The Year's Contributions to Shakespearian Study 1 - Critical Studies

Summary

Last year I began with the crisis in publishing, and the difficulties young scholars now face with first monographs. Nothing suggests that the situation has eased; rather, the monograph itself is threatened. The consequences can be severe in academic cultures which require the production – I am choosing my words with care – of extended, continuous arguments between hard covers, not once but repeatedly. As publishers change their lists in the direction of ‘Companions’ and ‘Guides’, ‘Topics’ and ‘Accents’, and other collections targeted at student markets, good new work appears increasingly in formats once disdained by committees reviewing dossiers for appointment, tenure, promotion, merit awards, all the armature of careers. Increasingly, the wider publication in journals and reviews becomes necessary, and no longer simply to try out ideas which will be discussed and modified later, or which may not contribute to a larger argument. The Net offers potential alternatives, but resistance to Net publication is no doubt in part fuelled by the wild freedom which has given a disreputable glow to much that happens there. The uploading of journals is to be welcomed – for much of the wide world of scholarship, it revolutionizes access, although the prices of subscriptions remain a problem. A free site, such as Shaksper (www.shaksper.net, edited by Professor Hardy M. Cook), has the advantages and disadvantages typical of all discussion groups: above all, for better or for worse, quantity. The phenomenon is hardly restricted to the Net: the proliferation of journals, and of the ephemeral appearance of conference papers, raises questions about just how much the world of scholarship can sustain.