Textual Scholarship and the Material Book

In the last decades, the emphasis in textual scholarship has moved onto creation, production, process, collaboration; onto the material manifestations of a work; onto multiple rather than single versions; onto reception and book history. Textual scholarship now includes not only textual editing, but any form of scholarship that looks at the materiality of text, of writing, of reading, and of the book.
The essays in this collection explore many questions, about methodology and theory, arising from this widening scope of textual scholarship. The range of texts discussed, from Sanskrit epic via Medieval Latin commentary through English and Scottish Ballads to the plays of Samuel Beckett and the stories of Guimarães Rosa, testifies to the vigour of the discipline. The range of texts is matched by a range of approach: from theoretical discussion of how text 'happens', to analysis of issues of book design and censorship, the connections between literary and textual studies, exploration of the links between reception and commodification in George Eliot, and between information theory and paratext. Through this diversity of subject and approach, a common theme emerges: the need to look further for common ground from which to continue the debate from a comparative perspective.

Introduction Perspectives John Gouws: Why "Text Happens" Won't Do for Fulke Greville (or Anyone Else) Rudiger Nutt-Kofoth: Editorial Scholarship and Literary Studies: Reflections on their Relationship from a German Perspective Dirk Van Hulle: Genetic Editing and Beckett's Multiple Intentions Practices J.C.C. Mays: Coleridge and Yeats: The Romantic Voice Bodo Plachta: More than Mise-en-Page: Book Design and German Editing Chris Ackerley: Towards a Scholarly Edition of Samuel Beckett's Watt Traditions David Atkinson: Editing the Child Ballads: Agency, Intention, and the Problem of Version Wendy J. Phillips-Rodriguez: A Discussion about Textual Eugenics: Still Searching for the Perfect Mahabharata? Paulius V. Subacius: How a Poem Became a Book of Poetry: Conflict of Folkloristic, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches in the Publications of a Nineteenth-Century Classic of Lithuanian Literature Mariken Teeuwen: The Impossible Task of Editing a Ninth-Century Commentary: The Case of Martianus Capella Mark Nixon: Beckett Publishing / Publishing Beckett in the 1930s Crossings Simon Frost: Masterworks and Merchandise: Showing off the Goods of Middlemarch Susan Kovacs: Discourse analysis and book history: Literary indexing as social dialogue Rita Marquilhas: On the Study of Everyday Writings: Portuguese Letters from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century Clara Rowland: Forms of Crossing: Book and margin in the work of Guimaraes Rosa Reviews Notes on Contributors