The literary text in the digital age
By: edited by Richard J. Finneran.
Contributors: Finneran, Richard J.
Series: Editorial theory and literary criticism
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Ann Arbor
Language: eng
Number of pages: 250
Subjects: English literature -- Criticism, Textual -- Data processing; English literature -- Publishing -- Data processing; Manuscripts, English -- Editing -- Data processing; Textual criticism -- Data processing; Text processing (Computer science); Editing -- Data processing; Electronic publishing
Description: The development of digital technology and its widespread availability on the personal computer are bringing about a fundamental paradigm shift in the ways that literary texts are created, preserved, disseminated, and studied - a revolution that many scholars have argued is as profound as that created by Gutenberg's invention of movable type.

At the same time, a major shift in textual theory - away from the notion of a "Definitive Edition" and toward a recognition of the integrity of discrete versions - has highlighted the fundamental limitations of the printed book.

The Literary Text in the Digital Age addresses these developments from a wide range of perspectives. The essays discuss topics from the history of electronic editions to problems in encoding to the relationship between contemporary literary theory and the capabilities of digital technology. Other articles discuss the design of hypertext electronic editions now in progress or projected, including editions of the work of Chaucer, Thomas Hardy, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Individually and together the contributions show how these projects will go beyond the "electronic book" and exploit the full potential of the new medium. Finally, the volume also includes an afterword, in which A. Walton Litz reflects on the importance of digital technology from the perspective of one of the senior scholars in modernist literary studies.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
"Most of the essays in this collection were first delivered at scholarly conferences, particularly the 1993 meeting of the Association for Documentary Editing and the 1993 and 1994 meetings of the Modern Language Association"--Acknowledgments.
Table of contents: title: Creating and using electronic editions / Susan Hockey; title: Principles for electronic archives, scholarly editions, and tutorials / Peter Shillingsburg; title: Textual criticism and the text encoding initiative / M. Sperberg-McQueen; title: Completeness and adequacy in text encoding / John Lavagnino; title: Some unrevolutionary aspects of computer editing / Hoyt N. Duggan; title: Is there a text in these variants? / Peter M.W. Robinson; title: Editing English Renaissance electronic texts / Ian Lancashire; title: The Rossetti Archive and image-based electronic editing / Jerome McGann; title: Electronic Hardy / Simon Gatrell; title: Designing a hypertext edition of a modern poem / William O'Donnell and Emily A. Thrush; title: Traditional theory and innovative practice : the electronic editor as poststructuralist reader / Phillip E. Doss; title: The electronic text and the death of the critical edition / Charles L. Ross; title: Electronic scholarship, or, Scholarly publishing and the public / John Unsworth.