English 241 Third Writing Assignment: Manuscript Texts and Archives
There is no minimum page length. I would prefer that your writing would take up no more than five to seven pages when printed, not including the Works Cited section, of course. You also may want to include features that would make it more sensible to read it as a digital text. I want to emphasize concentrated, sophisticated thinking in your writing, rather than length or sheer accumulation of ideas. The topics below are intended to simulate, not limit, your creative engagement with the issues we have been discussing. You may well find that you have more to say than you can fit into five (virtual) pages. Remember that you can return to these topics in the final research projects, though I hope most of you will want to work with books from Goucher's Special Collections.
Please make time to brainstorm your paper with a Writing Center tutor, showing her/him this assignment and your materials, and try to get back for a revision conference before turning the paper in. Remember you can meet with tutors outside the regular operating hours of the center, which you can access here.
1) Discuss either the nineteenth-century or the seventeenth-century manuscript in two stages. Describe the challenges it presented to you as a reader and bibliographic analyst. Then discuss the tools and methods you discovered that helped you to read and understand it. Especially consider how knowledge of the document's purposes, hand, and language affected your ability to know and describe what you saw. Comparisons between your experiences of both manuscripts might be helpful, but I urge you to concentrate on one. Refer specifically to readings in the syllabus and elsewhere to support your discussion. For the nineteenth-century manuscript, you should especially refer to Williams and Abbott's "A Text and Its Embodiments" for the machine-press era (57-70). The "text itself" (Lang's words) exists in five differing versions, at least three or more of which you consulted in the lab: your MS leaf, the online digital surrogate of the MS leaf, the photocopy of the print edition of the Magazine of Art article, the print edition of the chapter in Books and Bookmen (on the 241 book truck), and one of the online digital surrogates of the print editions (and which one!) which you used to correct your reading of the manuscript leaf. You would have to list every edition you used, and each would follow a different format. Click here for the proper format for Works Cited reference to the Lang manuscript leaves in the original and in digital surrogate. Remember to document your use of both primary and secondary sources using MLA in-text citations and a properly formatted Works Cited section--see this hyperlink to the course style sheet for further guidance on what your paper should look like. Also, make sure your paper has a standard academic title, an introduction and conclusion, page numbering turned on, and proper annotation of anything unusual enough to require the reader to research it.
2) How did reading that nineteenth-century document's text in that manuscript leaf differ from your experience reading the same text, or related texts, in modern print or online editions? Think about the physical (tactile, visual, etc.) and emotional experience of reading manuscript text. What trade-offs do you perceive when the manuscript version is compared with a modern print or online edition of the same text? What are the unique properties of manuscript texts and how does that affect your encounter with them, including your attempts to categorize them in an archive so that others might retrieve them? Reference to readings in the syllabus and elsewhere should help to support your discussion, including the discussions on printed text vs. MS in Paul Duguid and John Seely Brown, "The Social Life of Documents"; and Elizabeth Eisenstein, "Some Features of Print Culture"; both in Writing Material, 104-22 and 124-33. The "text itself" (Lang's words) exists in five differing versions, at least three or more of which you consulted in the lab: your MS leaf, the online digital surrogate of the MS leaf, the photocopy of the print edition of the Magazine of Art article, the print edition of the chapter in Books and Bookmen (on the 241 book truck), and one of the online digital surrogates of the print editions (and which one!) which you used to correct your reading of the manuscript leaf. You would have to list every edition you used, and each would follow a different format. Click here for the proper format for Works Cited reference to the Lang manuscript leaves in the original and in digital surrogate. Remember to document your use of both primary and secondary sources using MLA in-text citations and a properly formatted Works Cited section--see this hyperlink to the course style sheet for further guidance on what your paper should look like. Also, make sure your paper has a standard academic title, an introduction and conclusion, page numbering turned on, and proper annotation of anything unusual enough to require the reader to research it.
3) Let us assume, for the moment, that the nineteenth-century manuscript was the pre-publication autograph draft of the magazine article and book chapter published by the man whose name appears on the last folio. Where does that manuscript "belong"? Who "owns" a found manuscript, especially if the author's kin are still alive, and if the author's work is of sufficient cultural importance to attract governments' attention? On this issue, be sure to consult James Thorpe's guide to manuscript use in scholarly research. Where are this manuscript's author's "papers" (i.e., personal archive) now stored? Some online research will help you locate him in collections. Remember WorldCat and Karlsruhe University for searching American and Continental library collections. Think about collections and collectors as the amateur librarians of all early MSS that are not already in permanent institutional collections and open to the investigations of scholars. What advantages are there if the MSS of an author are all brought together as they once were in her/his study when she/he first composed them? What difficulties are presented by the scattering of an author's MSS, and of her/his library, when authors' private effects are sold after their deaths? Reference to readings in the syllabus and elsewhere should help to support your discussion. The "text itself" (Lang's words) exists in five differing versions, at least three or more of which you consulted in the lab: your MS leaf, the online digital surrogate of the MS leaf, the photocopy of the print edition of the Magazine of Art article, the print edition of the chapter in Books and Bookmen (on the 241 book truck), and one of the online digital surrogates of the print editions (and which one!) which you used to correct your reading of the manuscript leaf. You should list every edition you used, and each would follow a different format, but I provide you with guidance for how to do that for the manuscript and its digital image. Click here for the proper format for Works Cited reference to the Lang manuscript leaves in the original and in digital surrogate. Remember to document your use of both primary and secondary sources using MLA in-text citations and a properly formatted Works Cited section--see this hyperlink to the course style sheet for further guidance on what your paper should look like. Also, make sure your paper has a standard academic title, an introduction and conclusion, page numbering turned on, and proper annotation of anything unusual enough to require the reader to research it.
4) Referring to your seventeenth-century manuscript, identify as carefully as you can the persons, places, dates, and actions mentioned, and define any unfamiliar terms used in it. Then try to describe what the document was intended to do, and what that might imply about the relationships among the persons associated with it, both in the indenture's primary (recto) text and in the (verso) endorsements. Think of indentures as evidence of a society, and of a series of cultural events, that inform us about what the parties valued. What insight do they give you into seventeenth-century English culture. Make use of Thoyts' Key to the Family Deed Chest and scholarly resources about family and economic relations. Pay close attention to and discuss the resources you use in identifying the persons, places, etc., and document them properly. If you were led to use a less-than-scholarly source on the Internet, try to fact-check it using a better source, ideally something scholarly. Take full advantage of reputable (and properly documented!) online sources, as well as the library's print resources, including the Dictionary of National Biography, Burke's Peerage (if your person bears a noble title like "Sir" or "Lord"), and the O.E.D. Remember to document your use of both primary and secondary sources using MLA in-text citations and a properly formatted Works Cited section--see this hyperlink to the course style sheet for further guidance on what your paper should look like. Also, make sure your paper has a standard academic title, an introduction and conclusion, page numbering turned on, and proper annotation of anything unusual enough to require the reader to research it. [N.B.: This assignment specifically does not ask you to prepare a diplomtic transcription of the document! If you did so, evaluating it would drive me mad!]