Author : Paul Eggert
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9781108724494
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)
Book Synopsis The Work and the Reader in Literary Studies by : Paul Eggert
Download or read book The Work and the Reader in Literary Studies written by Paul Eggert and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the late 1980s the concept of the work had slipped out of sight, consigned to its last refuge in the library catalogue as concepts of discourse and text took its place. Scholarly editors, who depended on it, found no grounding in literary theory for their practice. But fundamental ideas do not go away, and the work is proving to be one of them. New interest in the activity of the reader in the work has broadened the concept, extending it historically and sweeping away its once-supposed aesthetic objecthood. Concurrently, the advent of digital scholarly editions is recasting the editorial endeavour. The Work and The Reader in Literary Studies tests its argument against a range of book-historically inflected case-studies from Hamlet editions to Romantic poetry archives to the writing practices of Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence. It newly justifies the practice of close reading in the digital age.