambitious essay presents the book as a
machine of knowledge and evaluates the advantages of hyperediting and
hypermedia over editions in codex form. As the earliest hypertextual structure
the library organization illustrates the theoretical design of a “decentered
text”.
McKenzie, D.F. Bibliography
and the Sociology of the Text: The Panizzi Lectures 1985. London: The British Library, 1986.
McKenzie extends the scope of
traditional bibliography to a broader sociology of the text, including
videogames, movies, and even landscapes. This perspective has been a major
stimulus to the advancement of the sociological orientation in scholarly
editing.
McKerrow, R. B. An
Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1927.
McKerrow’s manual of “new bibliography”
reflects the early twentieth-century editorial method which made extensive use
of analytical bibliography. The author of Prolegomena
for the Oxford Shakespeare was rather averse to the idea of emending the
copy-text from other sources.
Nutt-Kofoth, Rüdiger, Bodo
Plachta, H.T.M. van Vliet, and Hermann Zwerschina, eds. Text und Edition: Positionen und Perspektiven. Berlin: Erich
Schmidt, 2000.
As a younger generation’s counterpart of
Texte und Varianten (see Martens),
this state of the art of current scholarly editing in Germany also includes
interesting survey articles on Anglo-American scholarly editing (Peter
Shillingsburg) and “genetic criticism and philology” (Geert Lernout; trans. TEXT 14 [2002]: 53-75).
Parker, Hershel. Flawed
Texts and Verbal Icons: Literary Authority in American Fiction. Evanston:
Nortwestern University Press, 1984.
Starting from analyses of revisions by
Melville, Twain, Crane, and Mailer, Parker pleads for more attention to textual
composition and the development of (sometimes self-contradictory) authorial
intentions, which an institutionalized editorial method is often unable to
represent.
Pasquali, Giorgio. Storia
della tradizione e critica del testo. Florence: Le Monnier, 1934.
Pasquali criticizes some of the basic
Lachmannian principles and proposes to take the history of the witnesses and
the scribes into account. The current emphasis on textual tradition in Italian
philology is to a large extent his legacy.
Pizer, Donald. “Self-Censorship and Textual Editing.” Textual Criticism and Literary
Interpretation. Ed. Jerome J. McGann. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1985. 144-61.
Pizer emphasizes the social aspects of
texts, arguing that even if an author has personally changed his texts under
external pressure, it may be more important to present the reader with the
censored versions because of their social resonance.
Reiman, Donald H. “‘Versioning’: The Presentation of
Multiple Texts.” Romantic Texts and
Contexts. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987. 167-80.
Reiman suggests “versioning” (or
multiversional representation) as an alternative to “editing.” The main purpose
of this textual approach is to offer readers and critics the opportunity to
figure out for themselves how the work evolved.
Robinson, Peter M. W. “The One Text and the Many Texts.” Making Texts for the Next Century.
Special Issue of Literary &
Linguistic Computing 15.1 (2000): 5-14
In answer to the question “Is There a
Text in These Variants?” which Robinson asked in a previous essay, he argues
that a scholarly edition is more than merely presenting an archive of variants.
The aim of the editor should be to offer a useful tool so as to allow readers
to make the connection between variation and meaning. A critically edited text
(presented along with “the many texts”) is the best means to that end.
Shillingsburg Peter. Scholarly
Editing in the Computer Age: Theory and Practice. 3rd edition. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1996.
Indispensable introduction to practical
procedures and controversial issues in editorial theory, offering clear
definitions in matters of textual ontology and a survey of different
orientations in scholarly editing.
Shillingsburg, Peter. Resisting Texts: Authority and Submission in
Constructions of Meaning. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1997.
The editor’s main task, Shillingsburg
argues, is to relate the work to the documents and to take responsibility for
the integrity of the agency of texts, which is a responsibility to both the
author and the social contract.
Shillingsburg designs a map with four major forms of textual concern, placing
the physical documents at the center of textual and literary theory.
Stillinger, Jack. Multiple
Authorship and the Myth of the Author in Criticism and Textual Theory. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Stillinger pleads for a broader
conception of authorship to include collaboration as an inherent aspect of
creation. Case studies include John Stuart Mill and his wife, Keats and his
helpers, Wordsworth revising earlier versions of his texts.
Tanselle, G. Thomas. “The Editorial Problem of Final
Authorial Intention.” Studies in Bibliography 29 (1976):
167-211.
An author’s revisions do not
automatically reflect his final intentions. In the case of Typee, Herman Melville was responsible for the changes in the
second edition, but they represent his “acquiescence” rather than his
intention, according to Tanselle, who is well aware that a reader does not have
access to an author’s mind and advises to always take the context into account.
Tanselle, G. Thomas. A Rationale of Textual Criticism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
In his profound analysis of the ontology
of texts Tanselle makes a clear distinction between “work” and “text.” A work
is an entity that exists in no single historical document. Scholarly editing
entails, just like any act of reading, the effort to discover the work that
“lies behind” the text(s) one is presented with.
Thorpe, James. Principles
of Textual Criticism. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1972.
As an early critic of the principles
advocated by Greg and Bowers, Thorpe argues that specific compositional
peculiarities and contingencies tend to be left out of consideration.
Timpanaro, Sebastiano. La
genesi del metodo del Lachmann. Florence: Le Monnier, 1963. Rev. ed. Padua:
Liviana, 1985.
The genealogical study of manuscript
transmission originated in New Testament criticism toward the end of the
eighteenth century. By reexamining Bédier’s criticism regarding two-branch
stemmata, Timpanaro does not so much aim to correct them but to understand how
they came into being.
Zeller, Hans. “A New Approach to the Critical Constitution
of Literary Texts.” Studies in
Bibliography 28 (1975): 231-63.
In his evaluation of Anglo-American copy-text theory from a structuralist
point of view Zeller contrasts the practice of editing an “eclectic
(contaminated) text” with German editorial methods, showing crucial differences
with respect to the notions of “authority,” “authorial intention,” and
“version.”