Description
Book SynopsisDirk Van Hulle is Professor of English Literature at the Centre for Manuscript Genetics, University of Antwerp, Belgium. He is President of the European Society for Textual Scholarship and his previous books include Textual Awareness (2004).
Trade ReviewDirk van Hulle proves with admirable clarity that textual genesis has become the new science of literature, and that it works both ways, from scrutinized manuscripts to original re-readings of canonical works, and from their authors’ progression in language to the laws of evolution governing creativity. His convincing remapping of modernism, from Darwin to Beckett via Conrad, Proust, Woolf, Joyce, Kafka and Flann O’Brien, definitely splices textual genetics with cognitive studies, thus rendering an invaluable service to literary studies in general. * Jean-Michel Rabaté, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania, USA *
This learned, detailed and fascinating study of 'creative undoing' mines the works of Darwin, Joyce, Woolf, and Beckett to explore the processes by which revisions, deletions and substitutions shape the work of art. It will be of interest to a broad range of readers, specialist and non-specialist alike. * Dame Gillian Beer, DBE, King Edward VII Professor of English Literature and President, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, UK *
Table of Contents1. ‘Avante-Texte': the Golden Age of Modern Manuscripts \ 2. Exogenetics: Observation, Documentation and External Source Texts \ 3. Endogenetics: the Preservation of Unfavoured Traces \ 4. Epigenetics: the Continuation of the Genesis After Publication \ 5. ‘Apres-Texte': Between Completion and Incompletion \ Bibliography \ Index.
