Textual Communities Research Articles

Behind the Blackout Curtains: Female Focalization of Atlantic Canada in the Dear Canada Series of Historical Fiction

Novels from the Dear Canada series of historic fiction, published by Scholastic Canada, currently populate the shelves of school classrooms and libraries across Canada. This study explores two Dear Canada novels that chronicle significant moments in Atlantic Canadian history: Janet McNaughton’s novel (Flame and ashes: The great fire diary of Triffie Winsor. St. Johns, Newfoundland, 1892, Scholastic Canada, Toronto, 2014) which explores the Great Fire of Newfoundland in 1892, and Julie Lawson’s novel, No Safe Harbour (No safe harbour: the Halifax explosion diary of Charlotte Blackburn, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1917, Scholastic Canada, Toronto, 2006), which explores the Halifax Explosion of 1917. Kenneth Kidd (Child Lit 33: 120–149, 2005) notes that “subjects previously thought too upsetting for children are now deemed appropriate and even necessary” in children’s literature (p. 12); indeed, the themes of both Flame and Ashes and No Safe Harbour resonate with recent attempts to represent broader and more diverse ranges of experiences in children’s fiction. Like many other texts in the series, these texts explore economic hardship and psychological distress. Furthermore, they explore events through the eyes of subjects who have, historically, had very little agency: female children. Drawing on narrative theory and feminist standpoint theory (Fuller in Writing the everyday: women’s textual communities in Atlantic Canada, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2004), this study examines the narrative techniques McNaughton and Lawson rely on to counterbalance difficult historical events with the appeal of young protagonists who offer subjective responses to the historical moment. This study considers both the ideological challenges and the possible advantages of circulating historical knowledge that is linked to girlhood and profoundly rooted in place. Ultimately, I argue that these young female narrators provide important inroads for interrogating what counts as history in historical narratives.

“Through a Glass, Darkly”: Evidence for Knowledge of Pseudo-Dionysius in Anglo-Saxon England

Abstract Despite his importance to later English medieval spirituality, the possibility of Pseudo-Dionysius's influence in Anglo-Saxon England remains unresolved, having been merely subjected to brief speculation. This article quantifies Pseudo-Dionysius's potential influence by tracing all evidence for Anglo-Saxon contact with the Corpus Areopagitum. Using Stock's model of “textual communities,” it reviews the study of Pseudo-Dionysius at Rome and the Carolingian court and discusses the level of intellectual exchange between Anglo-Saxon England and these Continental centers, with particular focus on Israel the Grammarian. It then discusses the unacknowledged presence of Pseudo-Dionysius's thought in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and analyzes Hilduin's exposition of his theology in Passio Sancti Dionysii. It concludes that Pseudo-Dionysius was an influence on Anglo-Saxon thought. Beyond signaling the need for his influence on Anglo-Saxon spirituality and texts to be reconsidered, this article's suggestion of Pseudo-Dionysius's preconquest influence has implications for the accepted history of English medieval spirituality.

Sermon-Notes and Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Communities

Any reader of manuscript catalogues knows how common the unhelpfully vague entry "sermon-notes, seventeenth-century" can be. In this essay, Mary Morrissey explores whether sermon-notes provide evidence for the kinds of textual communities that have been found through the reconstruction of other routes of manuscript circulation. She explains what those laconic catalogue entries hide, and she distinguishes the different kinds of sermon-notes found in archival collections (some derived from the original preacher, some from hearers, some from readers of manuscript and printed copies). The physical forms of sermon-notes alert us to the different types of authors who created these manuscripts and the different purposes involved in preserving an oration in textual form.

Fleshly Resurrection, Authority Claims, and the Scriptural Practices of Lukan Christianity

In this article, I argue that references to the fleshly resurrection of Jesus in Luke and Acts, both those that tell of Jesus eating with his apostles and those that assert that Jesus’s flesh was “incorruptible” (Luke 24:36–53, Acts 1:4, 2:31, 10:40–41, 13:37), share thematic continuity and are best understood as stemming from Luke’s concern for the exclusive authority of the twelve apostles. I assume that Luke has access not only to oral and written resurrection narratives but also to a collection of the Pauline Epistles and that Luke frames Lukan narrative as the result of the scriptural practices of one second-century textual community, among others. In mapping both divergences and convergences between Lukan understandings of resurrection and views often attributed to Marcionites and/or so-called docetists, I challenge the view that Luke’s assertions of fleshly resurrection represent (proto)orthodoxy’s incipient battle with heresy over the nature of the resurrection of Jesus.

”Click, click go the shears”: Text and Orality in an Australian Textual Community

Lukutaidottomuuden ja luku- sekä kirjoitustaidon välistä rajaa on aina ollut vaikea piirtää tarkasti, varsinkin esimodernilla aikakaudella. Ongin ”Primary orality” (”ensisijainen suullisuus”) -mallia (1962) on kyseenalaistettu toistuvasti. Atkinsonin (2014) tutkimus väittää, että ainakaan kansan- ja ammattilaulujen tutkimuksessa Ongin väite, että kansanlaulut siirtyisivät improvisaation yhteydessä (that it was central to the transmission of traditional songs that they should be passed on orally through improvisation) ei välttämättä pidä paikkaansa tai ainakaan selitä variaatioita. Tapaustutkimukseni tukee Atkinsonin ehdotusta, jonka mukaan käytännössä sekä laulujen painetut että käsinkirjoitetut versiot ovat selvästi vaikuttaneet toisiinsa. Tutkin Atkinsonin ehdotuksen paikkansapitävyyttä eräässä kiertävässä miesten ammattiryhmässä 1800-luvun Australiassa. Kyseinen lampaidenkeritsijöiden ryhmä muodosti ”tekstuaalisen yhteisön” (”textual community”, Stock 1990), jolla oli ammattinsa perusteella samankaltainen käsitys lauluista, joiden sanat kuvailivat työolosuhteiden yksityiskohtia. Tutkimuksen lopputulos osoittaa, että vaikka ”alkuperäisestä versiosta” oli lähes aina olemassa painettu teksti, muunnelmia syntyi esitettyjen ja painettujen versioiden dynaamisessa ja dialogisessa kohtaamisessa.

A Companion to Alain Chartier (c. 1385–1430): Father of French Eloquence. Edited by Daisy Delogu, Joan E. McRae, and Emma Cayley.

This excellent volume — the medieval author’s first ‘Companion’ — consolidates the increasing critical attention directed to Alain Chartier over the past decade, its essays collectively making a persuasive case for him as ‘the most widely influential European writer of the fifteenth century’ (p. 279). Fourteen chapters are divided between four parts, locating Chartier in relation to his cultural, literary, and material context (Part One); proposing a range of approaches to his work (Part Two); focusing on the idea of ‘textual communities’ as a conceptual principle of both authorship and reception (Part Three); and mapping the cultural and chronological reach of his influence (Part Four). An important shared objective of the contributions is to promote the permeability of category boundaries that have previously operated in Chartier scholarship — between his professional identities as writer and diplomat, between his prose and verse compositions, and between Latin and vernacular works in his œuvre. This objective is pursued effectively through the practice of revisiting works in several chapters across the book, which elaborates in different contexts the cultural significance of well-known texts, such as the Belle Dame sans mercy , as well as drawing attention to important, less appreciated pieces, like Le Livre des quatre dames . The chapters themselves constitute a satisfying combination of synthesizing essays (such as the elegant overview of Chartier’s œuvre furnished by James Laidlaw, or Camille Serchuk’s examination of all thirty-two illuminated manuscripts) and critical analyses (Andrea Tarnowski’s study of the persona as a figure apart, or Daisy Delogu’s performative approach to gender roles). They are uniformly engaging and lucid, and strike a commendable balance between accessibility to the less familiar reader (the volume could readily be recommended on undergraduate reading lists, for example) and stimulating interest for the more specialist scholar. Of particular note is the collection’s very successful realization of its aim to offer Chartier’s texts as ‘a point of entry into larger questions’ (p. 11): the essays not only augment and richly contextualize our specific understanding of the writer — exploring the role of poet as public servant that he pioneered (Adrian Armstrong) or establishing his significance in medieval debates about chivalry (Craig Taylor); they also deploy Chartier to map key concerns of late medieval literary culture, furthering our appreciation of the early printed-book marketplace (Olivia Robinson), or of the power of poetry to effect political and social change during the Hundred Years’ War (Deborah McGrady). In this respect, the volume is of great value to scholars of the later Middle Ages more broadly, a value that could only be enhanced by an increased use of cross-referencing between chapters, to aid the reader approaching its essays selectively rather than sequentially — this would be especially helpful, for instance, between synthesizing chapters on influence in Part Four and earlier contributions on context in Part One. In sum, this collection is an exemplary piece of ‘Companion’ scholarship, which establishes emphatically Chartier’s importance in medieval French studies and beyond.

Occupying the margins: Masks, microcultures and the mainstream media

This essay draws parallels between contemporary popular visual culture and symbolic marginal sculpture from twelfth-century Saintonge in southwestern France. The Internet image of President Obama in makeup associated with Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker seems to float through popular culture without a definitive meaning, as does the extremely fluid Guy Fawkes’s mask from the film V for Vendetta. These examples from contemporary visual culture remind modern viewers to consider the importance of specific audiences, textual communities or microcultures when assigning meaning. The images’ reception by microcultural groups can inform our interpretation of twelfth-century corbel sculptures, which are equally perplexing due to their creation for a specific community no longer in existence. Far from being meaningless ornaments, corbels carried deep, multivalent and often polemical messages in much the same manner as the contemporary examples discussed here.

Ethnography at a distance: globally mobile parents choosing international schools

The research we report on was conducted from our computer desktops. We have not met the people we have studied; they are part of what Eichhorn described as a “textual community”, gathered around the threads of online conversations associated with a website servicing the needs of English-language speakers in Germany. The thread in question started in 2008 with a query from someone about to move to Berlin, seeking advice about the best international school in which to enrol her three children. The ensuing conversations are revealing, not only because of the schools canvassed and the manner in which they are discussed, but also because of the schools that are not charted into the discussion. This paper raises questions about qualitative research methodologies in online settings, particularly in relation to studies of the global middle-class. It examines claims about an emerging commitment to “nonlocal ethnography” and the surmising one can make about research subjects one never meets, but who remain comprehensible because of the broader cultural context in which they are situated. The research carries the promise of “rich enough” ethnography, reflecting a commitment to understanding what people do, documenting and analysing the intricate realities influencing and shaping individual choices people make, the complexities they face and the realities they help create. The fact that it was done “at a distance”, in so-called virtual spaces, does not undermine its ethnographic authenticity.

TEXTUAL ORGANISATION AND LINGUISTIC FEATURES IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS RESEARCH ARTICLES: MOVING FROM INTRODUCTION TO METHODS

Abstract Writing and publishing research articles (RAs) in English is crucial because an RA is considered as one of the channels to communicate among researchers and scholars worldwide. Research publication has become one of the requirements for Thai graduate students before graduation; however writing for publication is a daunting task to them as it requires substantial writing skills to ensure that researchers can efficiently present research findings and express themselves in response to textual convention and academic community. This paper centres on the rhetorical structures and linguistic features commonly used in the Introduction and Methods sections of the RA genre as written in a particular set of journals. Inspired by Swales’ analytical framework (1990; 2004) and work by Biber, Conner and Upton’s (2007) steps of conducting a move analysis, this study examined 25 RA Introduction and Methods sections in the field of applied linguistics. These RAs were analysed by genre analysis into ‘moves’ and ‘steps’. The results revealed that each section displayed a generic pattern, comprising a series of moves and steps. Lexico-grammatical features associated with a communicative function were also identified. Pedagogically, the findings generated by this study could be useful for teaching students how to write scholarly publications in EAP classrooms. The structural patterns and linguistic features found to functionally interact with one other may facilitate the understanding of novice writers and Thai graduates of published research articles in these sections. Moreover, the rhetorical patterns generated by this study might be meaningful for teachers in implementing relevant reading and writing materials for advanced learners to improve their writing skills to effectively disseminate discoveries in their fields. Keywords: Research articles, Introduction, Methods, genre analysis, rhetorical structures.

The Irish rent … and mended: transitional textual communities in nineteenth-century America

In this paper, traditional folkloric forms that were ritualised and practised in pre-Famine Ireland are examined. So, too, are the strategies that storytellers employed in disseminating the imaginative aspects of the oral tradition to their audiences. Following the disruption of the storytelling tradition precipitated by the Great Famine and emigration, the fabric of Irish storytelling lay threadbare, both in Ireland and abroad. Of interest is the fact that in America the less “heroic” and more subtle strands of Irish folklore resurfaced in the theatrical venues that developed during the second half of the nineteenth century, namely, minstrelsy, Vaudeville, and Tin Pan Alley. By the turn of twentieth century, the Irish were responding to other “heroic” depictions of themselves, not only with protestation but also with “tongue-in-cheek” laughter. Their grounding in a variety of folkloric texts in Ireland enabled them to transition to multiple kinds of accommodation and expressive resistance.

John Byrom and the Contexts of Charles Wesley's Shorthand

Abstract This article demonstrates that Charles Wesley's use of shorthand over many years carries biographical as well as textual significance. Surveying his acquaintance with the poet and stenographer John Byrom (1692–1763), it explores aspects of the wider ‘textual community’ of Byrom's system, which embraced several others in early Methodist circles. It considers how the Wesley brothers first became acquainted with this ‘universal English shorthand’, explores its diverse applications, and considers Charles Wesley's involvement in moves toward promulgating it by subscription publication, pointing to dimensions such as the aesthetic and linguistic, which might partly explain early Methodists' esteem for it.

Kirsty Campbell The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual CommunitiesThe Call to Read: Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual Communities. Kirsty Campbell. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. Pp. xi+310.

<i>Kirsty Campbell</i> The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual Communities<i>The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual Communities</i>. Kirsty Campbell. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. Pp. xi+310.

Jehovah's Witnesses, endangered languages, and the globalized textual community

This article explores Jehovah's Witnesses' use of Oaxaca Chontal, an endangered language spoken in Mexico. The Witness religion is highly centralized and standardized: Witnesses obeyed instructions to use Chontal because these instructions bore the authority of the Watch Tower Society institution. This article proposes the concept of the globalizing textual community, which synthesizes understandings of community from throughout social science literature, in order to explain how religious identity can supersede national, ethnic, and linguistic identities. A central mechanism of this community is the discourse of the “pure language,” which renders language choice irrelevant even as it provides a warrant for extensive translation.

A Catalan &lt;i&gt;Cobla Sparsa&lt;/i&gt; of the Fifteenth Century: An Icon of Ambivalence in the Misogynistic Background of Celestina, Act I

Summary: A short one-stanza poem, identified by the rubric «Cobla sparsa de lahor he deslaor,» is emblematic of the ambivalence that informs the «Maldezir de mugeres,» signature piece of Pere Torroella, renowned Catalan writer of the fifteenth century. The present essay is an attempt to demonstrate how the alternation of laor (‘praise’) and deslaor (‘unpraise’) plays a paramount role within the wide context of the debate about women in both Castilian and Catalan literature of the 1400s. For a background of that debate, I adduce evidence in the poetry of the troubadours and in the cants of the nonpareil Valencian bard, Ausiàs March. Ultimately, the paradoxical laor/deslaor conflation reflects a two-pronged phenomenology: 1) the tradition of dysfunctional rhetoric that comes to a head in the fractious dialogue illustrated in Act I of the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, better known as Celestina; 2) the definition of Torroella’s self-fashioning in terms of the process of coming to grips with the authenticity of a lover’s experience. [Keywords: «Gender debate»; irony; maldit; misogyny; repetitio; «textual community»]

J. Patrick Hornbeck II. What Is a Lollard? Dissent and Belief in Late Medieval England. Kirsty Campbell. The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock's Books and Textual Communities.

Both of these books make a valuable contribution to their shared field of study. While, as its author states at the outset, What Is a Lollard? is largely concerned with terminology, The Call to Read explores Reginald Pecock's response to the Lollard challenge of his time, and combined they have much to tell us about the forms and experience of dissent in late medieval England. The phenomenon of Lollard heresy and Pecock's writings were alike rooted in the conviction, shared by Wyclif's followers and their opponents, that theological issues belonged on the page as well as to oral statement. Beliefs might be contested as well as shared, but in both cases they were written as well as delivered by word of mouth. Later medieval English dissent and its refutation were fully paginated, and even if there were areas (maybe critical ones) that failed to transmit some of their secrets to later generations through the written record, the activities of hearing, reading, and voiced communication left plenty of evidence behind them.

Literate Media in Early Christ Groups: The Creation of a Christian Book Culture

The full emergence of Christian book culture in the fourth century was anticipated and prepared for by a series of developments in the second century: by presenting (anachronistically) the early heroes of the Jesus movement as skilled literate communicators; by the emergence of “textual communities” formed around the reading, study, and preservation of books; by valorizing literate culture through the embedding of allusions to books and book culture in Christian documents; and in the very construction of early Christian scriptural documents so as to render them more easily accessible to sub-elite readers.

Phrase dharmaparyāyo hastagato in Mahāyāna Buddhist Literature

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; This article examines the occurrence of the phrase dharmaparyāyo hastagato, “having the enumeration of the teaching in one’s hand,” in a select number of texts classified as Mahāyāna sūtras and theorizes its occurrence in relation to the use of the book (pustaka) in the religious cultures of middle period (Common Era to fifth/sixth centuries) Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. In recent scholarly discourse, the “cult of the book” in Mahāyāna Buddhist formations has been hypothesized to occur in relation to shrines (caitya) or not even to have occurred at all. This article suggests an alternative hypothesis. The paper first analyzes the syntax and composition of the terms dharmaparyāya and the participle hastagata as well as their occurrences within Indian Buddhist literature in Indic languages and in Tibetan and Chinese translations. The paper then identifies the occurrence of the phrase dharmaparyāyo hastagato in a select number of Mahāyāna sūtras and relates this phrase to an observable gradual process of bibliofication, a process where texts increasingly reference themselves as protective objects, that is detectable in the layers of accretion found within the comparative analysis of extant manuscripts. Based on this analysis, the paper concludes that the “cult of the book,” rather than being a stable or local cult phenomena, was comprised of highly mobile and translocal textual communities who carried their object of veneration with them.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

Recollecting Alfredian English in the Sixteenth Century

This article explores the rationale for the frequently criticized editorial practices of Matthew Parker (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1559–1575) in working with manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon texts. Parker published editions of some of these texts, and his editorial prefaces yield valuable information about his aims and methods. By situating Parker’s own explanation of his activities within the context of a textual community that reached back to include medieval ecclesiastics, we see that he learned much from medieval textual practices. Parker and his circle emulated key features of the reading habits, methods of selection and compilation, and scribal practices they saw in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Though conscious of the linguistic distance between his Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and his readers, Parker nevertheless exploited his bridging of that distance to support the ecclesiastical and political aims of Elizabeth’s early reign. Medieval and early modern treatments of the art of memory provide an important framework, within which Parker may be seen to be reimagining a sort of remembered medieval past for the young Church of England.

The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock's Books and Textual Communities. By KirstyCampbell. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 2010, $33.69.

The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock's Books and Textual Communities. By KirstyCampbell. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 2010, $33.69.

Textual communities in Guyana: A “nearly go so” literary history

This article seeks to make precise some of the challenges faced by Caribbean bibliography. I focus on two periods and texts in twentieth century Guyana: N.E. Cameron’s 1931 anthology, Guianese Poetry, Covering the Hundred Years’ Period, 1831-1931, and early 1950s issues of Thunder, the journal of the socialist anticolonial People’s Progressive Party. Attending to these publications could lead to a narrative about Guyana’s transformation from a cultural hub within the British Empire to a centre of anticolonial politics and poetics. This is part of the way we can view them, but transitions between the colonial and anticolonial do not emerge neatly. When we think more about Guyana through the lens of textual culture we build a picture of practices and values that cut across place and period. Paradoxically, even regarding the twentieth century, we cannot rely only on what Jerome J. McGann calls our inescapable “textual condition” to understand Caribbean textual culture. I show how the literary interests evidenced in Guianese Poetry and Thunder can lead us towards a local history of the book that takes seriously overlapping textual and non-textual perspectives. In doing so, we can chart more clearly the rise of poetry in colonial Guyana, an emerging national poetics, and the knotted poetics and politics of Empire, slavery, and anticolonialism. Guyana’s complicated and often contradictory textual cultures, I argue, must be sited locally and transnationally, and in order to assess them we must stay attuned to the ways that sites of textual culture connect authors, editors, publishers, and audiences. To adapt Erna Brodber’s approach to writing village histories, what we arrive at is the beginnings of a “nearly go so” literary history – a history that is sensitive to the inconsistencies between archival data, cultural memory, and oral testimony.