Textual scholarship

Textual scholarship (or textual studies) is an umbrella term for disciplines that deal with describing, transcribing, editing or annotating texts and physical documents.

Overview

Textual research is mainly historically oriented. Textual scholars study, for instance, how writing practices and printing technology have developed, how a certain writer has written and revised his or her texts, how literary documents have been edited, the history of reading culture, as well as censorship and the authenticity of texts. The subjects, methods and theoretical backgrounds of textual research vary widely, but what they have in common is an interest in the genesis and derivation of texts and textual variation in these practices.

Many textual scholars are interested in author intention while others seek to see how text is transmitted. Textual scholars often produce their own editions of what they discovered.^[1]

Disciplines of textual scholarship include, among others, textual criticism, stemmatology, paleography, genetic criticism, bibliography and history of the book. Textual scholar David Greetham has described textual scholarship as a term encompassing "the procedures of enumerative bibliographers, descriptive, analytical, and historical bibliographers, paleographers and codicologists, textual editors, and annotators-cumulatively and collectively".^[2] Some disciplines of textual scholarship focus on certain material sources or text genres, such as epigraphy, codicology and diplomatics.

The historical roots of textual scholarship date back to the 3rd century BCE, when the scholarly activities of copying, comparing, describing and archiving texts became professionalized in the Library of Alexandria.^[3][4][5]

See also

• Text publication society

References

1. "Textual Scholarship".
2. Greetham, David C. (1992). Textual Scholarship: An Introduction. Psychology Press. ISBN 0-8153-0058-1.
3. Greetham, David C.: Textual Scholarship. An Introduction. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 1417. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1994 (1992)
4. Greetham, David C.: "What is Textual Scholarship?". In A Companion to the History of the Book. Eds. Simon Eliot & Jonathan Rose. Blackwell companions to literature and culture 48. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 (2007)
5. Katajamäki, Sakari & Karina Lukin: "Textual Trails from Oral to Written Sources: An Introduction". In: Lukin, Karina, Frog & Sakari Katajamäki (eds.), Limited Sources, Boundless Possibilities. Textual Scholarship and the Challenges of Oral and Written Texts. RMN Newsletter No 7, December 2013.

Further reading

• Bowers, Fredson (1959). Textual & Literary Criticism. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511552885. ISBN 9780511552885.
• Bryant, John (2002). The Fluid Text. doi:10.3998/mpub.12024. ISBN 9780472098156.
• Fraistat, Neil; Flanders, Julia, eds. (2012). The Cambridge Companion to Textual Scholarship. doi:10.1017/CCO9781139044073. ISBN 9781139044073.
• Gabler, Hans Walter; Robinson, Peter; Subač Ius, Paulius V. (2008). Textual Scholarship and the Canon. doi:10.1163/9789042032361. ISBN 9789042032361.
• Grésillon, Almuth (1998). "La critique génétique à l'œuvre". Pourquoi la critique génétique ?. p. 61. doi:10.3917/cnrs.conta.1998.01.0061. ISBN 9782271055965.
• Van Hulle, Dirk (2004). Textual Awareness. doi:10.3998/mpub.17739. ISBN 9780472113415.
• McKenzie, D. F. (1999). Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511483226. ISBN 9780511483226.
• Van Mierlo, Wim, ed. (2007). Textual Scholarship and the Material Book. doi:10.1163/9789042028180. ISBN 9789042028180.
• Van Mierlo, Wim; Fachard, Alexandre, eds. (2014). The Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship. doi:10.1163/9789401212113. ISBN 9789401212113.
• Shillingsburg, Peter L. (2006). From Gutenberg to Google. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511617942. ISBN 9780511617942.
• Tanselle, G. Thomas (1992). A Rationale of Textual Criticism. doi:10.9783/9780812200423. ISBN 9780812200423.

External links

• The Society for Textual Scholarship
• The European Society for Textual Scholarship (ESTS)