Description
Book SynopsisThe textual foundations of works of great cultural significance are often less stable than one would wish them to be. No work of Homer, Dante or Shakespeare survives in utterly reliable witnesses, be they papyri, manuscripts or printed editions. Notions of textual authority have varied considerably across the ages under the influence of different (and differently motivated) agents, such as scribes, annotators, editors, correctors, grammarians, printers and publishers, over and above the authors themselves. The need for preserving the written legacy of peoples and nations as faithfully as possible has always been counterbalanced by a duty to ensure its accessibility to successive generations at different times and in different cultural contexts.The ten chapters collected in this volume offer critical approaches to such authors and texts as Homer, the Bible,
The Thousand and One Nights, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Eliot, but also Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts uniquely combini
Trade ReviewAn eye-opening book, underlining the importance of thinking long and hard about the life of texts, and forcing us to reflect on their often complex histories so we don't just take the words we read for granted. * Minerva *
Table of ContentsList of illustrations Foreword List of contributors 1. Conceiving the Life of Texts · Richard Gameson (Durham University, UK) 2. Editing Homer · Barbara Graziosi (Princeton University, USA) 3. The Canon and the Codex: On the Material Form of the Christian Bible · Francis Watson (Durham University, UK) 4. Wandering Nights: Shahrazad’s Mutations · Daniel Newman (Durham University, UK) 5. A Text in Exile: Dante’s
Divine Comedy · Annalisa Cipollone (Durham University, UK) 6. Textual Metamorphosis: The Manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci · Carlo Vecce (Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale, Italy) 7. Montaigne: The Life and After Life of an Unfinished Text · John O'Brien (Durham University, UK) 8. Rescuing Shakespeare:
King Lear and Its Textual Contexts · David Fuller (Durham University, UK) 9. Textual Evidence and Musical Analysis: Once More on the First Movement of Beethoven’s ‘Tempest’ Sonata, Op. 31, No. 2 · Julian Horton (Durham University, UK) 10. Fragments Shored against Ruin: Reassembling
The Waste Land · Jason Harding (Durham University, UK) Index of principal passages cited General index
