609 Week 4 - Blog 2

Concerning Leah. S. Marcus’ essay, Textual Scholarship, Aristotle’s topoi focusing on witnesses feasibly applies. Marcus describes textual scholars as those entrusted with keeping the integrity of literary documents. Marcus lists numerous examples of texts changed by editors, who, although well meaning, changed the thrust of the authors writing through their corrections. In this digital age, we have all witnessed something similar. Wikipedia articles, for example, although they may not be original and canonical literature, have the ability to be altered (thereby enhancing or depleting) and edited by any registered user (witness).

Moving on, this article fascinated me as it gave insight into a librarian’s head. Although Marcus may be a textual scholar, she has strong elements of a librarian’s mindset. Hence, she allows us to witness the inner workings of texts and their somewhat changing landscape. In addition, Marcus adds to Mann’s concept that copyrights are the drive behind how a text is altered from one “material presentation to another” (153). In other words, copyrights—the money protectors, decide how we, the witnesses to these books, ingest the material inside them.