ABSTRACT
IN THE INVITATION TO THE York conference where I GAVE THE first version of “Challenges of Theory and Practice in the Editing of Hoccleve's Regement of Princes,” Derek Pearsall instructed the speakers that any title containing a colon would automatically be disqualified. I see his point. Academic titles have for some time followed a predictable formula, with an opening figurative or otherwise impenetrable title, a colon, and then an explanatory subtitle. Discursive Polyphonies: Late Nineteenth-Century Broadsheets and Their Impact on the Reform Movement in Germany, 1870–1900. Robbed of the colon I had used in my SB article on Hoccleve, I came up with the inelegant and unprovocative “Challenges.” Since Derek's warning, I have used colons sparingly, and have perhaps erred in the other direction, toward the catchy phrase that might puzzle or invite the reader but does not offer a full description of the topic (“Textual Forensics,” “Phylum-Tree-Rhizome,” “Rights to Copy,” Margins of the Text), although I have not so far dared the vertiginous rhetoric of Gary Taylor (“Farrago,” “Why Ask Why?”1).
