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Abstract

The Genesis of a Work Is Not a Function of It’s Text . The Study of Authorship in Textual Scholarship This article provides a short introduction to how authorship has been studied within many fields of textual scholarship (from bibliography, codicology, diplomatics and paleography to textual criticism, genetic critique and book history). The main aim is to explain difference between criticism and scholarship to a Finnish audience, and to describe differing tasks, objects and methodologies of textual study – highlighting fact that questions of authorship are approached and construed slightly differently in textual scholarship. A central point is that whereas mainstream literary study is often founded on an analytic, hermeneutic imperative (the need to interpret literary works and place them within hermeneutic horizons of genres, periods and literary institutions), textual scholarship is driven by a synthetic archival responsibility (the need to measure, order, edit, store and manage literary artefacts, documents and information, and to theorize role of archive in modern societies). Four areas of textual authorship studies come into closer focus. Firstly, article explains background of genetic criticism in Pierre Macherey’s and Michel Foucault’s theoretical opening gestures, and explicates notion that the genesis of a work is not a function of its text (Louis Hay). Then it takes up Jerome J. McGann’s argument with theory of final intentions in critical editing, and his notion of social collaboration and literature as a social act as defining aspect of authorship. This is followed by an explication of reasons behind Don McKenzie’s enlargement of bibliographical study into sociology of texts (the study of social, material and economic conditions of textual transmission), and comparing them to Rachel Malik’s suggestion that scholars ought to study horizon of publishable. Finally article examines way in which recent scholars of early modern manuscript culture have revealed malleable (Arthur Marotti) nature of manuscript texts and social con¬ceptions of authorship which prevailed in scribal publication. The conclusion contrasts these with our modern conceptions of literary works which themselves are related to conditions imposed by print publication.