The Bowers Zone
I have been away for a few days at the New Chaucer Society Conference, in New York. There I was, once more, surprised by the fact that people who call themselves “literary critics” do not seem to be any kind of interest on textual matters.
There were several well-intentioned people who had worked very hard to try and understand what is it that we do. However, they seem to be getting a lot of “publicity” about what textual scholars do. This publicity seems to have a direct time warp link to the 19th Century.
The publications we produce –I am thinking of the Canterbury Tales Project– do not have a wide audience, so often scholars receive second hand –through articles by others, news of our work. Of course, second hand news is not always as precise or accurate as one would like them to be.
It is like a nightmare from the Bowers Zone. And we were thinking that we were over that. As it turns out, our destiny is to talk to other textual critics –who seem to have more of an idea of what we do– and never to see the day in which literary scholars take editions and texts seriously. Alternatively, we might have to make a bigger effort to communicate with those not involved in textual criticism –this blog that no one reads might be a place to start.
Of course, I wonder if this also happens to others. Is there any communication between those studying the text of Shakespeare and those producing interpretive essays about his works? What about Joyce scholars? What about the rest?