Further Explorations in Early Modern Manuscripts

• Published in: Etudes anglaises 2020-01, Vol.73 (3), p.259-264
• Main Author: Coatalen, Guillaume
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 18th century; 19th century; Austen, Jane (1775-1817); Donne, John (1572-1631); Early modern period; Genetic criticism; Historical text analysis; Humanities and Social Sciences; Literature; Paleography
• ISSN: 0014-195X; 1965-0159
• DOI: 10.3917/etan.733.0259

Yet the field of early modern manuscript studies has remained in a somewhat uncomfortable position. Manuscripts are still associated with the medieval age on the one hand, and manuscript genetics on the other. The myth according to which the invention of printing made manuscripts redundant or led to their extinction is still very much alive, even when facts tell otherwise. In reality, due to institutional pressure to publish quickly, fewer medievalists than before edit manuscripts. As to manuscript genetics, the focus is often on twentieth-century authors like Joyce and Beckett. Until fairly recently, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary manuscripts were consulted by relatively few scholars outside textual geneticists and scholars establishing critical editions, even for the most popular writers in the canon, like Jane Austen. Perhaps because the study of manuscripts requires a definite set of skills, among them linguistic, bibliographical and paleographic competences, most literary scholars dread engaging with them.