Florence Margaret Paisey Professor David Gants Digital Scholarly Editing Fall 2012 Matters in Electronic Textuality Matters

in Electronic Textuality is an online project that explores central perspectives in textual bibliography and textual criticism, their relationship to editorial principles and how these perspectives play out in an electronic edition. This project required establishing a foundational knowledge based in textual criticism, approaches to digital editing, distinguishing an electronic edition from a print edition, conceptualizing a model of electronic edition and developing skills in XML TEI for the transcription of a literary text. The following writing includes the online textual introduction though as a print text, it is de-contextualized and, as a result, is conceptually and hermeneutically flattened. Greetham, Bowers, Greg and Tanselle are textual and editorial scholars whose theory and practices aim to establish a critical eclectic text. The eclectic text is based on the notion of the ideal copy, determined by examining the textual and transmission history of a work -- examining surviving manuscripts, comparing variants, exorcising alterations or corruptions and then reconstituting a critical text. The role of a surviving manuscript in the eclectic text hinges on what agency and what point in a text's production history best reflects an author's intention. Does the author bear an exclusive responsibility for the text or is the text a social transaction that results from all actors in the process of publication

2 (Tanselle, Rationale 73)? The role of the editor in the Greg-Bowers school is to determine the ideal copy. The means of arriving at this ideal copy or the text that most nearly reflects the author's final intentions depends upon how one views artistic responsibility. Ideal copy, as the copytext, came about through literary research with early manuscripts and printed books where original manuscripts do not survive. In the absence of an original manuscript, the Greg-Bowers perspective recognizes the earliest printed edition -- that was based on the manuscript -- as the edition that reflects the author's intentions more accurately than later editions. Since the purpose of textual criticism is to recognize and emend textual corruptions as well as determine the intended meaning and expression of an author, the Greg-Bowers copy-text will usually be the first (authorized) edition, or the last to receive the author's revision and sanction (Tanselle, Editorial 8). This is simply a rule of thumb -literary history is replete with authors who have sanctioned more than one final version. Greg's influential theory of copy-text does not directly deal with authorial intentions. Greg was concerned with upholding an editor's reasoned prerogative in establishing copy-text, delineating editorial procedures for handling accidentals and substantives. His theory built upon Lachmann's genealogical theory of mapping variants as stemma as well as Bowers' notion of a historically reconstructed text that incorporated multiple final versions. Greg provided a rationale for emending copy-text where there is no surviving manuscript and where there is no clear "historical, biographical, bibliographical and linguistic evidence" (Tanselle, Editorial 28). In this case, Greg's position rests on the notion that the earliest printed edition, based on the lost manuscript, will have fewer alterations than later editions and so should be employed as copy-text. However, where

3 an author has revised a text and authorized another version, the accidentals (punctuation) from the earlier copy-text retain their authority while the substantives (words) from variant editions or issues may be adopted based on editorial policy (Greg 51). Such is a rough sketch of the theoretical underpinnings of classical or formalist textual scholarship and critical editing, the oft-quoted "Greg-Bowers" approach. However, while an author conceives of a text -- and writing is one of many texts -- and expresses it, what other realities play upon the production of text? Is the author self-sufficient? Are social, institutional and commercial interests at play? What bibliographical roles do these realities effect? And, what are the implications for a textual critic and editor? These issues are at the heart of D. F. McKenzie's concept of bibliography as an investigation into the sociology of texts -- historical readings, sociological facts and the semiotics of print in conveying meanings. In this sense, McKenzie recognizes material signs as bibliographic codes -typography, layout, paper, inadvertent printer's errors or marks -- or electronic elements and presentation -- that play into the hermeneutics of texts. McKenzie accepts the significance of descriptive bibliography, its application and contributions. However, he takes bibliography into a socio-historical context where the facts of transmission and the material evidence of reception and reading play back on the text and create new texts as a function of form. In this regard, final authorial intention is only one clue in the riddle of textual authority and textuality; historical, cultural and commercial facts also provide clues to meanings and in McKenzie's words the human presence in any recorded text (McKenzie 29). Jerome McGann also recognizes the significance of socio-cultural form and function

4 in creating readings, texts and textuality. He questions the idea of the author as "solitary genius" or autonomous and differentiates between an author's final unpublished intention (primary documents and manuscripts) and the final published intention. He also takes issue with Bowers' rejection of Greg's rationale of copy-text and Bowers' insistence that editorial intervention is a form of textual corruption, despite an author's acceptance. For McGann, an editor approaches a public or published text as a specific set of social operations, where institutions and socio-historical conditions bear on the text (McGann, Condition 21). McGann views literature as a communicative transaction where an author engages an audience and ventures into a collaborative relationship with an editor and publisher. In this sense, a textual history involves shifting intentions as author, editor and publisher come under the pressures of circumstances and transformations during production (McGann, Critique 60). With McGann, contamination or corruption of texts certainly occurs, however editorial intervention with consent from the author does not constitute textual corruption -- rather this relationship plays into the many social, political, institutional and commercial variables or agency -- the network -- that affect the development of a text. Final intentions relate to social agreements and are simply part of the complexities and facts of transformations and production in a textual history. And, what does Tanselle say about the socialization of texts as conceived by McKenzie and McGann? A lot. And, he leaves no stone unturned in his advocacy for an authorial formulated and intended text. As he unequivocally states, "Where McGann falters...is in his linking of [material negotiations] to a rejection of authorial intention as a goal of study" (Instability, 11).

5 Works Cited Bald, R. C. Editorial Problems--a Preliminary Survey. Studies in Bibliography 3 (1950): 3-17. Print. Greg, W. W. "The Rationale of Copy-Text." Bibliography and Textual Criticism: English and American Literature 1700 to the Present. Ed. Brack Jr., O. M. and Warner Barnes. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1950. Print. McGann, Jerome. The Textual Condition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Print. McGann, Jerome. A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992. Print. McKenzie, D. F. "The Book as Expressive Form." Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. Ed. McKenzie, D. F. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1999. Print. Tanselle, G. Thomas.The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention. Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing. Ed. Tanselle, G. Thomas. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1990. Print. Tanselle, G. Thomas. "Textual Instability and Editorial Idealism." Studies in Bibliography 49 (1996): 2-61. Print.