University of Virginia Library

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.