ABSTRACT
Textual studies is a discipline drowning in a sea of terms: enumerative bibliography, systematic bibliography, descriptive bibliography, analytical bibliography, historical bibliography and textual bibliography, textual analysis and textual criticism, textual editing, documentary editing, and social textual criticism-to say nothing of such older dispensations as epigraphy, paleography, codicology, and diplomatics, philology and historical criticism, higher and lower criticism, all of which may still be invoked by textuists. And, as if this cacophony were not loud enough, the recent annexation of the "text" by literary theorists and critics abandoning authors, works, and history has introduced more ambiguities and another struggle over ownership of the terms. A post-structuralist journal like Glyph can proclaim itself concerned with textual studies, and Stanley Fish can ask Is There a Text in This Class? without any fear of his audience thinking he is about to talk of incunabula or stemmata, imposition or watermarks, substantives or accidentals. The vocabulary of the text and its study is obviously in need of clarification, and perhaps simplification. The terms are out of joint. This book attempts to set them right.
