Learning Gower by Editing Gower
- Author/Editor
- Kelemen, Erick
- Title
- Learning Gower by Editing Gower
- Published
- Kelemen, Erick. "Learning Gower by Editing Gower." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 104-09.
- Review
- Though the traditional understanding of textual criticism is that it aims to bring stability," Kelemen maintains that "studying textual criticism is itself profoundly destabilizing to mass-culture notions of textuality" (104). Knowing that, students through the exercises Kelemen assigns come to understand how textual questions may elicit literary discussions. His goal is not to produce "budding editors but to produce readers who are aware of the ways in which their texts are mediated and what that mediation means" (107). Through these exercises, designed "to challenge the notion of the infallible text" (104), "students come to realize that, to edit well, one will need to understand the text and the work very, very well" (107). Thus led through "flexible and scalable" exercises of transcribing, collating, and editing proper, and then of introducing the edition, students come to recognize that in this setting "the point is not the product so much as the process" (109). [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1]
- Date
- 2011
- Gower Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies