Literature and libraries

Literature and Libraries LIS413 Brendan A Rapple Simmons College July, 2009 Literature • Imaginative works having some claim to artistic value, e.g.: – poetry; legends and folk tales; drama; short stories; novels • Certain non-fictional works of high artistic quality: – Literary nonfiction may include almost any writing except the strictly technical • Don’t Forget Oral Literature! What is English? • Is English the language or does it pertain to the country? Literary Criticism • Literary history: literature is viewed as part of a historical process • Literary theory: an attempt is made to describe the principles of literature, its genres, and its techniques and functions • Evaluative criticism: concerns the study and analysis of specific works and their authors Curricular Changes • “Many of the most publicized changes in higher education in the past three decades have been curricular Critics inside and outside academe have wrung their hands over a variety of course appearances, adjustments, and alleged "disappearings" (the dirty work of "leftist" faculty hit squads) A major thrust of most of these curricular reforms was to acknowledge the historical importance and cultural contributions of groups, doers, and thinkers beyond the limited cast or "canon" of Western white males featured in prevailing texts and syllabi This, in turn, led to the inclusion of women and other "minorities," an emphasis on conflict and pluralism, a globalization of the curriculum in general, a questioning of the canonical criteria of "greatness," and a rise in cross- and interdisciplinary studies Simultaneously, an influx of "postmodernist" theory from France and Germany threatened the humanities and social sciences by overturning or seriously challenging virtually all of their traditional ("modernist") assumptions and intellectual procedures All of these changes posed a major threat to the status quo and induced no little angst in the halls of ivy.” • James Axtell Virginia Quarterly Review (2003) Literary Criticism Now Less US/Eurocentric “Literary criticism now investigates entire ranges of literary production that not share in Western culture Critics treat the writings of poets, playwrights, and novelists, from postcolonial regions in the Pacific, Caribbean, and South Africa who use pidgin forms of English and sometimes French to articulate their own social realities and histories They also give new attention to writings and songs from ‘fourth-world’ peoples, that is, from minorities marginalized in ghettos within first-world cultures.” Today English Depts often Provide courses and programs in • literary theory • rhetoric and composition • technical writing • creative writing • cultural, TESOL, linguistics, children’s and adolescent literature • language arts • English education • pedagogical theory • Computerization of literature English Studies/Literary Studies is Turning More and More into Cultural Studies Criticism of Cultural Studies: “The downside of the equation between cultural studies and literary studies is that, carried to its logical conclusion, cultural studies can dispense with the literary altogether Studies of consumerism, for example, can be based on the analysis of shopping malls or Home Depot layouts; no literary texts are required Teen culture can be explored through music, film, and computer games Current social mores and cultural constraints can be profitably studied by examining Internet discourse And so on Everything, after all, can be a text and so why not a golf course? A skating rink? A theme park?” Marjorie Perloff Crisis in the Humanities Differences in Collecting Between • Public Libraries • Academic and Research Libraries (here the acquisition of literary scholarship, i.e secondary material, is stressed) Texts • Scholars often concerned with distinguishing the literary work from the (sometimes many) texts that embody it • A text may be considered a process as well as a finished product • Many aspects: • Creation of the text • Production • Dissemination • Reception • Preservation Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period • This is an electronic collection of over 60 volumes of lyric poetry by about fifty Scottish women, written between 1789 and 1832 The database also contains critical reviews, essays and associated bibliographical and biographical material There are also selected pertinent web sites Oxford English Dictionary Dates: (latest edition) Description: The Second Edition provides a comprehensive history of the English language and illustrates its development by quotations from both scholarly and popular works In total the second edition of the OED contains nearly two and a half million quotations Times Literary Supplement Centenary Archive Dates: (1902-1990) Description: An index to the TLS together with images of the publication Many of the previously anonymous contributors have been identified Full-text searching will be available by the end of 2000 Dictionary of Old English: A to G Online Dates: (600-1150 A.D.) Description: The Dictionary of Old English: A to G online includes the first release of the letter G, containing some 1319 headwords, as well as revised versions of the seven previously published fascicles (1986-2003) Both simple and Boolean searches are accommodated Links provide full bibliographic references for each of the texts cited within an entry The DOE is now linked to the online Oxford English Dictionary and Oxford English Dictionary to facilitate linguistic research Other Online Databases Language & Literature Languages Other than English: A Brief Selection Théâtre du Grand Siècle Dates: (1600-1699) Description: Théâtre du Grand Siécle includes the full text of seventyseven plays by Corneille, Molière and Racine This constitutes the complete works of Corneille, Molière and Racine Teatro Español del Siglo de Oro Dates: (1998) Description: The Teatro Español del Siglo de Oro full text database contains more than 800 plays written by 16 dramatists during the sixteenth and seventeenth century in Spain These important dramatic works are either edited by the playwrights themselves or by an editor "endorsed" by the playwright The entire text of each play is included and searchable ARTFL - Textual Database of French literature Dates: (1200-present) Description: Includes nearly 2,000 French texts ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing covering the 13th-20th Centuries Database includes literature, philosophy, arts, sciences The eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries are about equally represented, with a smaller selection of seventeenth century texts as well as some medieval and Renaissance texts Bertolt Brechts Werke im WWW Dates: (1999) Description: The first authorized electronic edition is based on Bertolt Brecht, Ausgewählte Werke in sechs Bänden, Jubiläumsausgabe um 100 Geburtstag Published in cooperation with Suhrkamp Verlag.and encoded in SGML La Critique Littéraire de Laharpe Proust Dates: (1800-1899) Description: Contains 115 works of twenty-nine French writers from Alexis and Baudelaire to Saint-Beuve, Schlegel and Zola In addition, works by literary critical specialists to explore the rapid development of literary theory between 1788 and 1925 Autour du Romantisme : Le Roman, 1792-1886 Dates: (1792-1886) Description: Contains the works of Arlincourt, Borel, Chateaubriand, Dumas, Feydeau, Hugo, Karr, Lamartine, Maistre, Nerval, Sade, Souza, Staël, and Vigny, as well as many other French authors of the 19th century Goethes Werke im WWW Dates: (1997) Description: Electronic version of Goethes Werke, Weimar: H Böhlau, 1887-1919; Goethes Gespräche Leipzig: Biedermann, 18891896; Goethes Werke, Nachträge zur Weimarer Ausgabe, München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1990 Kafkas Werke im WWW Dates: (1992) Description: The Kritische Kafka-Ausgabe des S Fischer Verlages bei Chadwyck-Healey is the complete critical edition published by S Fischer Verlag digitized and encoded in SGML The web site text has German and English versions Les Romanciers Réalistes et Naturalistes 1820-1910 Dates: (1820-1910) Description: Complete prose works of Balzac, Daudet, Flaubert, Les Goncourt, Huysmans, Maupassant, Stendhal, Vallès and Zola plus a selection of authors such as Les Familiers de Médan and Le Manifeste des Cinq Schillers Werke im WWW Dates: (1998) Description: The electronic edition of the Nationalausgabe of Schiller's works, established in 1940 as the definitive edition of his works, letters and conversations [...]... life facts and context – – – – – Chronologies Specialized studies in writer’s non-literary interest in, e.g theater or film Editions of diaries, journals, autobiographies, memoirs Editions of memoirs of contemporaries/acquaintances Catalogs of authors’ libraries, collections of photographs etc General Bibliographies • Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English... MLA Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures (1992) Descriptive Bibliography • “Descriptive bibliography may be defined as the close physical description of books and other printed objects: a systematic report concerning their type, paper, printing, illustrations, and binding, and how the circumstances of their publication and distribution may have affected their physical appearance... e.g non literature related – Often utilizes special collections Criticism • Particular focus on the creative work itself • Often more stress on Text than Context Theory • Literary theory “is the theory (or the philosophy) of the interpretation of literature and literary criticism Its history begins with classical Greek poetics and rhetoric and includes, since the 18th century, aesthetics and hermeneutics...History of Books and Publishing Many scholars are concerned “with the agents and process of the production of texts: progression from manuscript to serial or book; collaboration of author and editor; distribution and dissemination over time and place; influence of bookseller, librarian, and teacher; reception by readers who themselves are influenced... literary or otherwise, exists in isolation: rather, it is the collaborative effort of many people authors and editors, papermakers and printers, publishers and readers, among others” (Winship, 1995) Reception and Reading • Scholars may study how a book was received, reviewed etc • Many “book review” print and online indexes available • However, it’s much harder to know what ordinary readers think • Still... Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad 1475-1640 (STC) (Pollard & Redgrave) • Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and British America, and of English Books Printed in Other Countries 1641-1700 (Wing) • Together they form major part of the online database Early English Books Online (EEBO) ... versions of Hamlet probably written by Shakespeare • There are countless scholarly and popular versions • How many professional (and amateur) dramatic versions for stage, screen, radio, television, and classroom? Multitudes! Manga Shakespeare How Important is the Medium? • "The context cannot but condition the process Screen and book may exhibit the same string of words, but the assumptions that underlie... reading texts, most of which are informed by various strands of Continental philosophy.” • “Broad schools of theory that have historically been important include the New Criticism, formalism, Russian formalism, and structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxism, feminism and French feminism, new historicism, deconstruction, reader-response criticism, and psychoanalytic criticism.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_theory... Editions: first and other eds (in author’s lifetime) whose form of publication is authorized by author • Subsequent Editions: many types • Scholarly Editions: texts of works that have been determined by editor(s) to have some degree of authority (based on manuscript, original, and subsequent editions) • Student Editions: usually have a sound text; an introduction to the historical and literary contexts;... – – – – – Personal libraries Library borrowing records Journal/diary entries Published reviews Teaching Comments in letters Etc Parameters of Texts • Can a text be more than words? • e.g • • • • Sound Video Computer graphics Web content • BeeHive Hypertext /Hypermedia Journal: http:// beehive.temporalimage.com/departments/ • Electronic Literature Collection: http://collection.eliterature.org What