In 1984 I made an attempt to delineate the gradations of concepts
from the ideal to the concrete, which I thought clarified the editorial
materials and goals sufficiently so that disagreements among scholarly
editors about editorial policies could be understood clearly and not result
from vagueness or confusion.[17]
Disagreements could thus be resolved or brought to a truce in which the
parties at least knew why they disagreed. I have been gratified by the
response to this effort from editors who expressed feelings of relief and
release from conflicts between what their common sense inclined them to
think was a desirable editorial solution and what standard editorial practice
and principles seemed to dictate.
Now it seems profitable to raise the question again because the
arguments about what constitutes the work of art rages not merely among
textual critics, but among literary critics generally. I have found inspiration
to continue my 1984 attempt in the writings of Jerome McGann, D. F.
McKenzie, Joseph Grigely and James McLaverty.[18] My discussion
will take the form primarily of definitions. The distinctions between
concepts, and the relations I will try to show existing between them, are
designed first to provide a system for describing the range of materials that
are commonly referred to vaguely as books or works of literary art, and
second, to provide a ground for discussing the various sorts of acts (often
characterized by confusion and conflict) undertaken in response to these
materials. My purpose is to enable the conflicts to be focused more clearly
on substantive differences of opinion and judgment rather than on
confusions about what is being said. Although taxonomies are by definition
logocentric and tend to pin down concepts or objects in a conventional way,
the result of the taxonomy I propose is to suggest that the drive towards
arresting and codifying Works of Art is futile. Instead, it suggests that the
work is partially inherent in all "copies" of it. One might say the Work is
neither this, nor that, but both
and none. The Work is partially in the copy of the work but is not the
copy. Works are known through proliferations of texts, not through their
refinement or concentration. Nearly all experiences of works are, therefore,
partial. This taxonomy helps reveal what parts remain unknown or
unexperienced. I have adopted the convention of capitalizing the terms I
have appropriated for definition. Since I use some of these terms before I
have had a chance to define them, their capitalization is an indication that
I will eventually define them.
