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Reference
[Review of :] The Book History Reader / David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (eds.). - London : Routledge, 2003
ERNE, Lukas Christian
ERNE, Lukas Christian. [Review of :] The Book History Reader / David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (eds.). - London : Routledge, 2003. Anglia - Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie , 2004, vol. 122, p. 526-527
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http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:14575
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BESPRECHUNGENtionskriterien der Herausgeber genauso Stand gehalten batten wie andere, die Aufnahme in das Lexikon fanden. Unter den romantischen und viktoriani- schen Dichterinnen sucht man beispielsweise Namen wie Felicia Hemans, Laetitia Elizabeth Landon, Augusta Webster oder Emily Pfeiffer vergebens; in der Tat beschrankt sich die Auswahl auf die bereits "kanonisierten" Dichte- rinnen Charlotte Smith, Anna Laetitita Barbauld, Elizabeth Barrett Browning und Christina Rossetti. Gleichwohl ist dieser Vorwurf ungerecht, denn kein Herausgeber eines so ambitionierten und wichtigen Lexikons wie diesem wird es immer allen Lesern Recht machen konnen: Selektion und Beschrankung gehoren zu semen wichtigsten und gleichzeitig undankbarsten Aufgaben. Un- geachtet dieses letzten — fast unvermeidlichen — Kritikpunkts ist das Metzler Lexikon englischsprachiger Autoren eM umfassendes, hochaktuelles Nach- schlagewerk.
REGENSBURG CHRISTIN GALSTER
The Book History Reader. Ed. David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery.
London and New York: Routledge, 2002, x + 390 pp., £ 60.00 hb, 17.99 pb.
The history of book history is currently being written in two rather diffe- rent ways. According to one narrative, book history is 'an important new di- scipline' (Robert Darnton) that has quickly established itself as a conspisuous presence in the humanities. Acoording to another narrative, book history is not so new after all, but has been in existence, in various guises, bibliography, social history, etc., for quite a long time. While the former narrative has the advantage of describing a dynamic ascendancy, the latter approach can con- veniently adopt seminal work of the past even though its authors may never have known that what they were engaged in was book history.
In The Book History Reader, David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery have decided to have it both ways. In the introduction, they stress the discipline's recent rise and make the thought-provoking argument that its emergence
`partly derives from ... a realization that the role [of print] has now been usur- ped by other media' (2-3). Yet this does not keep them from including mate- rial published as long ago as 1957, in Richard Altick's The English Common Reader. Nor do all the excerpts included in the Reader conform to the relati- vely narrow definition of 'book history' the editors presuppose in the intro- duction. Is Roland Barthes"The Death of the Author' book history? Or, to put it differently, what understanding of book history would warrant the in- clusion of a scholar like Wolfgang Iser (Interaction between Text and Reader'), who emphatically does not deal with actual books or actual readers but with reception aesthetics? One of Finkelstein and McCleery's tasks in their all-too-short introduction (1-4) might have been to engage this question, the- reby allowing readers to clarify what exactly they think book history is.
The two editors have divided their Reader into four parts, each preceded by a two-page introduction. Part One, 'What is Book History?', contains ex-
BESPRECHUNGEN
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cerpts from the writings of six ground-breaking scholars with an undeniable impact on the history of the book: Robert Darnton ('What Is the History of Books?'), D. F. McKenzie (The Book as an Expressive Form,' from his semi- nal Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts), Jerome McGann (`The Sociali- zation of Texts,' from the equally seminal Textual Condition), Roger Char- tier (`Labourers and Voyagers: From the Text to the Reader'), Adrian Johns (`The Book of Nature and the Nature of the Book') and Pierre Bourdieu (The Field of Cultural Production'). Part Two, with excerpts from the work of Wal- ter Ong (from Orality and Literacy), Chartier, Jan-Dirk Muller, Elizabeth Eisenstein (from her monumental Printing Press as an Agent of Change), C. A. Bayly, and McKenzie, explores from a variety of perspectives the pas- sage 'From Orality to Literacy'. Part Three, 'Commodifying Print: Books and Authors', centres on examinations of the notion of the author, ranging from the now classic essays by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, to more recent work by Mark Rose, John Brewer, Jane Tompkins, John Sutherland, James L. W. West III, and N. N. Feltes. The final part on 'Books and Readers', dra- wing on the work of Wolfgang Iser, E. Jennifer Monaghan, Kate Flint, Jona- than Rose, Richard Altick, Stanley Fish, and Janice Radway, ranges from re- ception aesthetics to historical reading practices, from the nature of the act of reading itself to empirical studies of actual readers.
While it is hardly true that much of what The Book History Reader in- cludes 'is now out of print or impossible to access' (i) — most well stocked li- braries surely house most if not all of the volumes from which its texts have been excerpted — Finkelstein and McCleery have the merit of having made available an affordable volume that includes a good many seminal texts for the history of the book. Some will quarrel with the inclusion of an author like Iser, and many will regret the almost total absence of bibliography, whose key importance as the direct ancestor of book history is acknowledged in the in- troduction (2), but which is nowhere given adequate representation. Never- theless, given the rapidly growing number of academic institutes, program- mes and seminars devoted to book history, Finkelstein's and McCleery's Reader is likely to find a grateful readership.
NEUCHATEL LUKAS ERNE
Neue Ansiitze in der Literaturtheorie. Ed. Ansgar und Vera Nanning. WVT- Handbficher zum literaturwissenschaftlichen Studium 4. Trier: WVT Wissen- schaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2002, vi + 274 S., € 19.00.
Das vorliegende Handbuch wurde zeitgleich mit dem ebenfalls von Nan- ning/Nanning herausgegebenen Erziihltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinar veroffentlicht und setzt mit diesem die Reihe der "Hand- biicher zum Literaturwissenschaftlichen Studium" des WAIT fort, in der zu- vor schon Titel mit erzahltheoretischen Schwerpunkten (A. Niinning, Hrsg., Unreliable Narration, 1998; A. & V. Niinning, Hrsg., Multiperspektivisches
