Textual criticism and scholarly editing do not occupy conspicuous
positions on the cutting edge of literary theory. This is because theory and
practice in these disciplines have seemed largely unaffected by several
fundamental propositions underlying modern literary theory, and indeed,
scientific theory and philosophy, as well. Consequently, textual
criticism—the science or art of detecting and removing textual error,
the
discipline of establishing what the author wrote or final authorial intention,
the work of purifying and preserving our cultural heritage—textual
criticism, I say, has appeared to occupy an intellectual backwater
concerning itself with goals and a methodology challenged or abandoned by
modern communication theory, principles of relativity, and concepts about
the nature of knowledge. If, to the traditionalists, modern literary theory
seems to have lost its moorings in reality, to the literary theorists the textual
critics seem moored to a chimera.
I propose to entertain three fundamental propositions underlying
recent challenges to old certainties in relation to the materials, goals, and
methods of textual criticism to see whether, taken seriously, they would
effect a revolution, or totally marginalize, or simply reify textual critical
theory and practice. Although I can be only referential and suggestive in
what I say about fields other than textual and literary criticism, I think that
excursions into related fields is a way of raising a series of questions, to a
few of which I want to contribute potential answers.
The first fundamental proposition of modern theories relating to
factual, historical, and scientific knowledge is that objectivity is a chimera
and that statements about facts, history, and truth are relative—not
actually "knowable"—because of the gap in perception between
object
and subject (an inability to verify correspondence between mental constructs
and "real" objects). This is not a new idea, of course. The second
proposition is the structuralist notion that language provides the vehicle
and imposes the limits for mental constructs of "reality"; therefore, recent
investigations of the nature of "facts," "history," and "truth" have been
focused on the structuring effect of language. The relevance of these
fundamental propositions to any form of speech or writing is quite obvious.
In communication, whether or not the listener/reader receives into
understanding precisely what the speaker/writer sent from intention is
problematical—not ascertainable, not verifiable. The third proposition
is,
then, that the reader, listener, or perceiver is the most important, or some
might say the only important, functional authority for meaning or
understanding. That is, it is impossible to conceive of a work of art apart
from a perceiver's perception of it.
Moby-Dick, for example,
as it "exists" between the covers of a closed book has no functional
existence as a work of art, remaining potential until someone reads it.
These three propositions are, I think, closely related;
they may even be said to entail one another. The reading, which "creates"
the functional existence of the work, is subject to the perception gap and
determined by the structuring nature of language, as was the writing which
created the "potential" existence of the work.
[1]
Now the question I wish ultimately to tease out is how these
propositions, if taken seriously, would affect specific ideas about the
materials, methods, and goals of scholarly editing and scholarly reading,
how they would affect the making and using of scholarly editions. A few
years ago I asked two or three colleagues who claimed to have no expertise
in bibliography but who were "up" on literary theory, as I was not, "What
difference does it make to a deconstructive reading what text the critic starts
with?" They either did not understand the question or found it irrelevant,
and from some points of view they were right, for deconstruction is a
means of seeing how meanings are generated from any text, not a means
of detecting the "intent" of a specific text. But what follows does attempt
an answer to the question. Therefore, I begin with a survey of some ways
in which the principles of relativity, structuralism, and reading have
affected the practice and theory of literary
criticism. If textual criticism and scholarly editing are to provide texts and
insights that are valuable to literary criticism, they must be conducted in the
light of what literary critics find valuable to do. It seems to me that a great
deal of the textual criticism of the past twenty years has been conducted in
the light of literary critical practices of the 1930s to early '60s. I begin
then with an attempt to characterize some of the fundamental ideas of
modern literary theory, though that field is such a seething sea of conflict
that no summary can be adequate. Crucial differences in the basic
assumptions literary critics and textual critics hold about texts, however,
will emerge.
