Speaking up for English

In the New York Times on 23rd June (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/opinion/sunday/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-english-major.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB), Verlyn Klinkenborg outlined the so-called 'decline' of the English Major, unhappily conflating the apparent crisis in the Humanities with the falling numbers of students studying English and confusing the issue by lamenting these same English students' alleged inability to write clearly. (What students, by the way, would want to study with a tutor who complained in such a blanket fashion about them?)

There's so much one can say about this article. First, Klinkenborg's experience is not my experience. Some students write beautifully from the outset; others need more time to learn. It was ever thus. It is my job to teach my students the skills they need to be the best that they can be. Secondly, as pointed out here (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/jacobs/the-humanities-again/) and here (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_289.asp [a reference via Michael Bérubé at https://www.facebook.com/michael.berube.169?fref=ts]), the figures depend on the particular data being manipulated. It was ever thus... again.

But in between the hand-wringing and the prophecies of a Humanities apocalypse, there are two things that strike me as particularly myopic.

1. The first is the common use of the English Literature and Language undergraduate degree as the whipping boy of 'the Humanities'. The 'Humanities'--or, more appropriately, 'Arts'--are much more than just English.

2. The second point is that a good English degree is much more than just 'writing' and 'reading'. A good English degree will train a student in all areas of English Literature. In the study of early literary texts, for example, the skills imparted by reading Old English or Middle English are not only 'clear thinking, clear writing and a lifelong engagement with literature', as Klinkenborg lists, but also patience and meticulousness in the acquisition of translation skills, problem solving at the level of the individual lexeme, team work in class efforts to make sense of tricky syntax, empathy with a literary corpus at first so alien, tolerance of others' beliefs and expression of those beliefs, and so on. Thus, when we talk about an 'English degree', let's remember the field of English is itself varied and broad: it is not a single, uniform set of literary materials; it is not a narrow, individual set of tools. At its best, the field of English is diverse, chronologically capacious, concerned with minutiae as well as big pictures, focused on translation and interpretation as well as reading and writing. As a teacher, I am determined to teach students that what is difficult is worth pursuing; that the hardest work is usually the most rewarding. And as practitioners, we might remind ourselves that this Humanities 'crisis', while hyperbolic now, could actually become self-fulfilling if we continue to talk about our field in the negative ways we've so often seen recently.  

The Origin of Texts

The OED, s.v. 'origin', describes this as

the act or fact of beginning, or of springing from something; beginning of existence with reference to source or cause; rise or first manifestation

Under this same entry, 1b., the citations include the following from 1867: J. McCosh Method Divine Govt. (ed. 9) iii. ii. 377, 'The origin of evil, like every other beginning, shrouds itself in darkness'. Perhaps this 'darkness' about the origin of everything is most apt to discussions of textual genesis.

Seemingly conversely, though, the OED's meaning 2a, reveals 'origin' as

a. That from which anything originates, or is derived; source of being or existence; starting point. Now freq. in pl.

Trying to untangle these two proximate definitions of 'origin' is headache-inducing, and yet, in textual studies, the 'origin' can take on an, arguably, extraordinary and disproportionate significance. For textual critics, especially those trained in the classics or early literatures, determining the 'origin', the Ur-text, the fons is the goal of the editor. Interesting debates in the 1990s emerged among the traditional philologists (see, for example, the essays in D. G. Scragg and P. E. Szarmach, eds., Editing Old English [Brewer, 1994]) and the new philologists (P. Zumthor [Towards a Medieval Poetics], B. Cerquiglini [In Praise of the Variant] Stephen Nicholls [The New Philology]). The issue at stake was how to present the text. At the risk of oversimplifying complex arguments, it is the debate about whether to present a reconstructed, hypothetical proto-text that best illustrates the author's intended text (see the rationale of the Piers Plowman Project here: http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/seenet/piers/) or whether to privilege the variant, or at least given the variant its long overdue sustained consideration (also part of the remit of the Piers Plowman venture). For many editors, treading a via media between these seemed preferable; for others, the argument for presenting simulacra, perhaps with en-face transcription, was a key desideratum. 

Turn-the-Page Display in the foyer of the British Library

At this point, and with very little real effect visible in the pbook or ebook presentation of scholarly critical editions, the debate has tailed off and has transformed into a debate about the nature of digital editing: how best to present a word-based or word- and image-based text on screen, utilising all the dynamic interface potential of the digital realm. Now, it is possible to have a manuscript version of a text, complete with a myriad of tools for interpreting and accessing not only that text, but all the co-texts almost simultaneously. None of this helps solve the issue of 'origin', though; how to access or present the 'original'. This is particularly the case when, as is most common in fact, the 'original' does not exist. Chaucer's original Wife of Bath's Tale does not survive, any more than an original version of Hamlet does. If 'origin' is the 'beginning of existence' or 'that from which anything originates', then authorial intentionality is surely the only origin for Text. Anything other than this is a remake, a version. Or is everything subsequent to the mental act an 'original' of its own? This might certainly permit us to account for the uniqueness of all text, particularly by virtue of its peculiar materiality. 

Perhaps more provocatively and fruitfully, though, we should go along with Cerquiglini and state with certainty that 'There is no such thing as originality'. We can say, then, that all texts are rendered equal and as such deserve individual study, sustained examination and a recognition of their own intrinsic value.