Chapter 4 - The Reader-Oriented Scholarly Edition

Summary

Chapter 4 argues that calls for crowdsourcing digital scholarly editions have misconceived the nature of the scholarly edition and its changing relationship to its readers. The relationship is argued to be essential. A survey of post-war scholarly editions reveals a shifting understanding amongst editors of the needs and capacities of readers. However, an increasing tolerance for the reporting of variant readings has come at the cost of shrinking print runs (some figures are provided). The digital environment is argued to offer a solution by putting into operation a distinction between the archival and editorial functions of the scholarly edition. The latter should henceforth be understood as an argument directed at the reader about the archive. This conception is shown to open the way for editors to transgress those literary-historical and literary-critical domains where, because of the 100-year horizons of print editions, editors have traditionally been reluctant to tread.