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In "Structure and Society in Literary History" Robert Weimann, one of Germany's leading literary theoreticians, raises important questions about the social function of literature and sketches the outlines of a new historical criticism.

Weinmann's Marxist analysis relates the history of writing and reading to the history of social and economic activities; literature and art are imaginative appropriations of the world, producers as well as products of culture. Aesthetic structures-- texts-- and social function are necessarily interrelated for Weimann as they are not for the followers of the New Criticism or the practitioners of structuralism.

Firmly grounded in Anglo-American and Western European criticism, Weimann presents a cogent critique of T. S. Eliot's concept of tradition, analyzes the development of American literary history, and reconsiders the interpretation of Shakespeare's imagery. A new concluding chapter, written especially for the Johns Hopkins edition, presents a coherent and systematically developed survey of those poststructuralist positions most relevant to the placement of "Structure and Society in Literary History" within the critical context of the mid 1980s. ... Read more

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How might it be that works of art and literature are not just made, but unmade, remade, and made over? Joseph Grigely argues that it is the very nature of art to incorporate change by editors and conservators, and as it is resituated in different publications and exhibition sites. Asserting that the common editorial practice of creating eclectic texts is essentially a eugenic practice based on Romanticism's desire for racial and textual purity, Grigely reconceives the notion of textual difference, or textualterity.
Grigely draws not only on a wide range of cultural transformations in nineteenth--and twentieth-century literature-- including Thomas Bowdler's 1818 edition of Shakespeare and the Reader's Digest condensed edition of Tom Sawyer--but on a detailed exploration of recent controversies in the arts to argue for the need to understand these textual transformations as fundamental cultural phenomena. In a concluding chapter devoted to Jackson Pollock's Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), Grigely shows how the title and the media of Pollock's painting have been changed (by friends, curators, and an inch-long cicada) in ways that ultimately affect our conceptualization of the work of art as a timeless object.
By moving between the scholarly territory of textual research and the critical territory of contemporary conceptual art, Grigely creates a transdisciplinary discourse that engages current discussions on framing, authorial intentions, collaborative authorship, and moral rights. Textualterity will be essential reading for textual critics, art historians and theorists, and students of cultural theory and history.
Joseph Grigely is Associate Professor of Art, University of Michigan.
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Another Outstanding Contribution from Joseph Grigely
Like his art work and critiques, Joseph Grigely's selection of essays are insightful, humorous and often brilliant.Grigely is one of those rare artists who can challenge his audience on many levels with unusual clarity.Highly recommended for anyone who has appreciated the work of Avital Ronell or Jacques Derrida. ... Read more

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With a career stretching from the last years of the nineteenth century well into the 1930s, William Butler Yeats is perceived as a key figure in the transition from Romanticism to modernism in English literature. In Much Labouring David Holdeman opens up new paths of thinking about Yeats's modernism by paying close attention to the production of his early books as well as to their publication histories.
Two characteristics stand out in Yeats's career. First, there was his intricate interaction with collaborators, including his sister E. C. Yeats, to produce fine books in which the deliberate use of the page created meaningful relationships among the poems. These collaborative works revealed tangled ideological commitments to Irish cultural nationalism, to women's emancipation, and to wealthy book collectors. Second, there was Yeats's attachment to pervasive, repeated revision of his own work--the struggle to extend his authority over its reception.
Yet without an understanding of how publishers compromised Yeats's intentions in order to capitalize on the success of his early work, the richness of these characteristics is lost, and Yeats's image flattened. Holdeman restores to the picture a sense of the textual processes that qualify Yeats's perceived ideological commitments, giving a fuller understanding of what the poet was up to.
Although Much Labouring will particularly interest students of modernism, the uncommon significance of Yeats's textual experiments suggests new perspectives on interpretive and editorial theories and practices generally.
David Holdeman is Assistant Professor of English, University of North Texas.
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The development of digital technology and its widespread availability on the personal computer are bringing about a fundamental paradigm shift in the ways that literary texts are created, preserved, disseminated, and studied--a revolution that many scholars have argued is as profound as that created by Gutenberg's invention of movable type. At the same time, a major shift in textual theory--away from the notion of a "Definitive Edition" and toward a recognition of the integrity of discrete versions--has highlighted the fundamental limitations of the printed book.
The Literary Text in the Digital Age addresses these developments from a wide range of perspectives. The essays discuss topics from the history of electronic editions to problems in encoding to the relationship between contemporary literary theory and the capabilities of digital technology. Other articles discuss the design of hypertext electronic editions now in progress or projected, including editions of the work of Chaucer, Thomas Hardy, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Individually and together these contributions show how such projects will go beyond the "electronic book" and exploit the full potential of the new medium. Finally, the volume also includes an afterword, in which A. Walton Litz reflects on the importance of digital technology from the perspective of one of the senior scholars in modern literary studies.
The essays gathered here are both authoritative and timely. This volume will be of interest to any student or scholar of literary texts, as well as those in any field concerned with the advent of digital technology and its transforming effects.
Contributors are Phillip E. Doss, Richard J. Finneran, Simon Gatrell, Susan Hockey, Ian Lancashire, John Lavagnino, A. Walton Litz, Jerome J. McGann, William H. O'Donnell, Peter Robinson, Charles L. Ross, Peter Shillingsburg, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, Emily A. Thrush, and John Unsworth.
Richard J. Finneran is Hodges Chair of Excellence Professor of English, University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
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An examination of a problematic text by one of America's most important poets
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This text aims to provide students with a critical introduction to the major developments in literary criticism and literary theory in English since the 1890s. ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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Included in this unique volume are Addison's most memorable essays from The Spectator (1711-1712), complete and amplified with copious notes identifying contemporary persons and allusions, as well as classical allusions. Edited by John Loftis, this edition also includes an introduction, a list of the principal dates in Addison's life, and a selected bibliography. ... Read more

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Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books addresses Wilde's obsession with the visual appearance or "look" of his published writings. It examines the role played by graphic designers in the production of Wilde's writings and demonstrates how marginal and decorative elements of the printed book affect interpretation.
Nicholas Frankel approaches Wilde's writings as graphical or "printed" phenomena that reveal their significance through the beautiful and elaborate decorations with which they were published in Wilde's own lifetime. With extensive reference to and exposition on Wilde's theoretical writings and letters, the author shows that, far from being marginal elements of the literary text, these decorative devices were central to Wilde's understanding of his own writings as well as to his "aesthetic" theory of language. Extensive illustrations support Frankel's arguments.
While its principal appeal will be to students of Oscar Wilde and the Victorian fin-de-siècle, this book will also appeal to textual and literary scholars, art historians, and linguistic philosophers interested in the graphical nature of the linguistic sign.
Nicholas Frankel is Assistant Professor of English, Virginia Commonwealth University.
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These days, the margins have become a powerful position from which to mount a critique of contemporary society, culture, and text. From gay and lesbian studies to postcolonial or "subaltern" criticism, formerly marginalized perspectives have brought provocative new insights into many fields of inquiry. But until comparatively recently, the extremely powerful, even culture-defining, discourse of textual editing has been immune to such influences.
The Margins of the Text is the first attempt to collect a body of essays concerned with specific aspects of the marginal as they relate to text. The volume is divided into two sections. The first part assembles essays concerned with the margins of textual discourse and explores the function of discourses not previously recognized as significant to scholarly editing, such as those of class, race, gender, and sexual orientation. The second section attends to the textual margins in the bibliographical sense--the margins of the book, in which there has been so much recent interest. The two parts of the collection are clearly interrelated, since both study the effects of margins as a form of cultural discourse.
As a whole, the collection spans several periods (medieval, Renaissance, eighteenth-century to modern), several disciplines (drama, literature, art history, politics, and philosophy), and offers a wide-ranging consideration of a single topic as it is manifested in various genres, formats, and media. The contributors are among the most respected textual/critical theorists in their fields.
The Margins of the Text will become a standard reference in the field, and will be read profitably by culture critics and social historians as well as textual critics and editors.
D. C. Greetham is Professor of English and Medieval Studies, City University of New York Graduate School.
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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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Most readers think of a written work as producing its meaning through the words it contains. But what is the significance of the detailed and beautiful illuminations on a medieval manuscript? Of the deliberately chosen typefaces in a book of poems by Yeats? Of the design and layout of text in an electronic format? How does the material form of a work shape its understanding in a particular historical moment, in a particular culture?
The material features of texts as physical artifacts--their "bibliographic codes" --have over the last decade excited increasing interest in a variety of disciplines. The Iconic Page in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Culture gathers essays by an extraordinarily distinguished group of scholars to offer the most comprehensive examination of these issues yet, drawing on examples from literature, history, the fine arts, and philosophy.
Fittingly, the volume contains over two dozen illustrations that display the iconic features of the works analyzed--from Alfred the Great's Boethius through medieval manuscripts to the philosophy of C. S. Peirce and the dustjackets on works by F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Styron.
The Iconic Page in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Culture will be groundbreaking reading for scholars in a wide range of fields.
George Bornstein is C. A. Patrides Professor of English, University of Michigan. Theresa Tinkle is Associate Professor of English, University of Michigan.
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lovely illustrations, but they should have been in colour
Thoughtfully, the editors accompanied the text with several pages of images of old manuscripts. Like the Ellesmere Chaucer, or the Cotton manuscript. Plus, there is also an image of a Muslim design carved into stucco. Most of the images, however, are indeed taken from old European manuscripts. The only pity is that the images are all in black and white. Cost considerations probably prevented the inclusion of these as colour plates. Unfortunate, because that removes an entire dimension of appreciation for the reader.

The text also has an interesting discussion about the effect of the Web on the awareness of these old manuscripts. Exposes them to a far broader lay audience, and thus gives the chance of a greater knowledge of what is hitherto a very small field. It remarks how the typical image of a manuscript on the Web is somewhat low resolution. But the book was written in 1998. Over time, this problem will be remedied, as memory, disk drives and bandwidth keep getting cheaper. ... Read more

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Managing Readers explores the fascinating interchange between text and margin, authorship and readership in early modern England. Printed marginalia did more than any other material feature of book production in the period between 1540 and 1700 to shape the experience of reading. William W. E. Slights considers overlooked evidence of the ways that early modern readers were instructed to process information, to contest opinions, and to make themselves into fully responsive consumers of texts.
The recent revolution in the protocols of reading brought on by computer technology has forced questions about the nature of book-based knowledge in our global culture. Managing Readers traces changes in the protocols of annotation and directed reading--from medieval religious manuscripts and Renaissance handbooks for explorers, rhetoricians, and politicians to the elegant clear-text editions of the Enlightenment and the hypertexts of our own time. Developing such concepts as textual authority, generic difference, and reader-response, Slights demonstrates that printed marginalia were used to confirm the authority of the text and to undermine it, to supplement "dark" passages, and to colonize strategic hermeneutic spaces. The book contains twenty-two illustrations of pages from rare-book archives that make immediately clear how distinctive the management of the reading experience was during the first century-and-a-half of printing in England.
William W. E. Slights is Professor of English, University of Saskatchewan. He is also author of Ben Jonson and the Art of Secrecy.
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Before the technology of print, every book was unique. Two manuscripts of the "same" text could package and transmit that text very differently, depending on the choices made by scribes, compilers, translators, annotators, and decorators. Is it appropriate, Elizabeth Bryan asks, for us to read these books as products of a single author's consciousness? And if not, how do we read them?
In Collaborative Meaning in Medieval Scribal Culture, Bryan compares examples from the British Library Cotton Otho C.xiii manuscript of La3amon's Brut, the early thirteenth-century verse history that translated King Arthur into English for the first time. She discovers cultural attitudes that valued communal aspects of manuscript texts--for example, a view of the physical book as connecting all who read or even held it to each other.
The study is divided into two parts. Part one presents Early Middle English concepts of "enjoining" texts and explores the theoretical and methodological challenges they pose to present-day readers of scribally-produced texts. Part two conducts a detailed study of the multiple interpretations built into the manuscript text. Illustrations of manuscript pages accompany analysis, and the reader is invited to engage in interpreting the manuscript text.
Collaborative Meaning in Medieval Scribal Culture will be of interest to students and specialists in medieval chronicle histories, Middle English, Arthurian literature, and literary and textual theory.
Elizabeth J. Bryan is Associate Professor of English, Brown University.
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With the recognition in recent years that the apparently stable texts we read in codex books are actually fluid, unstable, or indeterminate, there has been a growing interest in the work of editors. As specialized readers, editors interpret and produce texts in ways that precede and partly determine the strategies with which other readers are said to write texts.
Editing D. H. Lawrence: New Versions of a Modern Author takes the Cambridge University Press edition of The Letters and Works of D. H. Lawrence, the first complete re-editing of a major modern writer, as a test case in the intersection of textual theory, editorial praxis, and publishing history. The contributors, ten of whom have edited Lawrence for Cambridge or other presses, reflect on important questions raised by the project. How has understanding of Lawrence's creativity and the nature of critical editing been altered by the Cambridge project? Has editing revealed or disguised the processes through which Lawrence's oeuvre reached its multifarious forms? How has this creative process been incorporated into editorial theories, practices, and editions? What have Lawrence's editors assimilated from the community of literary theorists?
Copyright on works by many of the great modernists--Lawrence, Conrad, Woolf, Joyce, Fitzgerald--has now lapsed. Students and teachers face a bewildering array of competing editions, many containing significantly different reading texts. Editing D. H. Lawrence will help clarify the important issues surrounding this battle of the books.
Charles L. Ross is Associate Professor of English, University of Hartford. Dennis Jackson is Professor of English, University of Delaware.
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