Extreme Reading: Josephine Miles and the Scale of the Pre-Digital Digital Humanities

• Published in: ELH 2019, Vol.86 (2), p.355-385
• Main Author: Pasanek, Brad
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ambiguity; Authorship; Biographies; British & Irish literature; Collaboration; College students; Creativity; Digital humanities; English literature; Epic literature; Essays; Exegesis & hermeneutics; Folklore; Heroism & heroes; Identity; Literary criticism; Narrative techniques; Poetry; Poets; Publishing; Publishing industry; Reading; Transcription; Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)
• ISSN: 0013-8304; 1080-6547; 1080-6547
• DOI: 10.1353/elh.2019.0018

[...]haunting my strong interest in and identification with these archival materials is my despair, brought out by the busy pointlessness of recounting Miles's countings, an effort which necessarily underscores her misapprehensions and errors and complicates my effort to celebrate her scholarship. [...]I am uncertain how to understand Miles as a disabled woman, an identity which figures so prominently in most accounts of her critical and creative work. Tallies of A-N-V proportions. Because these tabulations bulk largest in her archive as the main product of Miles's working methods, I will explain how they were made. [...]Tuve's full phrasing replaces a more anodyne clause—struck through in pencil—that states "the method does not seem designed to help us therein. [...]the tedium of transcription was shared by her graduate student assistants: several packets of transcription are not in Miles's hand.