Editing Early Modern Women’s Manuscripts: Theory, Electronic Editions, and the Accidental Copy‐Text

Abstract

Both the content and the physical nature of early modern women’s manuscript texts frequently raise significant issues for editors which are not addressed by either classical editorial theory set forth by Greg, Bowers, and Tanselle or the current principles and practices of editing manuscripts as historical documents. ‘E‐editions’ or electronic editions would appear to be the solution, but current market‐driven models of electronic editions and archives also have several important but little examined premises about what types of texts are suitable for such projects that are problematic when working with many early modern women’s manuscript texts. This article is part of a Literature Compass special issue on ‘Scholarly Editing in the Twenty‐First Century’. The special issue is made up of the following pieces: ‘Special Issue: “Scholarly Editing in the Twenty‐First Century”– Preface’, Regenia Gagnier, Literature Compass 7.2 (2010): 33–34, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00672.x. ‘Special Issue: “Scholarly Editing in the Twenty‐First Century”– Introduction’, Arthur F. Marotti, Literature Compass 7.2 (2010): 35–36, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00673.x. ‘Electronic Archives and Critical Editing’, Jerome McGann, Literature Compass 7.2 (2010): 37–42, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00674.x. ‘Theorizing the Digital Scholarly Edition’, Hans Walter Gabler, Literature Compass 7.2 (2010): 43–56, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00675.x. ‘Editing Without Walls’, Peter Robinson, Literature Compass 7.2 (2010): 57–61, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00676.x. ‘Our Affection for Books’, Susan J. Wolfson, Literature Compass 7.2 (2010): 62–71, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00677.x. ‘His Days Among the Dead Are No Longer Passed: Editing Robert Southey’, Lynda Pratt, Literature Compass 7.2 (2010): 72–81, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00678.x. ‘Different Demands, Different Priorities: Electronic and Print Editions’, Stuart Curran, Literature Compass 7.2 (2010): 82–88, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00679.x. ‘Editing Manuscripts in Print and Digital Forms’, Arthur F. Marotti, Literature Compass 7.2 (2010): 89–94, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00680.x. ‘All of the Above: The Importance of Multiple Editions of Renaissance Manuscripts’, Steven W. May, Literature Compass 7.2 (2010): 95–101, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00681.x. ‘Editing Early Modern Women’s Manuscripts: Theory, Electronic Editions, and the Accidental Copy‐Text’, Margaret J.M. Ezell, Literature Compass 7.2 (2010): 102–109, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00682.x. ‘Different Strokes, Same Folk: Designing the Multi‐form Digital Edition’, Daniel Paul O’Donnell, Literature Compass 7.2 (2010): 110–119, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00683.x. ‘Special Issue: “Scholarly Editing in the Twenty‐First Century”– A Conclusion’, Laura Mandell, Literature Compass 7.2 (2010): 120–13...

Traces of the Old, Uses of the New

“…sEEnEt, the society for Early English & norse Electronic texts, publisher of Caedmon's Hymn, Piers Plowman, and other digital editions, "was established in the 1990s to gain the benefits of new electronic technology without sacrificing what scholars have learned about textual criticism and its sister disciplines." 53 sEEnEt's digital editions were modeled on a "long-established book publication series, medieval Academy books (mAb), which is overseen by the Publications Advisory board and published in collaboration with the University of toronto Press. Like mAb, the sEEnEt series focuses on editions and scholarly tools of importance to medieval studies.…”

“…martha nell smith is clear that the tEi is not a naturalized computer code but a socially produced form impacted by cultural and social values; "meeting the challenge [of encoding texts] requires asking in as many ways as can be imagined how to go about reckoning the hierarchies apparently accepted by coding for rendering the images and texts in digital format, hierarchies that stubbornly resist parity between the intellectual/textual object and physical object but that insist one must be subordinate to the other." 53 We should not underestimate the importance of such an understanding of selfreflexivity, as it provides a methodological means for digital humanities to focus on a broad set of theoretical engagements from critical code studies to datamining. the notion of a scholar's purview as broad and diverse, interconnected and social rather than limited to a particular author or literary text, crucially influences the direction of digital literary studies.…”

“…editors do not please to select certain types of material and this is in part because perhaps we are not yet changing some of the basic assumptions about what an 'edition' does, or in hunter's terms, what is 'appropriate.'" 53 clearly the question of canon is still in flux, regardless of the belief that such concerns were resolved by the culture wars of the last century. We might also have a historical problem in the very emergence of digital humanities that contributes to the selection of materials for digitization.…”

“…As the monK project reveals, digital datasets "are large enough and rich enough to provide an excellent opportunity for text-mining, and we believe that web-based text-mining tools will make those collections significantly more useful, more informative, and more rewarding for research and teaching." 53 no doubt text mining will prove our datasets to be more useful, but "large enough" and "rich" enough are dependent on the types of texts under consideration and the algorithmic approach applied to the dataset. certainly sets that exclude particular groups of writers are not good enough.…”

The Assembled Book as a Map of Relations

“…As Margaret Ezell has argued, gendered early modern formats like some multiauthor verse miscellanies, anonymous recipe books compiled over time, or bespoke manuscripts circulated among a coterie of readers have remained "invisible" to us because they do not easily t the infrastructures of contemporary scholarship. 4 These include editorial methods and standards that focus on a single author as the prime mover of a text and thereby downplay collaboration or craftwork. Thus when portions of Isabella Whitney's A Sweet Nosegay (1573) nally made it into a reading edition for Penguin, in a collection focused on three early modern women, the editor included only those longer poems that most represent what we might today think of as Whitney's unique authorial voice.…”