The Editorial Gaze: Mediating Texts in Literature and the Arts

This collection of original essays brings international and multidisciplinary perspectives to the problem of how to understand and practice editorial mediation: How does editing alter what it seeks to represent? How does it condition the relationship between texts and readers? The different concerns shared by editors of a variety of genres, literary and otherwise, emerge here as constructive new approaches to the theory and practice of editing are explored. The essays make a concerted attempt to assess the implications of postmodern thought on one of the oldest and most fundamental cultural activities, editing The section on theory covers such important subjects as editorial responsibility, the death of the author, and the nature of the authorial voice. The practice section covers actual editing situations in various literary areas and in musicology, recorded music, and the preservation of oral literature. The multidisciplinary volume will find its readers among students of textual criticism, literature, music, and folklore as well as any readers of postmodern criticism.