Genetic Criticism

This volume introduces English speakers to genetic criticism, arguably the most important critical movement in France today. In recent years, French literary scholars have been exploring the interpretive possibilities of textual history, turning manuscript study into a recognized form of literary criticism. They have clearly demonstrated that manuscripts can be used for purposes other than establishing an accurate text of a work. Although its raw material is a writer's manuscripts, genetic criticism owes more to structuralist and poststructuralist notions of textuality than to philology and textual criticism. As Genetic Criticism demonstrates, the chief concern is not the "final" text but the reconstruction and analysis of the writing process. Geneticists find endless richness in what they call the "avant-texte": a critical gathering of a writer's notes, sketches, drafts, manuscripts, typescripts, proofs, and correspondence. Together, the essays in this volume reveal how genetic criticism cooperates with such forms of literary study as narratology, linguistics, psychoanalysis, sociocriticism, deconstruction, and gender theory. Genetic Criticism contains translations of eleven essays, general theoretical analyses as well as studies of individual authors such as Flaubert, Proust, Joyce, Zola, Stendhal, Chateaubriand, and Montaigne. Some of the essays are foundational statements, while others deal with such recent topics as noncanonical texts and the potential impact of hypertext on genetic study. A general introduction to the book traces genetic criticism's intellectual history, and separate introductions give precise contexts for each essay.

In Genetic Criticism, Dirk Van Hulle introduces the study of creative processes to an Anglophone audience. As a method in the study of literary writing processes, genetic criticism is also a reading strategy. The idea behind this book is to introduce this strategy to a broader audience, from interested readers and graduate students to early career researchers and literary critics. In literary studies, it is often obvious that a particular work somehow seems to hit a nerve, but more challenging to pinpoint exactly why it 'works'. This book therefore starts from a clear, basic assumption: knowing how something was made can help us understand how and why it works. This strategy is at the basis of many disciplines, including art history. By means of X-ray technology or hyperspectral imaging, it is possible to look at a painting as a multilayered object with not only spatial dimensions, but also a temporal one. This temporal dimension is the core of the reading strategy introduced in this book. Note books, marginalia, manuscripts, and typescripts (even if one works with scans) give a concrete dimension to literature, which is a helpful reading strategy for many students. On the one hand, this involves concrete, transferrable skills such as aspects of transcription and digital scholarly editing. On the other hand, it also involves more abstract theoretical issues relating to matters of authorship, collaboration, authority, agency, intention and intertextuality.

Genetic criticism investigates creative processes by analysing manuscripts and other archival sources. It sheds light on authors’ working practices and the ways works are developed on the writer’s desk or in the artist’s studio. This book provides a cross-section of current international trends in genetic criticism, half a century after the birth of the discipline in Paris. The last two decades have witnessed an expansion of the field of study with new kinds of research objects and new forms of archival material, along with various kinds of interdisciplinary intersections and new theoretical perspectives. The essays in this volume represent various European literary and scholarly traditions discussing creative processes from Polish poetry to French children’s literature, as well as topical issues such as born-digital literature and the application of forensic methodology to manuscript studies. The book is intended for scholars and students of literary criticism and textual scholarship, together with anyone interested in the working practices of writers, illustrators, and editors.

James Joyce and Genetic Criticism offers the most contemporary developments in manuscript-based analysis in Joyce scholarship.

Studies of the genesis of musical, literary, and theatrical works.

Traditional critical editing, defined by the paper and print limitations of the book, is now considered by many to be inadequate for the expression and interpretation of complex works of literature. At the same time, digital developments are permitting us to extend the range of text objects we can reproduce and investigate critically - not just books, but newspapers, draft manuscripts and inscriptions on stone. Some exponents of the benefits of new information technologies argue that in future all editions should be produced in digital or online form. By contrast, others point to the fact that print, after more than five hundred years of development, continues to set the agenda for how we think about text, even in its non-print forms. This important book brings together leading textual critics, scholarly editors, technical specialists and publishers to discuss whether and how existing paradigms for developing and using critical editions are changing to reflect the increased commitment to and assumed significance of digital tools and methodologies.

The newest volume in the distinguished annual

The last half of the twentieth century has seen the emergence of literary theory as a new discipline. As with any body of scholarship, various schools of thought exist, and sometimes conflict, within it. I.R. Makaryk has compiled a welcome guide to the field. Accessible and jargon-free, the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory provides lucid, concise explanations of myriad approaches to literature that have arisen over the past forty years. Some 170 scholars from around the world have contributed their expertise to this volume. Their work is organized into three parts. In Part I, forty evaluative essays examine the historical and cultural context out of which new schools of and approaches to literature arose. The essays also discuss the uses and limitations of the various schools, and the key issues they address. Part II focuses on individual theorists. It provides a more detailed picture of the network of scholars not always easily pigeonholed into the categories of Part I. This second section analyses the individual achievements, as well as the influence, of specific scholars, and places them in a larger critical context. Part III deals with the vocabulary of literary theory. It identifies significant, complex terms, places them in context, and explains their origins and use. Accessibility is a key feature of the work. By avoiding jargon, providing mini-bibliographies, and cross-referencing throughout, Makaryk has provided an indispensable tool for literary theorists and historians and for all scholars and students of contemporary criticism and culture.