G-70. Advanced Seminar in Critical Bibliography - Advance Reading List

• Preliminary Advices

  Note: Students admitted to this course will receive further instructions for accessing these readings.

  Students should read as much of the materials in sections 1 and 2 as needed to familiarize themselves with the historiography and terminology of book history and bibliography. Special attention should be paid to the starred items. Students are expected to have read all the materials in sections 3–6. The starred items in these sections will serve as the starting points for discussion during the course week.

  As you prepare your readings, please keep the following questions in mind:

  • How has bibliography changed over the last century, and how does it relate to book history?
  • What does it mean to borrow Greg’s term “critical bibliography” as it originally appeared in 1912, and to use it to characterize a multidisciplinary, object-oriented approach to bibliography?
  • How might we distinguish the practice of critical bibliography from other forms of bibliographical and book-historical scholarship?
  • How might the approaches and techniques demonstrated in these readings be applied to the materials you work on? Which aspects of critical bibliography might be most germane for your own research and pedagogy?

• 1. The Development of the Fields of Bibliography and Book History (in chronological order)

  Greg, W. W. “What is Bibliography?” In Collected Papers, 75–88. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. First delivered in 1912 as an address to the Bibliographical Society. Excerpted in The Broadview Reader in Book History, edited by Michelle Levy and Tom Mole, 3–14. Tonawanda: Broadview Press, 2015.

  Greg, W. W. “Bibliography – An Apologia.” In Collected Papers, 239–266. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. First delivered in 1932 as an address to the Bibliographical Society.

  Febvre, Lucien, and Henri-Jean Martin. “The Book as a Force for Change.” In The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450–1800, translated by David Gerard and edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and David Wootton, 248–332. London: Verso, 1984. First published in French as L’Apparition du Livre in 1958.

  Bowers, Fredson. “Textual Criticism and the Literary Critic.” In Textual & Literary Criticism, 1–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959.

  * McKenzie, D. F. “Printers of the Mind: Some Notes on Bibliographical Theories and Printing-House Practices.” Studies in Bibliography 22 (1969): 1–75. First delivered in 1963, in a much shorter form, as a lecture at University of Illinois, UVA, and UCLA; reprinted in Making Meaning: “Printers of the Mind” and Other Essays, 13–85. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002.

  Gaskell, Philip. A New Introduction to Bibliography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972; corrected edition 1974; several subsequent re-printings with minor corrections.

  Belanger, Terry. “Descriptive Bibliography.” In Book Collecting: A Modern Guide, edited by Jean Peters, 97–115. New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1977.

  Tanselle, G. Thomas. “Bibliography and Science.” Studies in Bibliography 27 (1974): 55–89. Reprinted in Selected Studies in Bibliography, 1–35. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979. Available online at http://xtf.lib.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=StudiesInBiblio/uvaBook/tei/sibv027.xml;chunk.id=vol027.02;toc.depth=100;toc.id=vol027.02;brand=default.

  Eisenstein, Elizabeth. “The Unacknowledged Revolution.” In The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 3–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

  Sayce, R. A. Compositional Practices and the Localization of Printed Books, 1530–1800. Occasional Publication 13. Oxford: The Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1979. Originally published in The Library; reprinted version contains additions and corrections.

  Darnton, Robert. “What is the History of Books?” Daedalus 111:3 (1982): 65–83. Excerpted in The Broadview Reader in Book History, edited by Michelle Levy and Tom Mole, 231–250. Tonawanda: Broadview Press, 2015.

  McGann, Jerome J. “Introduction.” In Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation, vii–xi. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985.

  Williams, William Proctor and Craig S. Abbott. An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies, 4th edition. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2009. Earlier editions published in 1985, 1989, and 1999.

  McKenzie, D. F. “Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts.” In Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts, 9–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. First published by the British Library in 1986 as the 1985 Panizzi Lecture.

  McGann, Jerome J. “The Monks and the Giants: Textual and Bibliographical Studies and the Interpretation of Literary Works.” In The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in Historical Method & Theory, 69–89. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.

  McGann, Jerome J. “Shall These Bones Live?” In The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in Historical Method & Theory, 90–100. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Excerpted in The Broadview Reader in Book History, edited by Michelle Levy and Tom Mole, 113–124. Tonawanda: Broadview Press, 2015.

  Adams, Thomas R. and Nicolas Barker. “A New Model for the Study of the Book.” In A Potencie of Life: Books in Society (The Clark Lectures, 1986–1987), edited by Nicolas Barker, 5–43. London: The British Library, 1993.

  Balsamo, Luigi. Bibliography: History of a Tradition, translated by William A. Pettas. Berkeley: Bernard M. Rosenthal, 1990. Optional.

  McKenzie, D. F. “‘What’s Past Is Prologue’: The Bibliographical Society and History of the Book.” In Making Meaning: “Printers of the Mind” and Other Essays, edited by Peter D. McDonald and Michael F. Suarez, S.J., 259–275. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. First published in 1993 for the Bibliographical Society.

  Tanselle, G. Thomas. “Introduction.” In Principles of Bibliographical Description by Fredson Bowers, v–xiv. Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1994).

  Johns, Adrian. “Introduction: The Book of Nature and the Nature of the Book.” In The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making, 1–57. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998. Excerpted in The Broadview Reader in Book History, edited by Michelle Levy and Tom Mole, 267–288. Tonawanda: Broadview Press, 2015.

  Cavallo, Guglielmo and Roger Chartier. “Introduction.” In A History of Reading in the West, 1–36. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999.

  McDonald, Peter D. and Michael F. Suarez, S.J. “Editorial Introduction.” In Making Meaning: “Printers of the Mind” and Other Essays, 3–10. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002.

  Tanselle, G. Thomas. Bibliographical Analysis: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

  Mosley, James. “The Technologies of Print.” In The Oxford Companion to the Book, edited by Michael F. Suarez, S.J. and H. R. Woudhuysen, 1:89–104. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

  Walsh, Marcus. “Theories of Text, Editorial Theory, and Textual Criticism.” In The Oxford Companion to the Book, edited by Michael F. Suarez, S.J. and H. R. Woudhuysen, 1:156–163. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

  Suarez, Michael F., S.J. “Book History from Descriptive Bibliographies. In The Cambridge Companion to the Book, edited by Leslie Howsam, 199–218. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

• 2. Bibliographical Terminology & Reference Materials

  Bowers, Fredson. “Hand-Printed Books: Edition, Issue, and State; Ideal Copy.” In Principles of Bibliographical Description, 37–123. Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1994.

  * Carter, John. ABC for Book Collectors. 8th ed. by John Carter and Nicolas Barker. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2004. Also available as a PDF at http://www.ilab.org/eng/documentation/30-john_carters_abc_for_book_collectors.html.

  Franco, Edgar. Dictionary of Terms and Expressions Commonly Used in the Antiquarian Book Trade in French, English, German, & Italian. LILA/ILAB, 1994. Also available as a PDF at https://www.ilab.org/eng/glossary/dictionary/31-edgar_franco_dictionary_of_terms.html.

  Tanselle, G. Thomas. Introduction to Bibliography: Seminar Syllabus. 5th edition. Charlottesville, VA: Book Arts Press, 2002. Also available as a PDF file at: http://www.rarebookschool.org/tanselle/bibliography.

  Tanselle, G. Thomas. Introduction to Scholarly Editing: Seminar Syllabus. Charlottesville, VA: Book Arts Press, 2002. Also available as a PDF file at: http://www.rarebookschool.org/tanselle/editing.

• 3. Resistance to Bibliography

  Boutcher, Warren. “Literary Art and Agency?: Gell and the Magic of the Early Modern Book.” In Distributed Objects: Meaning and Mattering After Alfred Gell, edited by Liana Chua and Mark Elliott, 155–175. New York: Berghahn Books, 2013.

  Chartier, Roger. “From Mechanical Reproduction to Electronic Representation.” In Mapping Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Digital Age, edited by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Michael Marrinan, 109–113. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.

  * Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Read “Foreword”; “Acknowledgements”; “The Problem Defined: The Need for an Anthropology of Art”; “The Theory of the Art Nexus”; “The Distributed Person”; and “Conclusion: The Extended Mind” (pp. vii–xv, 1–27, 96–154, 221–258).

  Illich, Ivan. “From Book to Text.” In In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s Didascalicon, 115–124. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

  Jones, Andrew M. and Nicole Boivin. “The Malice of Inanimate Objects: Material Agency.” In The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies, edited by Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry, 333–351. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

  Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. “Extreme Inscription: A Grammatology of the Hard Drive.” In Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination, 73–109. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.

  Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. and Sarah Werner. “Digital Scholarship and Digital Studies: The State of the Discipline.” Book History 17 (2014): 406–458.

  Pedersen, Morten Axel. “Talismans of Thought: Shamanist Ontologies and Extended Cognition in Northern Mongolia.” In Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically, edited by Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad, and Sari Wastell, 141–166. London: Routledge, 2007.

  Prown, Jules David. “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method.” In Art as Evidence: Writings on Art and Material Culture, 69–95. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

• 4. Constellations of Objects

  Aste, Richard, ed. Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home, 1492–1898. Brooklyn: Monacelli Press, 2013. Read pp. 70–73, 135–145, 152–159.

  Hughes-Wilson, John. The First World War in 100 Objects. Buffalo: Firefly Books, 2014. Read “The Pen That Signed the Ulster Covenant”; “The New Paper Money”; “A Message Streamer”; “A Trench Shovel”; and “A British Mark V Tank” (pp. 16–19, 40–43, 158–165, 364–367).

  Kurin, Richard. The Smithsonian’s History of America in 101 Objects. New York: Penguin Press, 2013. Read “Introduction”; “Nauvoo Temple Sun Stone”; “Emancipation Proclamation Pamphlet”; “Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’”; and “Gay Civil Rights Picket Signs” (pp. 3–17, 152–156, 217–223, 426–432, 580–585).

  MacGregor, Neil. A History of the World in 100 Objects. New York: Viking, 2010. Read “Preface”; “Introduction”; “Early Writing Tablet”; “Lachish Reliefs”; “Maya Relief of Royal Blood-letting”; “Ming Banknote”; and “Dürer’s Rhinoceros” (pp. xiii–xxvi, 90–94, 132–139, 326–332, 464–469, 482–488).

  * Pearce, Susan M. “Thinking about Things.” In Interpreting Objects and Collections, edited by Susan M. Pearce, 125–132. London: Routledge, 1994.

  Sinclair, Tony. “‘All styles are good, save the tiresome kind.’ An Examination of the Pattern of Stylistic Changes Occurring among Silver Candlesticks of the Eighteenth Century (1680–1780).” In The Archaeology of Contextual Meanings, edited by Ian Hodder, 39–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

• 5. Architecture & Invisible Structures

  Baker, Malcolm. “Some Object Histories and the Materiality of the Sculptural Object.” In The Lure of the Object, edited by Stephen Melville, 119–134. Williamstown: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2005.

  Blouin, Francis X., Jr., and William G. Rosenberg. “Archival Essentialism and the Archival Divide.” In Processing the Past: Contesting Authority in History and the Archives, 85–93. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

  Carpo, Mario. “Geneva.” In Architecture in the Age of Printing: Orality, Writing, Typography, and Printed Images in the History of Architectural Theory, translated by Sarah Benson, 79–102. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.

  Eggert, Paul. Securing the Past: Conservation in Art, Architecture and Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Read “Preface”; “Introduction”; “The Witness of Historic Buildings and the Restoration of the Churches”; and “Materialist, Performance or Literary Shakespeare?” (pp. ix–18, 19–40, 131–153).

  * Hodder, Ian. “The Contextual Analysis of Symbolic Meanings.” In The Archaeology of Contextual Meanings, edited by Ian Hodder, 1–10. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

  Hodder, Ian, and Scott Hutson. “Contextual Archaeology.” In Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology, 156–205. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

  Leone, Mark P. and Barbara J. Little. “Artifacts as Expressions of Society and Culture: Subversive Genealogy and the Value of History.” In Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts, edited by Bettina Messias Carbonell, 362–374. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

  Olsen, Bjørnar, Michael Shanks, Timothy Webmoor, and Christopher Witmore. “Futures for Things: Memory Practices and Digital Translation.” In Archaeology: The Discipline of Things, 102–135. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

  Schlereth, Thomas J. “Collecting Ideas and Artifacts: Common Problems of History Museums and History Texts.” In Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts, edited by Bettina Messias Carbonell, 335–347. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

• 6. Absence & Presence

  Blouin, Francis X., Jr., and William G. Rosenberg. “The Social Memory Problem.” In Processing the Past: Contesting Authority in History and the Archives, 97–115. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

  Meskell, Lynn. “Memory’s Materiality: Ancestral Presence, Commemorative Practice and Disjunctive Locales.” In Archaeologies of Memory, edited by Ruth M. Van Dyke and Susan E. Alcock, 34–55. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

  * Visser, Arnoud S. Q. “Customizing Authority: Anthologies and Epitomes.” In Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620, 77–94. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

  West, James L. W., III. “The Scholarly Editor as Biographer.” In Making the Archives Talk: New and Selected Essays in Bibliography, Editing, and Book History, 6–16. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011.