Doing English: Week 2 - Texts Matter

Doing English: Week 2 - Texts Matter

Weds 22nd October, LT2, 11am

Ms. da Costa ‘Medieval manuscripts: Why they matter’

This lecture is a brief introduction to manuscripts, which will give you a basic understanding of how the Anglo-Saxon and Middle English texts you'll study in Moderations Paper 3 were originally read. The first half of the lecture will cover how manuscripts were created and explain the key terms, like 'folios' and 'quires', which modern editors so often use. The second half will look at what manuscripts can tell us about the literary texts we read.

This lecture will cover material relevant to Mods papers 1 and 3, and FHS papers 3 and 9, as well as being relevant for course II students (especially paper A4).

Mr. McTague ‘The Materiality of Texts’

Texts are always transmitted to us by some kind of material process: writing; printing; speaking. This lecture examines how the physical form of texts affects their meanings, with particular reference to printed texts of the 17th and 18th centuries. The materiality of texts, it will be suggested, can tell us things about literary works that their verbal content does not – or can not – reveal. The lecture will look at three different early modern printed texts (from 1631, 1659, and 1726) in order to assess how their physicality influences readers’ interpretations.

This lecture will cover material relevant to Mods paper 1, and FHS papers 4, 5, and 7d (Dryden)

Mr. Whalen ‘Genetic Criticism’

Genetic criticism is the study of the composition process of literary works. Rather than reading only the final printed text, genetic critics analyse and interpret pre-publication materials such as the author’s notebooks, manuscripts, typescripts, and proofs. This lecture will show how genetic criticism differs from traditional philology and manuscript study by destabilizing the notion of “text”, focusing on the temporal dimension of writing, and regarding a work of literature as a process rather than a product. The textual uncertainties that arise from the study of pre-texts offer new ways to illuminate the published text. An author’s dead ends and earlier drafts allow us to see what the work could have become – like the deleted scenes on DVDs. This lecture will be particularly relevant to first- and third-year undergraduates studying twentieth-century literature, particularly Joyce, Eliot, and Woolf.

This lecture will cover material relevant to Mods papers 1, 2b, and FHS paper 7g (Woolf)