Textual Assemblages and Transmission: Unified models for (Digital) Scholarly Editions and Text Digitisation

Scholarly editing and textual digitisation are typically seen as two distinct, though related, fields. Scholarly editing is replete with traditions and codified practices, while the digitisation of text-bearing material is a recent enterprise, governed more by practice than theory. From the perspective of scholarly editing, the mere digitisation of text is a world away from the intellectual engagement and rigour on which textual scholarship is founded. Recent developments have led to a more open-minded perspective. As scholarly editing has made increasing use of the digital medium, and textual digitisation begins to make use of scholarly editing tools and techniques, the more obvious distinctions dissolve. Such criteria as ‘critical engagement’ become insufficient grounds on which to base a clear distinction. However, this perspective is not without its risks either. It perpetuates the idea that a (digital) scholarly edition and a digitised text are interchangeable. This thesis argues that a real distinction can be drawn. It starts by considering scholarly editing and textual digitisation as textual transmissions. Starting from the ontological perspective of Deleuze and Guattari, it builds a framework capable for considering the processes behind scholarly editing and digitisation. In doing so, it uncovers a number of critical distinction. Scholarly editing creates a regime of representation that is self-consistent and self-validating. Textual digitisation does not. In the final chapters, this thesis uses the crowd-sourced Letters of 1916 project as a test-case for a new conceptualisation of a scholarly edition: one that is neither globally self-consistent nor self-validating, but which provides a conceptual model in which these absences might be mitigated against and the function of a scholarly edition fulfilled