Recording Absence: Making Explicit the Editorial Decision not to Intervene

Description

Policies and rationales on editorial intervention are of course announced formally, and specific editorial revisions are recorded and made explicit within the textual apparatus. However, editions are also shaped by specific decisions on the part of editors not to ‘correct,’ ‘restore,’ or to modernize, decisions which may result from lengthy consideration and bear upon important textual and thematic issues. These decisions not to intervene, leaving no trace on the text, are similarly unrecorded in the apparatus. Should readers be acquainted with editorial discussions that did not result in textual interventions, and if in certain instances they should, how can this be done?
To exemplify these questions, this paper takes as its central example the editorial team’s debate over whether to insert a hyphen in a passage on page 35 of the Theodore Dreiser Edition of The Titan (Winchester University Press, 2016), a discussion that resulted in the decision not to intervene. After briefly evoking the discussion that took place and its importance for a thematic reading of the novel, I will describe the various ways in which it has been communicated to readers. These range from the allusive, in a historical commentary within the volume’s apparatus, to its explicit discussion in digital fora linked to the Dreiser Edition, and in a critical monograph. I will close by reviewing these and suggesting other possibilities and problems in recording individual editorial decisions not to intervene.

Period	24 Nov 2017
Held at	European Society for Textual Scholarship
Degree of Recognition	International