University of Virginia Library

If one considers systematic textual criticism to have begun with the Alexandrian librarians of the third century B.C., then one can say that for twenty-two and a half centuries the ultimate goal of textual criticism was—almost without exception—the establishment of texts as intended by their authors. The controversy that has always characterized the field was concerned with how best to approach this goal, not with whether this goal was the proper one. Sometimes editors recognized that authors may have changed their intentions over time; but if there was some doubt about whether early or late intentions were to be preferred, the focus was still on authorial intentions. Even when editors of ancient writings stated that they were reconstructing the text of the lost common ancestor of the extant manuscripts, knowing that it could not be equated with the text intended by the author (if indeed there was a single author), they were nevertheless attempting to move backward in time with the aim of coming closer to the author's intended text (or the text intended by the various creators of the work) than anyone had previously come. Most editors of the past have simply assumed, without giving much thought to the matter, that the purpose of critical editing was to correct the texts that have survived in documents, so as to bring them more into line with what the authors of the works intended.

In recent years, however, several writers on textual criticism have questioned this assumption, and their arguments have been so widely noted and discussed that the issue can probably be regarded as the dominant one in current theoretical debates. The line of argument runs as follows: authors cannot normally bring their works to the public without the assistance of other persons, such as scribes, printers, publishers' editors, and publishers, who in various ways alter the texts that pass through their hands; literature is thus a collaborative art, the joint product of a number of people; a concern with what authors alone intended is therefore artificial, since works can only be produced in the forms (both linguistic and physical) that the social process of publication

gives to them, and it is in those forms that readers encounter and respond to them (forms that keep changing over time as new publishers and new readers deal with them in different terms). This position shifts the emphasis from the individual creators of literary works to the social mechanisms for the dissemination and reception of particular texts of those works.[1] For the first time in twenty-three centuries, a significant segment of that body of individuals who consider themselves textual critics and editors are critically examining the place of authorial intention among the goals of editing. This is not to suggest that there has been any diminution in the proportion of editions focusing on authorial intention but only that more editors than ever before are cognizant of the reasons for considering an alternative approach.

This trend in textual theory is part of a larger movement in literary studies. During the same years, deconstruction, the "new historicism," and reader-response theory—among other approaches—have supported a turn away from the authorial and the canonical. Language is seen to betrary those who attempt to express themselves through it, and meaning is found to emerge from historical contexts and from the encounter of readers with texts. Although there has always been little (far too little) interchange between textual and literary critics, they do inhabit the same intellectual world, and it is to be expected that the concerns of both groups should be touched by the same currents of thought. One of the effects on textual criticism has been a new emphasis on the instability of texts, on their indeterminate nature. In this context, some theorists have regarded the editorial aim of reconstructing an authorially intended text as a misguided attempt to fix a text in a single form, hiding rather than revealing the fluidity and openness that are characteristic of texts. The idea that texts are the ever-shifting products of converging social forces is compatible with those approaches to literature that elevate linguistic analysis, historical associations, and readers' responses over the effort to receive a communication from an individual in the past.

Editors of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature have faced this set of issues for a longer time than some of them realize, and certainly before the time when a concern for social approaches to textual criticism was much in the air. The frequent survival of authors' manuscripts from these centuries has meant that editors dealing with this period have often had to decide between an author's manuscript and a first printed edition as the best choice for copy-text. When they chose

the first edition, their decision was generally made in the name of authorial intention, for they argued that the first edition contained the kinds of adjustments (especially in spelling and punctuation) that the author expected and desired the publisher to make. But whenever one speaks of an author's expectation that certain matters will be taken care of, one is involving other persons in the completion of the work and embracing a view of literary works as collaborative products. Although there can be instances in which an editor may decide that an author's uninfluenced intentions are best represented in a first edition, one can say in general that the choice between manuscript and first edition often reveals whether the editor's primary interest is in the product of an individual creative mind or of collaborative action. Greg's rationale of copy-text, favoring the former, has come in for considerable criticism in recent years by those who object to its orientation and thus to its wide influence. It is a healthy situation in any field for positions perceived as orthodoxies to be challenged, and the recent debates have unquestionably been useful in bringing increased recognition to the instability of texts and to the ways in which they are continually being shaped by society. An interest in the texts that emerged from the process of publication and were available to readers at given times is obviously one (but not the only) valid approach to the past, and it had not previously been altogether overlooked; nevertheless, its new visibility is welcome.

This attention would be more welcome, however, if the advocates of a socially oriented textual criticism wrote on its behalf with greater clarity and coherence. Unfortunately, many of the recent discussions are so carelessly presented that they could convince no one; but since thoughtful readers will understand in any case the value of looking at texts as social products, they may derive some new insights from these essays despite the illogical presentation. In what follows, I shall survey some of the theoretical writings on textual matters that have appeared during the second half of the 1980s, taking the social approach to textual criticism as the obvious theme.[2] I shall concentrate first on some

recent work of D. F. McKenzie and Jerome J. McGann, whose writings in the late 1970s and early 1980s (discussed in my survey five years ago) had first brought significant attention to the social view and who are still generally regarded as its most prominent exponents (though their emphases are not identical). It will then be necessary to examine several writers who are concerned, in one way or another, with the integrity of individual versions of works. This concern is a manifestation of the same set of attitudes, for an emphasis on versions reinforces the idea of textual fluidity. And even when the emphasis is on prepublication versions, some writers (notably a group of French and German critics) view such versions as evidence for assessing authors' attitudes (sometimes welcoming, sometimes apprehensive) toward the transition from private creativity to public professionalism. As for post-publication versions, one of the most interesting cases is drama, where the contrast between a text close to the playwright's manuscript and a text reflecting what occurred in performance epitomizes the dichotomy between uninfluenced authorial intention and the joint intention that emerges from the collaborative process whereby the playwright works with others to bring a performance into being. Finally, a brief overview of other recent essays, showing the prevalence of these issues, leads to a reconsideration of editorial apparatus, for not surprisingly this subject has surfaced repeatedly in the writings of the last few years: in many ways it lies at the heart of these debates and offers a means of reconciling the extreme positions that have been taken.