B. Texts: Conceptual, Semiotic, and
Physical
Although I have deferred discussion of some of the problems with the
term Version, I need here to imagine the writer composing a Version of the
Work in order to pursue the taxonomy through various concepts that are too
often hidden in the use of terms such as Work or Version. One should note,
then, that an Essayed Version is a conceptual entity not a physical entity;
it is not equivalent with the physical embodiment of it, because its
embodiment can be and usually is an imperfect representation of the
Version. The contortions of that last sentence bear witness to the fact that
Version is being used in two ways: it is a classification system for those
texts that represent Version X as opposed to those that represent Version
Y, and it is a Conceptual Text which copies of Version X or Y represent.
This latter notion, the Conceptual Text, is not a system of classification but
more like an ideal form of the Work. But it is not a Platonic ideal, for it
develops and changes, and probably
does not
"pre-exist" as an ideal, and it probably does not last very long either. The
imperfections of physical texts are of various origins, including failures of
creative imagination, failures of inscriptional skill or care, use of elisions
and abbreviations to be filled in later, or unhappy interventions by scribal
assistants. The Essayed Conceptual Text is always manifested in a physical
form, but it is not a physical or Material Text, for the Conceptual Text that
is Essayed remains (as the author's mental concept) invisible and probably
not stable; but the embodiment of the Conceptual Text is visible and fixed
in a material medium. The concept of "fixing" suggests another reason the
Material Text may misrepresent or at least only suggest the work: Version
(Potential, Developing, and Essayed) is fluid conceptual process, but the
material text is physically static, fixed. However, since the Essayed
Conceptual Text cannot be known except through a Material Text, people
tend to equate them
for practical purposes. But the Material Text can misrepresent the Essayed
Conceptual Text and hence that equation is not exact. The ways in which
the Material Text can misrepresent the Conceptual Text are many and often
are indeterminate but some might be revealed in the drafts or by violations
of syntax, grammar or orthography that cannot be justified as accurate
representations of the ideal Version.
[25]
It is common, at least among textual critics, to think of a text as
consisting of words and punctuation in a particular order. I would like to
call this concept of texts the Linguistic Text.[26] It refers to the semiotic dimension
of
Texts—the specific signs for words and word markers that stand for
the
Work (or the Version of the work). Linguistic Texts have three forms:
Conceptual, Semiotic, and Material. The author's Conceptual Linguistic
Text consisted of the signs he "intended to inscribe." A Semiotic Text
consists of the signs found recorded in a physical form of the work. If a
Version represents the conception or aim of the Work at a point of
Utterance, the Linguistic Text is the execution or achievement of that
Version, first as a Conceptual Text (thought) then as a Semiotic Text (sign),
and then as a Material Text (paper and ink or some other physical
inscription or production), at that point of Utterance. The Material Text is
the evidence
that a Conceptual Text was
formed and Uttered as a representation of a Version of the Work—in
short, if there is no Material Text there is no Linguistic Text and hence no
Version available to a reader. The Conceptual Text can be Materialized in
spoken or written form, and it can be recorded in a mechanical or
electronic way. It follows that the Linguistic Text can have more than one
Semiotic form—spoken, written, electronic, and Braille, for instance.
The
Linguistic Text is not, therefore, physical; it is a sequence of words and
word markers, conceived before spoken or written, and taking its semiotic
form, when written, from the sign system used to indicate the language in
which it is composed. We must also distinguish between the Linguistic Text
and the Documents that preserve them, for as long as the sequence of words
and markers is the same, the Linguistic Text is one, regardless of the
number of copies or number of forms it is manifested in. All accurate
copies, whether facsimiles, transcriptions, or
encodings are the same single Linguistic Text. An inaccurate copy,
however, is a different Linguistic Text for it is a different sequence of
words and word markers, though it might still represent the same Version.
The new Linguistic Text might represent the Essayed Conceptual Text more
faithfully or less faithfully.
It should be noted that the Linguistic Texts representing an Essayed
Version (the ideal aim of Utterance) run the risk of error at each
transformation in production both through a failure of articulation (we've
heard authors complain that they just couldn't put what they wanted into
words) and because the author or a scribe failed to inscribe it accurately or
completely. The Linguistic Text, therefore, corresponds to the Essayed
Version only to the extent that its production was perfect. Editors
(particularly "authorial intention" editors) have understood their job to be
the production of a newly edited Linguistic Text that accurately represents
the author's intentions for the final Version. Put in the terms defined here,
the traditional "intention" of scholarly editing has been to create a new
Material Text, the Linguistic Text of which coincides with the Essayed
Conceptual Text. But because the author's Essayed Text is available to the
editor only through material evidence for
it, the editor can do no more than construct a new conceptualization of it
(i.e., the editor does not in fact "recover" the author's Conceptual Text).
The resulting edition is then a forward construction rather than a
"backward" restoration.
To speak of the Linguistic Text as a sequence of words and word
markers is to emphasize a distinction already made but that is of primary
importance: that the Linguistic Text, being composed of signs, is a
representation of the work and is not the work itself. It represents a
Version, it is not the Version itself. It is the result of an encoding process
undertaken by the author or the author and his assistants. The Linguistic
Text is, therefore, a sign and not an object, though it is always manifested
in an object. To speak this way about the Linguistic Text is also to
emphasize the act of decoding which is necessary before another person can
be said to have seen or experienced the work of art. It should be equally
evident that such a decoding experience cannot take place without a physical
manifestation of the text as a starting point.
[27]
The word Document can be used to refer to the physical "container"
of the Linguistic Text. It might be paper and ink or a recording of some
sort, including for example a Braille transcript which can be just paper.
Records, tape recordings, microforms, and computer disks are also
documents, though decoding such documents requires mechanical or
electronic equipment. Documents are physical, material objects that can be
held in the hand. Each new copy of the Linguistic Text is in a new
document. Two documents containing the same Linguistic Text are still two
separate entities but only one Linguistic Text. This physical form not only
provides a "fixing medium" (to borrow a concept from photography) but it
inevitably provides an immediate context and texture for the Linguistic
Text. It will be useful therefore to have a term for the union of Linguistic
Text and Document. I call it the Material Text. It seems clear that a reader
reacts not just to the Linguistic Text when reading but to
the Material Text, though it be subconsciously, taking in impressions about
paper and ink quality, typographic design, size, weight, and length of
document, and style and quality of binding, and perhaps from all these
together some sense of authority or integrity (or lack thereof) for the text.
These aspects of the Material Text carry indications of date and origin, and
social and economic provenance and status, which can influence the
reader's understanding of and reaction to the Linguistic Text.[28] (See Chart 3.)
We should pause again for a moment, this time with our feet firmly
planted in the material realm. A Material Text, any Material Text, is
the reader's only access route to the Work. A Linguistic Text cannot exist
for anyone (who does not already hold it in memory) without a material
medium;
[29] the Linguistic Text and
its medium are the Material Text with all the implications of that union.
Material Texts are the production of Utterance. The first Material Text
(says the manuscript) is the first attempted union of the Essayed Version
and a Document. There might be a problem in distinguishing that first
Material Text from draft fragments, and it might be possible to
"reconstruct" archaeologically a Version buried in drafts in early
manuscripts or in the cancelled and altered passages in a manuscript or
typescript whose final revisions represent Essayed Version one. Material
Texts numbers 2-n are transcriptions made by anyone including the author.
These Material
Texts might incorporate the results of revisions, editorial interventions, or
errors, or they might be accurate transcripts.
It would appear from the concept of Material Texts that when an
editor has extracted or edited the Linguistic Text which he believes best
represents the Version he is editing, he must embody that Linguistic Text
in a new document which will be a new Material Text with implications all
its own. He cannot reincorporate a new Linguistic Text into an old
Document to present a "restored" Material Text. The force of this idea
came to me while reading Jerome McGann's explanation of the work as a
product of social contract in which the production process was described as
an integral and inevitable aspect of the concept of the work of art.[30]
