A Prehistory of Digital Textuality
Alex Mueller
Medieval hypertext?
Peter Lombard's Great
Gloss on the Psalms
Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
MS lat. 11565 f. 31v, 12th century
The authenticity and immediacy
of handwriting
Joseph Fiennes as
Shakespeare in
Shakespeare in
Love.
Is the pen mightier than the
sword?
William of Normandy
before the Battle of
Hastings (1066)
The Bayeux Tapestry
Etymologies
Isidore of Seville
(7th century)
Image at right:
T-O map in the 1472 Augsburg
printed edition by Günther
Zainer
(Univ. of Texas-Arlington Library,
Kraus 13)
Criticism of Isidore
“The literary and philological flavor, the stress on
word history and derivation, the pseudo-science
based on authority, the conspicuous tendency to
confusion and feebleness of thought, the habit of
heedless copying that we find in an aggravated
form in the Etymologies, all these are inherited
characteristics that betray the origin of the work.”
Ernest Brehaut, An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages: Isidor of Seville (New
York: Burt Franklin, 1912), 42-3.
Criticism of Wikipedia
“Wikipedians are concerned with
verifiability rather than truth, and the
Internet is a handy way of cross-checking
information and sources.”
Mathieu O’Neil, Cyberchiefs: Autonomy and Authority in
Online Tribes (New York: Pluto Press, 2009), 150.
I love Wikipedia . . . Any user can change any entry
and if enough other users agree with them, it
becomes true . . . We're going to stampede across
the web like that giant horde of elephants in Africa.
Find the page on elephants in Wikipedia and create
an entry that says the number of elephants tripled in
the last six months . . . Together we can create a
reality that we all agree on – the reality we just
agreed on.
Stephen Colbert, "The Word - Wikiality," Colbert Nation, July 31, 2006,
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/72347/july-312006/the-word---wikiality (accessed August 25, 2009).
How often do students use Wikipedia during
the course–related research process?
Always:
30%
Occasionally: 23%
Frequently:
22%
Rarely:
13%
Never:
9%
Don’t Know: 3%
Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, "How Today's College Students Use Wikipedia
for Course-Related Research," First Monday 15.3 (1 March 2010): 1-13,
http:/www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2830/2476 (accessed
April 27, 2010).
My students’ perceptions of Wikipedia
• “Teachers tell me not to use Wikipedia.”
• “When I'm learning about something I have little to no
prior knowledge on, Wikipedia provides a good
foundation for learning about it. It lets me know what
the main significance of the topic is before I read indepth articles about it. I can understand why
teachers wouldn't allow students to reference it since
it's not scholarly, but I rarely find inaccuracies on it
and it serves as a helpful tool for me.”
Etymologies
Isidore of Seville
(7th century)
Image at right:
T-O map in the 1472 Augsburg
printed edition by Günther
Zainer
(Univ. of Texas-Arlington Library,
Kraus 13)
Compilational Awareness
“The reason that Isidore's work has often been written off or
denigrated by modern scholars – that it is a derivative, unoriginal
compilation – was the very reason for its popularity throughout the
Middle Ages and early Renaissance . . . The form of textuality at work
can be understood through the notion of the writer as compilator, one
who selects material from a larger cultural library and whose resulting
compilation is an interpretive arrangement of the discursive traditions
in which the writer intervenes. The compilator makes explicit the
writer's function at the level of textuality: the compiler sets up a
dialogue between prior texts and the interpretive discourse of his own
community, isolating or bringing into focus a pattern in the larger
network of texts that forms the library. In short, the notion of the
compilator opens up the question of the intertextual dimensions of
writing, both the awareness of this principle by medieval writers and
readers themselves and the historical conditions for writing and
interpretation that function impersonally and unconsciously.”
Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture 'Grammatica' and Literary Theory,
350-1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 210.
Compilation or Plagiarism?
“Conpilator, qui aliena dicta suis praemiscet, sicut solent pigmentarii
in pila diversa mixta contundere. Hoc scelere quondam accusabatur
Mantuanus ille vates, cum quosdam versus Homeri transferens suis
permiscuisset et conpilator veterum ab aemulis diceretur. Ille
respondit: ‘Magnarum esse virium clavam Herculi extorquere de
manu.’”
[Compilator, one who mixes things said by others with his own words
as paint dealers are accustomed to pound together various mixes in a
mortar (pila). The Mantuan poet [Vergil] was once accused of this
crime when, transposing certain verses of Homer, he blended them in
with his own and was called a plunderer (conpilator) of the ancients by
his rivals. He replied: ‘to wrench the club from the hand of Hercules
is to be of greater power.’]
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. W.M. Lindsay (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1911), 10.44.
Compilational Power
“[C]ompiling means transferring textual
power from the hand of a former holder to
that of the present compiler. To compile is
to rewrite and to perpetuate authority.”
Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture, 242.
Etymologies and the History of
Language
“Etymologia est origo vocabulorum, cum vis verbi vel nominis per
interpretationem colligitur. Hanc Aristoteles σúµβολον, Cicero
adnotationem nominavit, quia nomina et verba rerum nota facit
exemplo posito; utputa 'flumen,' quia fluendo crevit, a fluendo dictum.
. . Omnis enim rei inspectio etymologia cognita planior est.”
[Etymology is the source of words, when the force of a word or name
is inferred by interpretation. This was termed 'symbolon' by Aristotle
and 'notatio' by Cicero, since it produces a sign (nota) by the names
and words of things in a given pattern; for example, a 'flumen' (river) is
so called from 'fluendo' (flowing) because it arose from flowing . . . An
examination of every thing is clearer by knowledge of its etymology.]
Isidore, Etymologiae, 1.29.
James Murray and the Oxford
English Dictionary (OED)
“This is work in which anyone can join.
Even the most indolent novel-reader will
find it little trouble to put a pencil-mark
against any word or phrase that strikes
him, and he can afterwards copy out the
context at his leisure. In this way many
words and references can be registered
that may prove of the highest value.”
“Appeal to the English-Speaking and EnglishReading Public to Read Books and Make
Extracts for the Philological Society’s New
Dictionary,” The Academy (May 10, 1879).