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Notes

 
[1]

Essays in Critical Dissent (1972), pp. 7-10; first published as "Modern Bibliography and the Literary Artifact" in English Studies Today, 2nd series, ed. G. A. Bonnard (1961), pp. 66-77. Bateson draws on the chapter on "The Mode of Existence of a Literary Work of Art" in René Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, 3rd ed. (1949; rpt. 1963).

[2]

Art and Its Objects: An Introduction to Aesthetics, 2nd ed. (1968; rpt. 1980). The second edition adds six new essays. Some of the relevant issues are raised (inconclusively, I believe) by Tom Davis and Susan Hamlyn, "What Do We Do When Two Texts Differ? She Stoops to Conquer and Textual Criticism" in Evidence in Literary Scholarship: Essays in Memory of James Marshall Osborn, ed. René Wellek and Alvaro Ribeiro (1979), pp. 263-279. A response (to which this essay gives extended support) came from G. Thomas Tanselle, "Recent Editorial Discussion and the Central Questions of Editing," Studies in Bibliography, 34 (1981), 57 n.67.

[3]

The idea of such a list comes from J. O. Urmson's "The Performing Arts" in Contemporary British Philosophy, 4th series, ed. H. D. Lewis (1976), pp. 239-252. Only the first four items in my list are Urmson's and he would dispute the validity of (6). The source of (5) and (6) will be apparent later. Urmson elaborates these ideas in "Literature" in Aesthetics, ed. G. Dickie and R. Sclafani (1977), pp. 334-341.

[4]

On Art and the Mind (1973), pp. 250-260; first published in Critical Essays on the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, ed. M. Krausz (1972), pp. 68-78.

[5]

It should be noted that (i) and (ii) are not necessary conditions; prints are work of art-types and do not fulfil these conditions. Nelson Goodman argues that (ii) is not even a sufficient condition because there could be a notation based on the history of production, "Comments on Wollheim's Paper," Ratio, 20 (1978), 49-51. But a lot hinges on the meaning of Wollheim's "expressible."

[6]

Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (1969), p. 113.

[7]

"Set" is my own desperate unphilosophical choice. It is easy to see that "tree" might denote a class of objects in the world, but it is more difficult to see how the whole text denotes in that way.

[8]

This is to suggest that there may be a theoretical sense in which certain features of the text are "accidental," as opposed to Greg's practical sense. Tom Davis's acute observations on "accidentals" in "The CEAA and Modern Textual Editing," Library, 5th ser., 32 (1977), 63-74, have received too little notice, though they met with a shrewd critical response from G. Thomas Tanselle, "Recent Editorial Discussion and the Central Questions of Editing," SB, 34 (1981), 36-40. It will be apparent that my frequent proviso, "if we copy exactly," explains the bibliographer's emphasis on the holograph or first edition.

[9]

I am aware that these disputes are usually couched in other terms, often concentrating on the author's intentions; but that may not be the best approach. The best guide through these mazes of controversy is G. Thomas Tanselle in "Greg's Theory of Copy-Text and the Editing of American Literature," SB, 28 (1975), 167-229, and "The Editing of Historical Documents," SB, 31 (1978), 1-56, reprinted in Selected Studies in Bibliography (1979), pp. 245-307 and 451-506.

[10]

On the Margins of Discourse: The Relation of Literature to Language (1978), p. 5. The essay first appeared as 'Literature as Performance, Fiction, and Art," Journal of Philosophy, 67 (1970), 553-563, and formed part of a symposium on Goodman's Languages of Art. An alternative view, which I shall not explore, is that in reading we are imagining the work performed.

[11]

Åke W. Edfeldt, Silent Speech and Silent Reading (1959), p. 151.

[12]

The Psychology of Reading (1975). Of particular importance are the sections on subvocalization (pp. 340-350) and models of the reading process in the mature reader (pp. 438-482).

[13]

Concrete Poetry: An International Anthology, ed. Stephen Bann (1967), p. 31. My observation, even if it holds true here, would not hold for all the poems in the anthology; some hardly depend on visual effect at all.

[14]

Richard Shusterman, "The Anomalous Nature of Literature," British Journal of Aesthetics, 18 (1978), 317-329.

[15]

The Common Pursuit (1952), p. 88. The review first appeared in Scrutiny, 12 (1943-44), 74-80. The fifth volume of the Twickenham Pope was edited by James Sutherland (1943).

[16]

The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn (1956), ii, 503 (28 June 1728). An account of the arrangements for publication can be found in Sutherland's introduction to the Twickenham volume; it is supplemented by my studies, Pope's Printer, John Wright (Oxford Bibliographical Society Occasional Publication No. 11, 1976) and "Lawton Gilliver: Pope's Bookseller," SB, 32 (1979), 101-124.

[17]

E. J. Kenney, The Classical Text: Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book (1974), pp. 115 and 156. Munro's discussion of Havercamp is in his edition of De Rerum Natura (1886), i, 19.

[18]

As David Foxon has suggested to me, variorum probably started as a trade shorthand for cum notis variorum. The notebooks of Thomas Bennet show him writing "Cornelius Nepos variorum," "Boethius Variorum" and the like as early as 1686 (The Notebook of Thomas Bennet and Henry Clements, ed. Cyprian Blagden and Norma Hodgson (Oxford Bibliographical Society Publication, n.s. VI, 1956), p. 27).

[19]

The best study of the scholarship and controversies of the time is still R. F. Jones, Lewis Theobald (1919).

[20]

John Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century (1817), ii, 621. Quoted in Lewis Theobald, p. 173. The 1713 Amsterdam Horace was the second edition: Q. Horatius Flaccus, ex Recensione & cum Notis atque Emendatibus Ricardi Bentleii, Amstelaedami, Apud Rod. & Gerh. Wetstenios.

[21]

References are to the Scolar Press facsimile of the Dunciad Variorum (1966).

[22]

"Pope's Books" in English Literature in the Age of Disguise, ed. Maximillian E. Novak (1977), p. 240. The Boileau is a two volume quarto: Oeuvres de Mr. Boileau Despréaux. Avec des Éclaircissemens Historiques, Donnez par Lui-même, A Geneve, chez Fabri & Barrillot.

[23]

The Works of Alexander Pope, ed. W. Elwin and W. J. Courthope (1871), ii, 261. Pope's Works II published in 1735 contained a list of "Variations" at the back of the volume. It seems likely that Warburton changed Pope's conception of the ideal edition.

[24]

In Marxism and Form (1971), pp. 390-400.

[25]

I was helped in the preparation of this paper by the generosity of Professor D. F. McKenzie, who allowed me to see the script of his 1976 Sanders Lectures, "The London Book Trade in the Later Seventeenth Century," and a pre-publication copy of his essay, "Typography and Meaning: The Case of William Congreve." My approach is more conservative and Anglo-Saxon than his and he might well disagree with much that I have said here, but his work provided an important stimulus for my own.