Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 93.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2000 19:24:49 +0100
From: jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu (James J. O'Donnell)
Subject: Re: 14.0089 thoughts on commentaries & humanities computing
Willard,
Raptim, I would say that the "commentary" is an artifact of the written
(MS or print) word, depending on technologies of maintaining hierarchy
(the authority of the text that is object of the commentary) and of
presenting simultaneity (putting words on page next to each other in
structured way). "Oral commentary" maintains hierarchy (we know what text
is being commented on) but does not achieve simultaneity (the spoken word
can't be looked at simultaneously, and fades).
Other than shovelware projects (e.g., http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/conf),
will there be genuinely similar commentary in cyberspace? I doubt it.
The technologies of presenting simultaneity are certainly developed to new
degrees of sophistication, but the ability of the anterior text to retain
its authority and place in the hierarchy will certainly fade. On what
text written in 2010 would anybody ever write a cybercommentary? In this
regard, I think *Pale Fire* a precursor, a text in which the
text-commented-upon disappears, is often read second after the commentary,
and is arguably unnecessary for at least one kind of reading. I said
"arguably" and would happily argue that, but my point is just that
Nabokov's game has the effect of rendering questionable all that one
thinks natural and normal about the commentary genre.
My largest reservation about the Most collection is that it concentrates
on the intellectual act and the relationship of text and commentary, but
does not put sufficiently in play the physical nature of the commentary as
object and its development over time. Other than what one can infer from
histories of classical scholarship and the like, I don't see that *this*
task has ever been properly done. (Rutherfurd's volume of Scholia
Aristophanica entitled "Being a Chapter in the History of Annotation" is
quite old but quite good on a piece of this, now that I think of it.)
Jim O'Donnell
Classics, U. of Penn
jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
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