ENGL 668k: Digital Studies (Spring 2004)

Blake and Paratext

Last semester at this time, I was positively obsessed by two things: William Blake and paratext. I spent quite a few hours creating two separate projects dealing with these two subjects, hoping, in doing so, to purge myself of my twin obsessions. But now I find that not only have they not been purged, they have become intertwined. That is my excuse, anyway, for what follows: a discussion of Blake and paratext.

First let me define paratext, according to Gerard Genette. In his masterful work, Paratext: Thresholds of interpretion, Genette writes, “More than a boundary or a sealed border, the paratext is, rather, a threshold.” It is “a zone between text and off-text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of pragmatics and a strategy, of an influence on the public, an influence that . . . is at the service of a better reception for the text and a more pertinent reading of it.” Then quoting Philipe Lejeune, Genette further describes paratext as “a fringe of the printed text which in reality controls one’s whole reading of the text” (2).

There are some loaded words in that definition, of course, words like “privileged”, “transaction” (I’m thinking in market terms) and “controls.” This brings us into the territory of “representational politics,” in terms of who controls access to and frames the meaning of texts. It also brings into us the arena of “sociologics of text” and “bibliographical codes” championed by Jerome McGann, refracted through the prism of electronic technology in the online environment. I hope all this will come clear in the discussion below.

More specifically, paratext includes “front matter” (such as title page, prefaces, and epigraphs), “end matter” (notes, postfaces, even reviews), and what we might call “between-matter” (chapter titles, intertitles, illustrations). Needless to say, there are plenty of such examples in the digitized works of William Blake. I would also argue (did argue, in my paratext project from last semester) that paratext also includes critical apparati and other interpretive tools, and, in the online environment, multimedia and interfaces. It is on these elements that I would like to focus.

What first got me going on Blake and paratext was looking at the images of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience owned by the Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress. My goodness, I asked myself—immediately enamored—is that really what the cover of the 1826 edition looks like? Is that green marble in the inside cover paper original (it certainly resembles much of Blake’s stone-strewn landscape)? And when did that little portrait of Blake appear in the front matter (was he such a hot commodity in 1826 that his portrait was called for?)? And then comparing the 1826 and 1794 editions, more rich questions arose, such as: why are the 1794 images printed verso and recto, but only verso in the 1826 edition? Does this reflect changes in technology between 1794 and 1826 (deeper, more precise imprint in 1826, but increased danger of ink leaking through the page) and a more savvy sense of Blake’s audience/market (1826 edition being more “deluxe” than the 1794 edition, signifying that Blake has given up on reaching anyone but collectors). The questions are fairly endless; the answers, however, are not as forthcoming, since this is not a scholarly site—it seems more for public consumption, to show off the collection. This is acceptable, I think, as long as there are other multimedia sites online featuring Blake’s work (and as long as they allow scholars access to the materials on fairly easy terms). Which brings us to discussion of The Blake Archive.

How can we do anything but genuflect to the wonderful editors and managers of The Blake Archive for the wonderful service they provide to scholars of William Blake? Speaking personally, I can say that the Archive has revolutionized my thinking about online scholarship, the relations between image and text, even, heaven help me, turned me into a budding Romanticist. Allowing me to toggle between text and image, between image and image, and providing scholarly context—all this and more is on hand (literally) at The Blake Archive. And yet, fabulous as it is, I find much of the technology clunky, and at certain times unwelcome. A good case in point would be my efforts to search for appearances of the tiger in Blake’s works. Having a check box specifically for “tiger” certainly helps, but what would help even more would be being able to type in the word “tiger” in a box at the top of the page, avoiding scrolling and scanning a long page, and be brought to relevant pages/images. Currently, when I finally come to a relevant image (after six clicks, which seems too many), it comes up in inote applet (that takes too long to load) that I have to jiggle with a mouse to make an image appear, and even then it is not centered (and no way to center it that I can tell), and it’s accompanied by an annotation I did not ask for which, frankly, distracts me.

I mentioned above that any discussion of paratext in a scholarly environment should include critical apparatus, and any discussion of paratext in a online environment should include interface. The Blake Archive, of course, offers both. The technology mediates everything one accesses at the Archive; using Genette’s terms, it controls ones reading of the text, and provides—even forces—transaction. But what if the interface is clunky and unwelcome, too controlling and transacting (exacting, anyway)? What does this do to the text and its reception? At the very least it suggests that you must in some sense be a techie, and very patient. In the same way, the critical apparatus—in this case, annotations—feels too controlling, popping up where it is not summoned. In all this I am not saying these elements should be removed or necessarily even changed; I am saying that other choices, other interfaces, might be helpful. What are the possibilities of offering one interface for scholars, who can take the time to master the technology of inotes and appreciate the critical apparatus, and another interface for the more casual, less scholarly, user? I hope it is at least something that has been considered by the editors of The Blake Archive.

A resource that might seem to be in competition with The Blake Archive would be the Blake Digital Text Project (BDTP). If it were a true competition, the BDTP would seem to be unequal to it, in that it has very simple (non-color) images and limited critical apparatus. But then going deeper into the site, one finds elements that positively distinguish it from its titanic adversary: I am referring here to the audio recordings of Blake’s Songs. These were a revelation to me, though, of course, the music itself was hardly up to the most exacting standards. I enjoyed Greg Brown’s bluesy-jazzy version of “The Tyger”, for example, as well as Finn Coren’s acid rock version, though find them slightly incongruous for a scholarly site, to say nothing of Gregory Forbes’s amateur folk effort. Benjamin Britten’s avant-garde art song would seem a better fit, though it was arguably the furthest from Blake’s sensibility. As to Allen Ginsberg’s recordings, I think the most generous thing one could say is that they reflect Ginsberg much more than Blake, and might have value at a Ginsberg site, but not here. But my intention is not to act as music critic but to muse on the function of such multimedia as a portal upon, and paratext to, the work of William Blake. I think such audio recordings frame Blake’s work in important ways, and offer the reader insights not otherwise available. In general, I’d like to see more such multimedia, particularly audio, added to scholarly websites, though I think the offerings here might be better situated in a section clearly devoted to Blake and popular culture, and annotated as such. Imagine a site that does for the aural what The Blake Archive does for the visual; and imagine the two in cahoots, in an interface that would allow them to play together. It's the type of thing I like to imagine anyway. No more inconceivable than what has already been accomplished online, things that, in Blake's words, were "once, only imagined."

I have done. Have I finally purged my obsession with Blake and with paratext? I’m guessing no, certainly not as long as such fascinating sites as those surveyed in the course of this assignment continue to crop up online. I see no reason why they shouldn’t. If this is what we have now, when web media is still taking its baby steps, imagine what might be when it can run a 4 minute mile?

Works Cited

Genette, Gerard. Paratexts: Thresholds of interpretation. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Related Links

Utopia: A User’s Manual. My site dealing with the paratext of Thomas More’s Utopia.
<http://www.wam.umd.edu/~byrnejo/utopia/>

Games of Innocence and of Experience. My site considering Blake’s Songs as a game.
<http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/designsonblake.ns/byrne/contraries.html>

Posted by Joseph at May 6, 2004 12:08 PM