bibliography as research method

Bibliography
Bibliography (from Greek βιβλίον biblion, "book" and -γραφία -graphia, "writing"), as a
discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense,
it is also known as bibliology.
Carter and Barker (2010) describe bibliography as a twofold scholarly discipline—the organized
listing of books (enumerative bibliography) and the systematic description of books as objects
(descriptive bibliography).
Bibliography, in its systematic pursuit of understanding the past and the present through written
and printed documents, describes a way and means of extracting information from this material.
Bibliographers are interested in comparing versions of texts to each other rather than in
interpreting their meaning or assessing their significance.
Carter and Barker (2010) describe bibliography as a twofold scholarly discipline—the
organized listing of books (enumerative bibliography) and the systematic description of books
as physical objects (descriptive bibliography). These two distinct concepts and practices have
separate rationales and serve differing purposes. Innovators and originators in the field
include W. W. Greg, Fredson Bowers, Philip Gaskell, G. Thomas Tanselle.
Bowers (1949) refers to enumerative bibliography as a procedure that identifies books in
“specific collections or libraries,” in a specific discipline, by an author, printer, or period of
production (3). He refers to descriptive bibliography as the systematic description of a book as a
material or physical artifact. Analytical bibliography, the cornerstone of descriptive bibliography,
investigates the printing and all physical features of a book that yield evidence establishing a book's
history and transmission (Feather 10). It is the preliminary phase of bibliographic description and
provides the vocabulary, principles and techniques of analysis that descriptive bibliographers apply
and on which they base their descriptive practice.
Descriptive bibliographers follow specific conventions and associated classification in their
description. Titles and title pages are transcribed in a quasi-facsimile style and representation.
Illustration, typeface, binding, paper, and all physical elements related to identifying a book follow
formulaic conventions, as Bowers established in his foundational opus, The Principles of
Bibliographic Description. The thought expressed in this book expands substantively on W. W.
Greg's groundbreaking theory that argued for the adoption of formal bibliographic principles (Greg
29). Fundamentally, analytical bibliography is concerned with objective, physical analysis and
history of a book while descriptive bibliography employs all data that analytical bibliography
furnishes and then codifies it with a view to identifying the ideal copy or form of a book that most
nearly represents the printer's initial conception and intention in printing.
In addition to viewing bibliographic study as being composed of four interdependent approaches
(enumerative, descriptive, analytical, and textual), Bowers notes two further subcategories of
research, namely historical bibliography and aesthetic bibliography.[10]
Both historical
bibliography, which involves the investigation of printing practices, tools, and related documents, and

aesthetic bibliography, which examines the art of designing type and books, are often employed by
analytical bibliographers.
D. F. McKenzie extended previous notions of bibliography as set forth by W. W. Greg, Bowers,
Gaskell and Tanselle. He describes the nature of bibliography as "the discipline that studies texts as
recorded forms, and the processes of their transmission, including their production and reception"
(1999 12). This concept broadens the scope of bibliography to include "non-book texts" and an
accounting for their material form and structure, as well as textual variations, technical and
production processes that bring sociocultural context and effects into play.
Bibliography, generally, concerns the material conditions of books [as well as other texts]
how they are designed, edited, printed, circulated, reprinted, collected.
Based on the purpose it can generally be divided into two categories: enumerative bibliography
(also called compilative, reference or systematic), which results in an overview of publications
in a particular category and analytical or critical bibliography, which studies the production
of books.
Enumerative bibliography
An enumerative bibliography is a systematic list of books and other works such
as journal articles. bibliographic databases. A library catalog, while not referred to as a
"bibliography," is bibliographic in nature. A more common and particular instance of an
enumerative bibliography relates to specific sources used or considered in preparing a scholarly
paper or academic term paper. MLA International Bibliography is another example.
An entry for a book in a bibliography usually contains the following elements:
 creator(s)
 title
 place of publication
 publisher or printer
 date of publication
An entry for a journal or periodical article usually contains:
 creator(s)
 article title

 journal title
 volume
 pages
 date of publication
A bibliography may be arranged by author, topic, or some other scheme. Annotated
bibliographies give descriptions about how each source is useful to an author in constructing a
paper or argument. These descriptions, usually a few sentences long, provide a summary of the
source and describe its relevance.
An annotated bibliography is a bibliography that gives a summary of each of the entries.[1]
The
purpose of annotations is to provide the reader with a summary and an evaluation of each source.
Each summary should be a concise exposition of the source's central idea(s) and give the reader a
general idea of the source's content.
Descriptive bibliography
Fredson Bowers described and formulated a standardized practice of descriptive bibliography in
his Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949). Scholars to this day treat Bowers' scholarly
guide as authoritative. In this classic text, Bowers describes the basic function of bibliography as,
"[providing] sufficient data so that a reader may identify the book described, understand the
printing, and recognize the precise contents"
According to Bowers (193), the format of a book is usually abbreviated in the collation formula:
 Binding – a description of the binding techniques (generally for books printed after 1800)
 Title Page Transcription – a transcription of the title page, including rule lines and ornaments
 Contents – a listing of the contents (by section) in the book
 Paper – a description of the physical properties of the paper, including production process, an
account of chain-line measurements, and a description of watermarks (if present)
 Illustrations – a description of the illustrations found in the book, including printing process (e.g.
woodblock, intaglio, etc.), measurements, and locations in the text
 Presswork – miscellaneous details gleaned from the text about its production
 Copies Examined – an enumeration of the copies examined, including those copies' location (i.e.
belonging to which library or collector)

Analytical Bibliography
This branch of the bibliographic discipline examines the material features of a textual artifact –
such as type, ink, paper, imposition, format, impressions and states of a book – to essentially
recreate the conditions of its production. Analytical bibliography often uses collateral evidence –
such as general printing practices, trends in format, responses and non-responses to design, etc. –
to scrutinize the historical conventions and influences underlying the physical appearance of a text.
The bibliographer utilizes knowledge gained from the investigation of physical evidence in the
form of a descriptive bibliography or textual bibliography.[17] Descriptive bibliography is the close
examination and cataloging of a text as a physical object, recording its size, format, binding, and
so on, while textual bibliography (or textual criticism) identifies variations – and the
aetiology of variations – in a text with a view to determining "the establishment of the most
correct form of [a] text (Bowers 498[1]).
The term bibliographer is sometimes—in particular subject bibliographer—today used about certain
roles performed in libraries
"Four Faces of Bibliography" by Bower Fredson
Textual Scholarship by Greetham, David
The Bibliographical Concepts of "Issue" and "State"
G. Thomas Tanselle
A NEW INTRODUCTION TO BIBLIOGRAPHY | Philip Gaskell
A Bibliographical Companion
By Roy Stokes
Voice, Text, Hypertext: Emerging Practices in Textual Studies
A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism,Foreword by David C Greetham

Annotated Bibliography: Key Works in the Theory of Textual Editing
Commissioned by the Committee on Scholarly Editions
Compiled by Dirk Van Hulle, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Bédier, Joseph. "La tradition manuscrite du Lai de l'Ombre: réflexions sur l'art d'éditer les anciens
textes." Romania 54 (1928): 161-196, 321-356.
Bédier advocates best-text conservatism and rejects the subjectivity of Lachmann's method (see
Maas) with its emphasis on the lost authorial text, resulting remarkably often in two-branch
stemmata. Instead, Bédier focuses on manuscripts and scribes, reducing the role of editorial
judgment.
Blecua, Alberto. "Defending Neolachmannianism: On the Palacio Manuscript of La
Celestina." Variants. Eds. Peter Robinson and H.T.M. Van Vliet. Turnhout: Brepols, 2002. 113-
33.
A clear position statement by the author of the noteworthy Spanish Manual de Critica
Textual (1983) in defence of the neolachmannian method. Blecua argues that stemmatic analysis
is superior to the methods based on material bibliography and that only the construction of a
stemma can detect the presence of contaminated texts.
Bornstein, George, and Ralph G. Williams, eds. Palimpsest: Editorial Theory in the Humanities.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
On the assumption that texts are not as stable or fixed as we tend to think they are, these essays
examine the palimpsestic quality of texts, emphasizing the contingencies both of their historical
circumstances of production, and of their reconstruction in the present. They mark a theoretical
period of transition, shifting the focus from product to process in editorial theory and practice.
Bowers, Fredson. "Some Principles for Scholarly Editions of Nineteenth-Century American
Authors." Studies in Bibliography 17 (1964): 223-8.
Concise and systematic elaboration of W.W. Greg's theories, arguing that "when an author's
manuscript is preserved," this document rather than the first edition has paramount authority and
should serve as copy-text. Bowers' principles for the application of analytical bibliography in an
eclectic method of editing, have been most influential in Anglo-American scholarly editing.

Bryant, John. The Fluid Text: A Theory of Revision for Book and Screen. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2002.
Bryant conceives of manuscript and print versions as collectively constituting a fluid text, positing
"revision sites" as editorial spaces through which to map both authorial and non-authorial changes,
including posthumous adaptations. Encouraging editors to construct "revision narratives" to track
this record of change, Bryant highlights fluid texts as especially expressive of their cultural
contexts.
(Annotation by John Young, Marshall University)
Cohen, Philip, ed. Devils and Angels: Textual Editing and Literary Theory. Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1991.
The "increasingly theoretical self-consciousness" characterizing textual criticism and scholarly
editing marks an impasse, indicative of a paradigm shift. Assumptions that have been self-evident
for several decades are rethought in eight stimulating essays and three responses.
de Biasi, Pierre-Marc. "What is a Literary Draft? Toward a Functional Typology of Genetic
Documentation." Yale French Studies 89: Drafts (1996): 26-58.
In a continuous effort to present manuscript analysis and critique génétique as a scientific
approach to literature, de Biasi designs a typology of genetic documentation, starting from
the bon tirer moment ("all set for printing") as the dividing line between the texte and what
precedes it, the so-called avant-texte.
Eggert, Paul. "Textual Product or Textual Process: Procedures and Assumptions of Critical
Editing." Editing in Australia. Ed. Paul Eggert. Canberra: University College ADFA, 1990. 19-
40.
Starting from a comparison with new techniques of X-raying paintings, Eggert proposes a valuable
ideal for a critical edition that allows the reader to study both the writing process and the finished
product.
Ferrer, Daniel. "Production, Invention, and Reproduction: Genetic vs. Textual
Criticism." Reimagining Textuality: Textual Studies in the Late Age of Print. Eds. Elizabeth
Bergmann Loizeaux and Neil Fraistat. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. 48-59.

Ferrer defines the difference between genetic and textual criticism on the basis of their respective
focus on invention and repetition. He pleads for a hypertextual presentation as the best way to do
justice to the diverse aspects of the writing process.
Finneran, Richard J., ed. The Literary Text in the Digital Age. Editorial Theory and Literary
Criticism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.
The availability of digital technology coincides with a fundamental paradigm shift in textual
theory, away from the idea of a "definitive edition." Fifteen contributions reflect on the shift toward
an enhanced attention to nonverbal elements and the integrity of discrete versions.
Gabler, Hans Walter, George Bornstein, and Gillian Borland Pierce, eds. Contemporary German
Editorial Theory. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995.
With its representative choice of position statements, this thorough introduction to major trends in
German editorial theory in the second half of the twentieth century marks the relatively recent
efforts to establish contact between German and Anglo-American editorial traditions.
Gabler, Hans Walter. "The Synchrony and Diachrony of Texts: Practice and Theory of the Critical
Edition of James Joyce's Ulysses." TEXT 1 (1981): 305-26.
The work's "total text," comprising all its authorial textual states, is conceived as a diachronous
structure that correlates different synchronous structures. A published text is only one such
synchronous structure and not necessarily a privileged one.
Gaskell, Philip. From Writer to Reader: Studies in Editorial Method. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1978.
In 1972, with A New Introductionto Bibliography replacing McKerrow's, Gaskell had already
criticized Greg's copy-text theory, arguing that authors often expect their publishers to correct
accidentals. From Writer to Reader zooms in on the act of publication and the supposed
acceptance of the textual modifications this may involve.
Greetham, David C. Textual Scholarship: An Introduction. New York and London: Garland,
1992.

Impressive survey of various textual approaches: finding, making, describing, evaluating, reading,
criticizing, and finally editing the text, i.e. biblio-, paleo- and typography, textual criticism and
scholarly editing. The book contains an extensive bibliography, organized per discipline.
Greetham, David C., ed. Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research. New York: The Modern
Language Association of America, 1995.
The most comprehensive survey of current scholarly editing of various kinds of literatures, both
historically and geographically, with elucidating contributions by textual scholars from different
traditions.
Greg, W. W. "The Rationale of Copy-Text." Studies in Bibliography 3 (1950-1): 19-37.
This pivotal essay has had an unparallelled influence on Anglo-American scholarly editing in the
twentieth century. Greg proposes a distinction between substantive readings (which change the
meaning of the text) and accidentals (spelling, punctuation, etc.). He pleads for more editorial
judgment and eclectic editing, against "the fallacy of the 'best text'" and "the tyranny of the copy-
text," contending that the copy-text should be followed only so far as accidentals are concerned,
but that it does not govern in the matter of substantive readings.
Grésillon, Almuth. Eléments de critique génétique: Lire les manuscrits modernes. Paris: Presses
universitaires de France, 1994.
Introduction to textual genetics or critique génétique, which was developed in the 1970s and
became a major field of research in France. In spite of correspondences with textual criticism, it
sees itself as a form of literary criticism, giving primacy to interpretation over editing.
Groden, Michael. "Contemporary Textual and Literary Theory." Representing Modernist Texts:
Editing as Interpretation. Ed. George Bornstein. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991:
259-86.
Important plea for more contact between textual and literary theorists by the general editor of
The James Joyce Archive facsimile edition of Joyce's works.
Hay, Louis. "Passé et avenir de l'édition génétique: quelques réflexions d'un usager." Cahier de
textologie 2 (1988): 5-22; trans. "Genetic Editing, Past and Future: A Few Reflections of a
User." TEXT 3 (1987): 117-33.

Genetic editing, presenting the reader with a "work in progress," is a new trend, but it revives an
old tradition. The founder of the Paris institute for modern texts and manuscripts (ITEM-CNRS)
points out that editing has always reflected the main ideological and cultural concerns of its day.
Maas, Paul. Einleitung in die Altertumswissenschaft vol. 2: "Textkritik." Leipzig & Berlin:
Teubner, 1927; Textual Criticism. Trans. Barbara Flower. Oxford: Clarendon, 1958.
One of Karl Lachmann's main disciples, Maas systematizes Lachmannian stemmatics, requiring
thorough scrutiny of witnesses (recensio) before emending errors and corruptions (emendatio,
often involving a third step of divination or divinatio).
Martens, Gunter and Hans Zeller, eds. Texte und Varianten: Probleme ihrer Edition und
Interpretation. Munich: Beck, 1971.
Epoch-making collection of German essays with important contributions by, amongst others, Hans
Zeller (pairing "record" and "interpretation," allowing readers to verify the editor's decisions),
Siegfried Scheibe (on fundamental principles for historical-critical editing), and Gunter Martens
(on textual dynamics and editing). The collection's central statement is that the apparatus, not the
reading text, constitutes the core of scholarly editions.
McGann, Jerome J. Critique of Modern Textual Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1983. Repr. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992.
Textual criticism does not have to be restricted to authorial changes, but may also include the study
of posthumous changes by publishers or other agents. McGann sees the text as a social construct
and draws attention to the cooperation involved in the production of literary works.
McGann, Jerome J. The Textual Condition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
McGann makes several valuable and innovating suggestions, from the idea of a "continuous
production text" to a clear distinction between a text's bibliographical and linguistic codes (in the
important essay "What Is Critical Editing?").
McGann, Jerome J. "The Rationale of HyperText."
<http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/public/jjm2f/rationale.html>; repr. TEXT 9 (1996): 11-32;
repr. Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory. Ed. Kathryn Sutherland. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1997. 19-46; repr. radiant textuality: literature after the world wide web. New
York: Palgrave, 2001. 53-74.
Conceived in an expressly revisionist relation to Greg's rationale, McGann's ambitious essay
presents the book as a machine of knowledge and evaluates the advantages of hyperediting and
hypermedia over editions in codex form. As the earliest hypertextual structure the library
organization illustrates the theoretical design of a "decentered text".
McKenzie, D.F. Bibliography and the Sociology of the Text: The Panizzi Lectures 1985. London:
The British Library, 1986.
McKenzie extends the scope of traditional bibliography to a broader sociology of the text,
including videogames, movies, and even landscapes. This perspective has been a major stimulus
to the advancement of the sociological orientation in scholarly editing.
McKerrow, R. B. An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1927.
McKerrow's manual of "new bibliography" reflects the early twentieth-century editorial method
which made extensive use of analytical bibliography. The author of Prolegomena for the Oxford
Shakespeare was rather averse to the idea of emending the copy-text from other sources.
Nutt-Kofoth, Rodiger, Bodo Plachta, H.T.M. van Vliet, and Hermann Zwerschina, eds. Text und
Edition: Positionen und Perspektiven. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2000.
As a younger generation's counterpart of Texte und Varianten (see Martens), this state of the art of
current scholarly editing in Germany also includes interesting survey articles on Anglo-American
scholarly editing (Peter Shillingsburg) and "genetic criticism and philology" (Geert Lernout;
trans. TEXT 14 [2002]: 53-75).
Parker, Hershel. Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons: Literary Authority in American Fiction.
Evanston: Nortwestern University Press, 1984.
Starting from analyses of revisions by Melville, Twain, Crane, and Mailer, Parker pleads for more
attention to textual composition and the development of (sometimes self-contradictory) authorial
intentions, which an institutionalized editorial method is often unable to represent.

Pasquali, Giorgio. Storia della tradizione e critica del testo. Florence: Le Monnier, 1934.
Pasquali criticizes some of the basic Lachmannian principles and proposes to take the history of
the witnesses and the scribes into account. The current emphasis on textual tradition in Italian
philology is to a large extent his legacy.
Pizer, Donald. "Self-Censorship and Textual Editing." Textual Criticism and Literary
Interpretation. Ed. Jerome J. McGann. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. 144-61.
Pizer emphasizes the social aspects of texts, arguing that even if an author has personally changed
his texts under external pressure, it may be more important to present the reader with the censored
versions because of their social resonance.
Reiman, Donald H. "'Versioning': The Presentation of Multiple Texts." Romantic Texts and
Contexts. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987. 167-80.
Reiman suggests "versioning" (or multiversional representation) as an alternative to "editing". The
main purpose of this textual approach is to offer readers and critics the opportunity to figure out
for themselves how the work evolved.
Robinson, Peter M. W. "The One Text and the Many Texts." Making Texts for the Next Century.
Special Issue of Literary & Linguistic Computing 15.1 (2000): 5-14
In answer to the question "Is There a Text in These Variants?" which Robinson asked in a previous
essay, he argues that a scholarly edition is more than merely presenting an archive of variants. The
aim of the editor should be to offer a useful tool so as to allow readers to make the connection
between variation and meaning. A critically edited text (presented along with "the many texts") is
the best means to that end.
Shillingsburg Peter. Scholarly Editing in theComputerAge: Theory and Practice. 3rd edition. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.
Indispensable introduction to practical procedures and controversial issues in editorial theory,
offering clear definitions in matters of textual ontology and a survey of different orientations in
scholarly editing.

Shillingsburg, Peter. Resisting Texts:Authority and Submission in Constructions of Meaning. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
The editor's main task, Shillingsburg argues, is to relate the work to the documents and to take
responsibility for the integrity of the agency of texts, which is a responsibility to both the
author and the social contract. Shillingsburg designs a map with four major forms of textual
concern, placing the physical documents at the center of textual and literary theory.
Stillinger, Jack. Multiple Authorship and the Myth of the Author in Criticism and Textual Theory.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Stillinger pleads for a broader conception of authorship to include collaboration as an inherent
aspect of creation. Case studies include John Stuart Mill and his wife, Keats and his helpers,
Wordsworth revising earlier versions of his texts.
Tanselle, G. Thomas. "The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention." Studies in
Bibliography 29 (1976): 167-211.
An author's revisions do not automatically reflect his final intentions. In the case of Typee, Herman
Melville was responsible for the changes in the second edition, but they represent his
"acquiescence" rather than his intention, according to Tanselle, who is well aware that a reader
does not have access to an author's mind and advises to always take the context into account.
Tanselle, G. Thomas. A Rationale of Textual Criticism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1989.
In his profound analysis of the ontology of texts Tanselle makes a clear distinction "between work"
and "text." A work is an entity that exists in no single historical document. Scholarly editing
entails, just like any act of reading, the effort to discover the work that "lies behind" the text(s) one
is presented with.
Thorpe, James. Principles of Textual Criticism. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1972.
As an early critic of the principles advocated by Greg and Bowers, Thorpe argues that specific
compositional peculiarities and contingencies tend to be left out of consideration.

Timpanaro, Sebastiano. La genesi del metodo del Lachmann. Florence: Le Monnier, 1963. Rev.
ed. Padua: Liviana, 1985.
The genealogical study of manuscript transmission originated in New Testament criticism toward
the end of the eighteenth century. By reexamining Bédier's criticism regarding two-branch
stemmata, Timpanaro does not so much aim to correct them but to understand how they came into
being.
Zeller, Hans. "A New Approach to the Critical Constitution of Literary Texts." Studies in
Bibliography 28 (1975): 231-63.
In his evaluation of Anglo-American copy-text theory from a structuralist point of view Zeller
contrasts the practice of editing an "eclectic (contaminated) text" with German editorial methods,
showing crucial differences with respect to the notions of "authority," "authorial intention," and
"version."
Studies in Bibliography
Contributed by G. Thomas Tanselle
Studies in Bibliography is a scholarly journal founded in 1948 by Fredson Bowers, a professor
of English at the University of Virginia, and published by the Bibliographical Society of the
University of Virginia. Its aim is to contribute to bibliographical scholarship by publishing
articles in any of the areas of study that deal with printed books and manuscripts as physical
objects: the history of paper, type, letterforms, book illustration, and binding; printing and
publishing history; the description and analysis of the physical features of books and
manuscripts; textual criticism and scholarly editing; and the history of bibliography itself. The
journal, which appears in the form of substantial volumes, usually at intervals of about a year,
established an international reputation quickly and has long been regarded as one of the major
journals in its field, having repeatedly brought out groundbreaking articles that have achieved the
status of classics.

bibliography as research method

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