Unit One: Primary Sources

Introduction: Works and Texts

Towards the end of his life, the great American writer Henry James revised all of his novels and they were published again. In a famous faux pas, the less great (but still pretty good) British critic F.R. Leavis built a compelling theory about James’ artistry in his early work. Problem was, Leavis used the revised texts, thinking they were unchanged versions of the early works; his argument didn't hold much water when the error was pointed out….As every student knows, in the great balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet wonders “what’s in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other word would smell as sweet.” Word? Not name? That’s right. “Name” shows up in Shakespeare’s lifetime only in a version of the play probably reported by an actor to a printer, without Shakespeare’s permission or even his knowledge; it’s stuck with us, because we think it sounds more “Shakespearean,” even though “word” is the word in the more respectable version of the play….The unequaled American poet Emily Dickinson’s work was not published in her lifetime in any form, but is preserved on hundreds of single sheets of paper, the ‘proper’ order of which is not known....Chaucer's works circulated in hundreds of manuscript copies before being first printed more than a hundred years after their composition, in a style of print now virtually unreadable to the modern eye.

These and other examples show us that books have adventurous lives in their material worlds: every book has an autobiography, often a tale of suffering and redemption, and rarely a story of an easy life lived in virtue, among plenty, and without turmoil. Even the simplest book has a history, and one of the first tasks all researchers in literary studies have to undertake is to figure out something of that history, and determine what exactly it is they are dealing with when they approach a book.