Introduction: What Is a Text? Author(S): Seth Lerer and Joseph A

Introduction: What is a Text? Author(s): Seth Lerer and Joseph A. Dane Source: Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 1, Reading from the Margins: Textual Studies, Chaucer, and Medieval Literature (1995), pp. 1-10 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3817894 Accessed: 11/12/2010 11:21 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Huntington Library Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org Introduction What Is a Text? SETH LERER AND JOSEPH A. DANE We are all now for "bibliographical"methods, keenly on the watch for every least indication of disturbancein the accurate transmissionof a text, sorting out by many subtle and ingenious methods the first, sec- ond, or third stage of the composition, the original draft, the first completed form, the revisionof this, that, and the other purpose, and so on. But there is much more in these modern methods of researchthan used to be understood by "bibliography,"and I am not sure that the recent extensions of the term have been altogether justifiable. The virtues of bibliographyas we used to call it were its definiteness, that it gave little scope for differencesof opinion, that two persons of reason- able intelligence following the same line of bibliographicalargument would inevitably arrive at the same conclusion, and that it therefore offered a very pleasantrelief from criticalinvestigations of the more "lit- erary"kind.1 nR, > B. McKerrow'sremarks of sixtyyears ago maywell standas an epi- graph for this special issue of HuntingtonLibrary Quarterly. We are o now, too, all for "bibliographical"methods: advances in computersci- ence and the attendant technologies of collation, ideological critiques of the presuppositionsof textual criticism itself, and the sheer volume of newly discov- ered manuscriptsand earlyprinted volumes have all made bibliographya central topic of academicdebate. Few might still claim that the provinceof bibliography lies with the unarticulatedintuitions of "personsof reasonableintelligence," but many would likely agreethat what we mean by "textualscholarship" necessitates a knowledge of the historicity of texts and readersand that such scholarshipcan only benefit from the communication among critics of many and variousfields.2 1. R. B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography(New York, 1927), 2. 2. See D. C. Greetham, TextualScholarship: An Introduction (New York, 1992), 2. HUNTINGTON LIBRARY QUARTERLY - 58:1 2 -", SETH LERER AND JOSEPH A. DANE Nonetheless, although "textuality"has become something of a term to conjure with-and disciplines as diverse as film studies, cultural anthropology,and the history of science imagine themselvesworking with the meaning and the mode of "texts"-the processesof transcribing,collating, describing, and editing books and manuscriptsof earlierhistorical periods remain, for the most part, relativelyfamil- iar.Editions from the age of McKerrowmay seem, at first glance, prettymuch the same as those from the atelierof JeromeMcGann. And, to a largedegree, debates framed by the Bedierists and Lachmanniansof nearly a century ago still find themselvesplayed out in the prefacesand articlesof professionaleditors.3 The question still evadesus: What is a text?Or, to ask it more precisely,what are the relationshipsbetween the methods of textual study and the privilegingof a class of objects called texts?How does an artifactbecome a text?Does it become one only when subjectedto the inquiriesof textual analysis?For that matter,can a text lose its status and revertto the merely artifactual? Such questions guide our inquiries into the elements of textuality itself. Are pictures-illustrations, marginalia,historiated initials-texts, and how can the editor incorporatesuch information in the making of the modern edition? For example, no modern scholarlyedition of The CanterburyTales (excluding, for the moment, facsimiles)prints the pilgrim portraitswith the General Prologue.Yet Frederic Furnivall'slate-nineteenth-century edition of Hoccleve's Regimentof Princesprints a facsimile of Hoccleve's portrait of Chaucer precisely where it appears in one of the earliest manuscripts of the poem (British Library,MS. Harley 4866).4 We may ask the question more radically:Can texts themselves function as pictures?Can, in other words, displays of writing function not as strings of words to be conveyed and edited but ratheras icons of something else? The very notion of "facsimile"implies a transformationof text back into picture. And, as current photographic technologies improve, the spate of new facsimiles may come to stand as virtual (in both senses of the word) replacementsof old texts. The facsimileof the famous Ellesmeremanuscript, recently copublished by the Huntington Libraryand Yushodo Co., Ltd., is no simple reproduction,how- 3. Witness, for example,the exchangesin the essayscollected in StephenG. Nichols, ed., TheNew Philology, a specialissue of Speculum60 (1990); and see Tim William Machan, TextualCriticism and MiddleEnglish Literature(Charlottesville, Va., 1994). 4. F.J. Furnivall,ed., TheRegiment ofPrinces A.D. 1411-12, from the HarleianMS 4866, EarlyEnglish Text Society,extra series, 72 (London, 1897). Of the forty-threemanuscripts of this work, only a few contain,or everdid contain, a Chaucerportrait where the text seemsto demandone. See M. C. Seymour,"The Manuscriptsof Hoccleve'sRegiment of Princes,"Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions 4, pt. 7 (1974): 253-97. WHAT Is A TEXT? s 3 ever;and a numberof textualscholars have argued directly that the entireenter- priseof facsimileproduction is editorialfrom beginning to end.5In the "Notes and Documents"section of this issue,Anthony G. Cainsdescribes the rebinding and conservationof the Ellesmeremanuscript that was undertakenas a compo- nent of the recentfacsimile publication. He revealsthe waysin which binding affectsthe productionof a facsimile-what one can see of the page,both gener- ally and in detail. More broadly,his analysissuggests the difficultboundary betweenthe textualand the artifactual;not only naturaldegradation but alsothe variousbindings and repairshave interfered with the pigmentsand inks,the dec- orationof the manuscriptin particular,which, as other essaysin the volume show,is increasinglythe subjectof textualinquiry. In whatways does the availabilityof facsimileeditions alter the characterof textualquestions? For the EllesmereChaucer, the answerlies in the future.But for,say, Beowulf the evidencehas been around for centuries.One needonly recall the readingwundini gold-a phraselong thought to evidencethe linguistic archaismof the poem-to reflecton how editorsworking from a transcription(in this case the Thorkelintranscripts of the Beowulfmanuscript) could discerna pieceof text not to be foundin the actualmanuscript and then incorporatethat text in publishedfacsimile and criticaleditions.6 What, then, are the elementsof textuality?At the local level,where do we drawthe line betweena "variant"and an "error"?In the vicissitudesof scribal copying,how can we distinguishbetween a lapseand an intrusion-and, in the caseof what appearto be intelligentand meaningfulintrusions, how do we dis- tinguish between the variantand wholesalerewriting?7 The transmissionof 5, See, for example,T. H. Howard-Hill,review of MichaelWarren, The CompleteKing Lear (1608-1623) (Berkeleyand Los Angeles, 1989), Reviewof EnglishStudies, n.s., 43 (1992): 420-22. 6. The phrasewundini gold in Beowulfhad been understoodto be a survivalof an earlyOld Englishinstru mental form, and thus was valuedas evidencefor an earlydate (seventhor eighth century)of compositionof the poem. Kevin Kiernandemonstrated that this readingappears as an editorialconjecture in the transcript of the poem made by G. J. Thorkelinin the late eighteenthcentury. It was then reproducedin Julius Zupitza'stransliteration of the text in his publishedfacsimile (Beowulf, Reproduced in Facsimile[London, 1882]) and was maintainedby twentieth-centuryeditors (notably C. L.Wrenn),who had not consultedthe originalmanuscript. Kiernan's examination of that manuscriptshows that the readingshould, in fact, be wundmigold -scribal nonsense,but one that may be more conservativelyedited as wundumgold, not an archaicphrase at all and one consistentwith the date c. 1000 for the manuscript.See Kiernan,Beowulf and the BeowulfManuscript(New Brunswick,N.J., 1980), 30-37. 7. This questionhas

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