Renaissance Text: Theory, Editing and Textuality

The volume is closely informed by recent developments in textual theory which have led to a probing interrogation of traditional understandings of the early modern textual world and of how we should edit, disseminate and encounter the Renaissance text in our own time.

The essays, whilst informed by contemporary theory, are not dominated by a single programmatic viewpoint. Reflecting the multiplicitous nature of Renaissance textuality, the collection provides space for a variety of different positions and lines of analysis and enquiry. The Renaissance text will be of interest to those with specialist concerns in editing, textuality and bibliography, and will also be of interest to those more generally concerned with Renaissance literature or with textual or literary history.

Contributors include Gary Taylor, Stephen Orgel, Peter Stallybrass, Leah S. Marcus and John Pitcher.

This collection of essays focuses attention on the broad issue of Renaissance textuality, exploring such topics as the position of the reader relative to the text; the impact of editorial strategies and modes of presentation on our understanding of the text; the complexities of extended textual histories; and the relevance of gender to the process of textual retrieval and preservation. The volume is closely informed by recent developments in textual theory that have led to a probing interrogation of traditional understandings of the early modern textual world and of how we should edit, disseminate, and encounter the Renaissance text in our own time.

Booknews

Literature scholars who specialize in Shakespeare and the Renaissance in general challenge the editing principles and practices of the New Bibliography movement. Siting texts from the period at the interfaces between amateur and professional, public and private, oral and printed, and manuscript and book, they argue that no single approach to editing them can do justice to the multitude of perspectives that modern scholarship can and should apply. Distributed in the US by St. Martin's Press. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Andrew Murphy is Lecturer in English at the University of St. Andrews.