The Nineteenth Century Textual Condition / to publish or not to publish/print / Remediating Emily Dickinson
We turn to the critical challenge faced by editing Emily Dickinson’s poetry. A significant number of scholars argue her work was intentionally never submitted for publication because Dickinson did not wish to submit to the technology aka conventions of print. What do we think?
- Emily Dickinson Poems By Emily Dickinson (first edition, Todd and Higginson edited) PDF Read “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” and identify two or three poems in the first edition that meditate on / reflect upon on the textual condition, textual materiality, text technologies, or other themes that have been broached in our discussions. How do these poems help us to answer the above question?
Here is a link to one of Dickinson’s holographic mss of “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” on the Emily Dickinson Archive.
2. Martha Nell Smith “Corporealizations of Dickinson and Interpretive Machines” from The Iconic Page in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Culture. Eds. George Bornstein and Theresa Tinkle. U of Michigan Press. (Spring 1998). 195-221.
3. Lori Emerson “The Fascicle as Process and Product,” (129-162) from Reading Writing Interfaces
4. Seth Perlow “Affect” from The Poem Electric: Technology and the American Lyric (2018) PDF in Google Drive
4.5 Tanya Clement, review of Perlow’s book, with attention to comments on the Emily Dickinson chapter) Clement, Tanya. Review of The Poem Electric: Technology and the Lyric, by Seth Perlow. Information & Culture: A Journal of History 54, no. 3 (2019): 381-384. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/737239 .
Seth Perlow his chapter PDF in Google Drive (and Tanya Clement, review of Perlow’s book, with attention to comments on the Emily Dickinson chapter) Clement, Tanya. Review of The Poem Electric: Technology and the Lyric, by Seth Perlow. Information & Culture: A Journal of History 54, no. 3 (2019): 381-384. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/737239 .
Jen Bervin. The Dickinson Composite Series. What does Bervin’s project claim about Dickinson?
Textual Practice: Fascicles, (materials needed: bone folder, needle, thread, awl, paper.) (Suzanne)
As you read through the first edited anthology of Dickinson (Todd and Higgenson), select and compare two or three specific poems in the anthology . Also search around on the databases and “the library without walls” for instantiations of that poem. Are there variations? How does interface, materiality, and editorial decisions contribute to the meaning of the poem?
As you browse / read through the first edited anthology of Dickinson (Todd and Higgenson), select and compare one or two specific poems other than “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” in the anthology with the same poem mss in the digital archive (lEmily Dickinson Archive see link above). Also search around on the web for instantiations of that poem. Since ED is out of copyright anyone is free to reproduce her work. Are there variations? How does interface, materiality and editorial decisions contribute to the meaning of the poem?
How has the sense of Dickinson’s iconic page changed over the past 130 years?
During the period of “Incunabula” or the swaddling clothed books of the early era of moveable type printing, it was assumed that you would write in a book. It was only later that a sense developed that one should not write in a book. Annotation practices were therefore common elements of early modern printed books. How does Dickinson’s poetry align with this early era of printing and in what ways is she more suited to a digital interface?
How do contemporary critics remediate Dickinson? What are the major debates?The first moveable typefaces mimicked calligraphy. Contemporary digital interfaces operate with icons and the controlling metaphor of the desktop, the folder, and the page. As we learned from Roger Chartier in The Order of Books, as old forms are replaced by new forms, imitation gives way to new innovations in form and style. What is gained and lost from remediating Dickinson into print media conventions? Into digital interfaces?
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