Dear Germaine, and List,
You might like to know that last night at DMU when had a round-table,
with visiting scholars, on precisely the issue of the relationship and
difference between Book History and Historical Bibliography (my own view
is that Book History is Historical Bibliography without the archival
detail, or methodological rigour, but some may wish to contest that),
and its relationship to Textual Criticism. If there is one thing I wish
Don had said in his inaugural Panizzi Lectures it is that 'a sociology
of the texts depends on an archaeology of the documents': his own work
demonstrates this, but the work of later cultural theorists who have
become interested in the history of the book has tended to overlook the
physical realities of the objects they discuss. I look forward to your
book. Mark.
-----Original Message-----
From: The list of the European Society for Textual Scholarship and the
Society for Textual Scholarship
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Germaine
Warkentin
Sent: 22 March 2007 17:03
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Texts as cultural objects
Well, I am now using the "reply to all" button. Barbara, such questions
need not be vague if the necessary preliminary epistemological and
archaeological-historical questions get asked. The problem is, they
almost never do. The reason I so enjoyed Jim's outburst is because it
fits in so well with the opening chapter of the book I am working on
(yes, Warwick, "Against Bibliography" -- the chapter title, not the
book). That chapter is an attempt to survey the various conflicts and
theoretical muddles as engagingly as possible (I begin with an old New
Yorker cartoon) so that THEN I can go to two tough chapters in which I
address first the philosophical issues, and second, the question "when
did homo sapiens begin to read and write anyway?" (Don't give me
Babylonian tablets; I'm poking around in the Palaeolithic.) I don't see
how one can come to any firm conclusions about book history as a mode of
analysis without asking those questions. Just to reassure everyone, this
book -- if I ever get it finished -- is called "The Bibliographical
Imagination," and yes, it will eventually get to the print culture that
absorbs everyone in the field often to the exclusion of all else.
Eventually. I now retreat from the field -- Germaine.
--
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Germaine Warkentin // English (Emeritus)
VC 205, Victoria College (University of Toronto),
73 Queen's Park Crescent East, Toronto, Ont. M5S 1K7, CANADA
[log in to unmask] (fax number on request)
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