Critical Issues in Editing Exploration Texts (review)

Short Notices 281 their o w n desires and imaginations. Median's references to the Cosmic PiUar, Assyrian art, the signs of the zodiac, the legend of Isis and Osiris, and a number of other random selections from the mythological basket make for some lovely caltigraphy, but do not make any sense at all in relation to the origins of 'Celtic' designs. His excursion into phtiology, to assert a connection between hard' (Latin durus) and 'oak tree' (Irish dair), is a brilliant sleight-of-hand which dazzles the reader into believing that druids are related to oak trees and therefore the 'tree of life' symbol possesses a supernatural aura: T h e Tree is, simply, all that lasts, stays true—and remains put—throughout all the fragility, fickleness, and transience of happenstance'. The book's bibliography reveals all: references to George Bain, Joseph CampbeU, James Frazer, but none to contemporary specialists in Celtic art history and mythology, such as Ruth and Vincent M e g a w or Miranda Green. As a handbook of designs which are n o w called 'Celtic', the book performs a useful and decorative service. But beware of the 'New Age' mumbo-jumbo. Helen Fulton Department of EngUsh University of Sydney Warkentin, Germaine, ed., Critical Issues in Editing Exploration Texts Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1995; cloth; pp. xi, 150; R.R.P. US$40.00. Recent scholarly interest in practices and discourses of coloniatism has raised important questions about the texts which document exploration and settlement. In the words of one of the contributors to this volume, the scholar is regularly faced with 'tractable texts', which have undergone processes of refashioning at the hands of coUaborators, translators and editors. Modern editors, concerned with the origins and transmission of texts, consequently raise for their readers important questions about the construction of knowledge. 282 Short Notices The six essays collected in Critical Issues in Editing Exploration Text derive from the twenty-eighth annual Conference on Editorial Problems held at the University of Toronto in 1992. Suitably, the book opens with a magisterial review of modern editing and the Columbian writings, by David Henige. Other essays consider Italian sources from the same era, Richard Hakluyt's Elizabethan argument for English colonial expansion (the 'Discourse of Western Planting'), the sixteenth-century description of pre-conquest Nahua culture known as the Florentine Codex, the nineteenth-century travel narratives of the Canadian artist Paul Kane, and the publishing history of the Hakluyt Society. The contributors to the volume are leaders in their fields, and bring to their discussions a wealth of experience in the practical concerns of editorial practice. But whtie the average reader with an interest in exploration texts would certainly be pleased that editors are critically examining their work, he or she might equally question the value of this book. Publishing papers from a conference three years after the occasion is inevitably risky, and these risks are compounded when some of the speakers were discussing their method in volumes which in 1992 were almost completed or in the hands of publishers. M a n y readers will rightly turn to the introductions of the respective editions, rather than read the pre-publication conference paper. Moreover, the essays are predominantly concerned with local and practical issues, and considerably less with the general and theoretical questions which would attract a reader w h o is not practicaUy involved with editing further exploration texts. It is also disappointing that no paper considers the potential of electronic publishing. The contributors repeatedly stress the value of ambitious and costly editions which combine facsimile reproduction, transcription, translation where necessary, and annotation. The recent publication of the Hartlib Papers on C D - R O M demonstrates the capacity of this medium for scholarly publication, and might weU suggest the possibility of an electronic edition of Columbian writings, for example. Helen WaUis's pedestrian account of 'the great publishing societies' looks to the past, showing the influence of the Hakluyt Society in selecting and presenting the existing printed Short Notices 283 corpus of exploration texts. A more stimulating volume might have looked equally to the future. Andrew McRae Department of EngUsh University of Sydney Watson, Nicholas...