I certainly didn't mean to suggest that we should *abandon* glosses; I am
simply wondering how the practice of annotating might, or should, change
in an age where access to information is readier (if still slightly
unreliable, as many note) than ever. I can almost imagine, now, an extreme
case where an editor simply flags ('anchors') words that the student
should, or might like to, chase up; but of course I wouldn't want to do
without the kinds of annotation that not only explain, but connect.
I declare my need for and indebtedness to heavily-annotated editions like
Variorum, Hamilton, Fowler, etc. But of course these editions also
*restrict* our readings, and *direct* them. In the pluralistic
interpretative world of the Googlian age, is it not time to experiment
again not only with the 'unedited' text, but the 'unannotated' text? I
don't mean to suggest a new practical criticism, but rather, as David
Miller reminded me recently, to restore the thrill and pleasure of the
reader's own itinerary of discovery. Annotated editions can be
*deflating*, where the experience of *growing* to love a poet like Spenser
or Milton should be, I'd have thought, *invigorating*. My students often
feel overwhelmed by Spenser, which I think is partly a response to the
*edition* in which they encounter him, rather than to the poems
themselves; they are never given the opportunity to latch onto and love
the poetry for its successively-revealing simplicities, before being
whelmed and clobbered with its complexity, allusiveness, philosophical
depth, and so on.
A 'plain text' edition should not be taken as a licence for indolence, but
rather an invitation to discovery. Are we forestalling discovery?
Just wondering. One a penny, two a penny.
az
Andrew Zurcher
Tutor and Director of Studies in English
Queens' College
Cambridge CB3 9ET
United Kingdom
+44 1223 335 572
hast hast post hast for lyfe
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