University of Virginia Library

II

In the 1980s the tenor and range of editorial discussion suddenly changed and broadened. The changes have taken three primary modes, but all three derive impetus from the newer critical theories and particularly from new attention to the act of reading as well as social theories of communication.

Morse Peckham had tried something similar in the early 70s with a behavioral model of communication, but it had little influence in the editing community.[16] The three new modes have certain things in common, but the differences lead to radically different editorial results. Two of the modes remain author-centric; the third is socio-centric. Ultimately, it is upon this third, the social view, that I wish to focus.

The first of these new modes dubbed itself The New Scholarship; its most frequent spokesman has been Hershel Parker.[17] The reading and editing principle for this approach is to see the work in the context of its creation in order to best understand what the author was trying to do and to see that effort in relationship to what the author did do—the text which he produced. Parker questions a basic assumption of the New Critics, that works of art are unified and make sense and that the critic's job is to discover and reveal that unity and sense. Exploring examples of works in which he believes the author did not fulfil his own intentions, or where a decently fulfilled intention was marred by the author's own later revisions, Parker dethrones the text as the verbal icon. He argues that textual criticism pursued with the diligence and methods of "The New Scholarship," can reveal flawed texts with "adventitious" meanings resulting, not just from corruptions imposed by editors, but from the author's failure to embody a coherent intention in the produced text. While this approach is wide-ranging in its search for evidence of all sorts that may have influenced the creative process and while it is equally wide-ranging in its awareness of influences on reading and interpreting the work, it remains an author-centered approach. As such it is primarily a refinement of the more traditional (CEAA) modes, the primary difference being that it eschews "final intentions" per se as a touchstone for determining the authenticity of the text. Often, in the examples Parker provides, initial intention is preferred to final intentions, since by the time of "final" intentions, Parker says, the author may have ceased the creative mode and adopted an editorial mode.[18] The approach does bear a similarity to the other two new editorial modes in that it emphasizes a concept of the author in a social continuum that includes economics, politics, the psychology of creativity, and book production. It represents, however, a refinement of an authorial concept of authority, not a dismissal of it.[19]

The second new editorial mode reacts strongly against that "single adequate established text" idea. The "multiple text" editors are not really new, but much new editorial debate emanates from their point of view. It is represented by Hans Gabler, editor of Joyce's Ulysses, and has roots in German editorial traditions as expressed early on by Hans Zeller.[20] I have adopted a good deal of this approach in my own editing of W. M. Thackeray. Its primary difference from previous editorial principles is its insistence on multiple or fluid texts. Authorial intention is recognized as less frequently monolithic than it is developing or changing—not only in a continuous progression but reaching stages of supposed completion or being transformed by conflicting or mutually exclusive intentions. In theory no particular preference is given

to the final-intention text, as was the stated goal of CEAA editions, or to the text best representing the author's creative involvement with the work, as advocated by Parker in Flawed Texts. This position insists that the editorial aim is to present the multiple authorial texts—representative of developing or changed intentions—in such a way that the work may be read radially, each version in relationship to its other manifestations. Each authorial version of the work adds to the whole critical perception of what the author was doing and therefore of what the work means. Further, it allows for the view that a new authorial intention does not deprive an original or intermediate intention of any "authority"—it is merely different; all authorial intentions may be equally authoritative.

It is much easier to think of the multiple-text concept in theory than it is to construct a multiple-text edition. "Everybody knows" texts are linear, not multiple, and "everyone" seems to want a text to be comfortable with.[21] But comfort and the practical problem of how to present the work of art are secondary to the significant issue here—that, except for unrevised texts, a single text does not adequately represent the work for scholarly study and that no single text can best represent the work for a critical reader—other single texts may be equally successful or useful.

There have been several efforts to make practical multiple-text editions. In Hans Gabler's edition of Ulysses [22] one can see the "synoptic text" on left-hand pages tracing the development of authorial intention through a sequence of variant texts preceding the final fair copy used to set the first edition. The synoptic text superimposes all the preceding texts on one page through an elaborate, but decipherable, coding system. On the facing page the reader sees a linear text (clear reading text) representing the final manuscript version. The reader is encouraged to read the right-hand linear page in tandem with the synoptic or radial left-hand page. Michael J. Warren's Complete King Lear reprints two basic variant texts in parallel on facing pages with further variant versions indicated in marginalia. The idea is that the editor's critical preference, if he has one, is submerged in the arrangement of competing documentary textual forms. That the linear text is a limitation which scholarly editions can, to some extent, overcome was clearly apparent from the many iterations of the idea at the 1987 meeting of the Society for Textual Scholarship in New York.[23]

As different as these various approaches to editing may seem, they have certain things in common. In each the work of art is seen as an authorial communication normally reaching its verbal form with minimal reference to book production, which is seen largely as an enabling process owing its allegiance to the author but frequently defaulting in that allegiance. Given this set of assumptions the critic is likely to see the interference of the publisher, editor and printer as legitimate only if it does not violate authorial intention or authorial practice. The production crew, from publisher to binder, is entrusted with translating the author's manuscript into print—or in more characteristic terms, entrusted with enabling the author's communication

to be seen by many in the form of a printed book. The production process is necessary but is always on notice that it may fail its handmaiden role.