Word: textuality
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...young Southern poets (including Allen Tate and Robert Perm Warren) who celebrated the virtues of Southern agrarianism in defiance of the machine age. In 1937 Ransom moved to Kenyon College, where he attracted such poets as Randall Jarrell and Robert Lowell, and fathered the New Criticism, which stressed rigorous textual analysis rather than the study of an author's life and ideas. "A professional critic," Ransom once said, "is a man who, in dealing with a work of art, creates a little work of art in its honor...
...Marcus' avowed aims is to apply the formal techniques of textual analysis to Engels' Condition of the Working Class, "to ascertain how far Literary criticism can help us understand history and society." The answer seems to be not very far at all. The half of his book that analyzes Engels' writing bogs down in the sort of overexplication of the obvious that has so often given literary criticism a bad name...
...turn-of-the-century aesthetes were more sophisticated--they convinced themselves that words, speeches, scenes, and even whole plays were so bad that they could not have been written by Shakespeare. This was more dangerous than any of Samuel Johnson's incredibly insensitive moral judgments, because it made textual criticism the servant of literary taste instead of a neutral point of departure. The present century has made a fetish out of scholarly objectivity, with good reason; let us hope that the achievements of editors like Gwynne Evans in restoring Shakespeare is as real as it looks...
...important that the reader be brought as close to Shakespeare as possible. Evans marks editorial revisions with brackets and his textual notes are clear and absorbing. His textual introduction magisterially surveys the history and techniques of Shakespearean editing, condescending not at all to the general ignorance of the subject. The principles of the "choice of the most difficult reading" (restoring unusual words which early editors may have considered mistakes) and "memorial reconstruction" (actors simply writing down their old parts to the best of their remembrance) are two things every reader should know about, and Evans effectively illustrates them from...
...Lacking textual support," the court continued, "counsel for the President would have us infer immunity from the President's political mandate or from his vulnerability to impeachment or from his discretionary powers. These are invitations to refashion the Constitution, and we reject them. Though the President is elected by nationwide ballot and is often said to represent all the people, he does not embody the nation's sovereignty. He is not above the law's commands. Sovereignty remains at all times with the people, and they do not forfeit through elections the right to have...