Tanselle 1992

Tanselle, Thomas. A Rationale of Textual Criticism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.

The Nature of Texts

Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" -- contemplating where time and art lie and how they endure

"do we ever know where a poem is? Can the artifacts that constitute our evidence for the existence of a poem provide us -- as the urn does -- with a means for ordering the randomness of life?" (12)

"do not manuscripts and printed books possess the same apssivity as othe rinanimate objects, and may not their texts -- however unfinished or incorrect their producers might consider them -- offer the same satisfying remoteness that works of visual art do? If so, what is the relation between the reading of the various documentary texts of a poem and the experiencing of the work, or are they all separate works? Such questions, like the cold pastoral of the urn itself, tease us out of thought, for they reflect the insoluble enigmas of aesthetics. And they raise issues that textual critics must not fail to confront." (13)

"Literature poses particularly perplexing aesthetic questions, for the corporeal reality of literary works has been, and remains, a matter of dispute." (13)

if we see a literary work as a "communication from the past," then "its location in space and time is the most basic of considerations: one must be able to distinguish the work itself from attempts to reproduce it." (13)

"Equating a reproduction with the work it aims to copy is incoherent, for an interest in works is a historical interest, and copies are the products of later historical moments. A reproduction may of course be regarded as a work in its own right, but the historical focus has then shifted. Artifacts can be viewed both as works in themselves and as evidence for reconstructing other works, but this dual possibility in no way lessens the conceptual gap between the two historical approaches to artifacts." (14)