In literary investigation all evidence is textual, dependent on preservation in material copies. Copies, however, are vulnerable to inadvertent and purposeful change. In this volume, Peter Shillingsburg explores the implications of this central concept of textual scholarship.

Through thirteen essays, Shillingsburg argues that literary study depends on documents, the preservation of works, and textual replication, and he traces how this proposition affects understanding. He explains the consequences of textual knowledge (and ignorance) in teaching, reading, and research-and in the generous impulses behind the digitization of cultural documents. He also examines the ways in which facile assumptions about a text can lead one astray, discusses how differing international and cultural understandings of the importance of documents and their preservation shape both knowledge about and replication of works, and assesses the dissemination of information in the context of ethics and social justice. In bringing these wide-ranging pieces together, Shillingsburg reveals how and why meaning changes with each successive rendering of a work, the value in viewing each subsequent copy of a text as an original entity, and the relationship between textuality and knowledge.

Featuring case studies throughout, this erudite collection distills decades of Shillingsburg's thought on literary history and criticism and appraises the place of textual studies and scholarly editing today.

About the Author

Peter Shillingsburg was the first Martin J. Svaglic Professor of English and Textual Studies at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of five books, most recently From Gutenberg to Google: Electronic Representations of Literary Texts.

Reviews

"There are big issues at stake in this restless symposium of a book, for it is brave and honest. Every research library serving the humanities needs to order a copy of it, and textual scholars will want to do so as well."

-Paul Eggert Textual Cultures

"Records the thinking of one of our strongest editorial theorists as the study of the book bent-or did not bend-to the winds of change during the first decade of the millennium."

-The Library

"Shillingsburg's insistence that we insist on the importance of provenance in our classrooms and editions is timely, urgent and - as we would expect - supported by the soundest available textual evidence."

-Barbara Cooke The Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship

Book Information
ISBN 9780271081076
Author Peter Shillingsburg
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint Pennsylvania State University Press
Publisher Pennsylvania State University Press
Weight(grams) 340g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 17mm