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

EtymologiesIsidore 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.

Stephen Colbert, "The Word - Wikiality," Colbert Nation, July 31, 2006, http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/72347/july-31-

2006/the-word---wikiality (accessed August 25, 2009).

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.

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 in-depth 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.”

EtymologiesIsidore 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 English-Reading Public to Read Books and Make Extracts for the Philological Society’s

New Dictionary,” The Academy (May 10, 1879).