Material Textuality: Reading Manuscripts

This collection of French essays on critique genetique or "genetic criticism" is a timely volume, not in the sense that these essays are recent—in fact, most of the essays were originally published in the 1980s—but rather because of the English-speaking academy's increased interest in the materiality of texts. "None of the essays have previously been translated," as the editors note, "yet some have already become classics in France" (1). With poststructuralist theory established in one way or another in most disciplines, it seems we are now ready for yet another wave of French critical influence, albeit belatedly.

But what is "genetic criticism"? As the eleven essays in this collection make clear, it is easier to say what it is not: it is not codicology as it is practiced by archivists; it is not traditional philology as practiced by linguists; nor is it textual editing as practised in the Anglo-American, Germanic or even the conventional French traditions; nor is it literary criticism as practiced by most theorists today but genetic criticism does have affinities and repercussions for all these endeavours. "It is a form of criticism of its own," according to Ferrer and Groden, who nonetheless do a thorough job of tracing the fundamental influences, especially those of semiotics and psychoanalysis as they were elaborated by French structuralists and poststructuralists, as well as the decisive role played by the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes, on this "new field of research" (2).

The sheer variety of perspectives and procedures deployed by the exponents of genetic criticism in this volume—and they represent just a selection from the earliest phases of this critical movement—shows that there in no single or even dominant way in which manuscripts can be made to "speak." Yet the set of shared core principles in the field is surprisingly small: textual geneticists refocus the critical enterprise on the multifaceted textual processes of writing, reading and rewriting, thereby destabilizing the seemingly unitary product, the so-called "finished" work. The critical opportunities that this perspective opens up are thereby vast because there is no longer only one work to be read but a multiplicity of texts, each of which is temporally and materially distinct, but all of which are related for one another in "the chain of events in a writing process" (2).

There is a palpable sense of energy, optimism and even adventure in these essays. This passion is a testament to the fact that these critics see themselves as involved in an effort to reveal the mysteries and secrets in the texts that the published works obfuscate. At the same time, genetic critics are fully aware of the risks and limitations of their conclusions. Confronting such an immaterial objective as the elucidation of a creative process necessarily tempers the genetic critics' initial enthusiasm. Even armed with previously unknown facts and unexpected insights, genetic critics remain humble and tentative in the face of "the phenomenon of writing, . . . the genesis of artworks" (29).

The types of materials studied and the approaches adopted by the genetic critics in this volume are indicative of the field's range of interests and potential influence. Raymonde Debray Genette pursues "narratological genetics" and uses "genetic material to analyze narrative modes, figural language and such structural components as the beginnings and endings of narratives" (69). The dexterity with which she handles the (at least) twelve distinct instances of Flaubert's rewriting of the ending of "A Simple Heart" is exemplary of the field. Deppman, another editor and the principal translator, deftly summarizes her conclusions: "Flaubert slowly made his endings by ignoring or integrating key elements from pagan, Christian, baroque, beatific mystic, scientific, saintly and other stories and pictures of death" (69). At the other end of the narrative arch and from a different theoretical perspective, Almuth Grésillon's essay studies the beginnings of Proust's masterpiece. Whereas locating cultural conventions in the writing process was essential to Debray Genette's analysis, Grésillon brackets all non-linguistic contextualizing frameworks and focuses strictly on the temporal aspects of Proust's use of the adverbs "already" and "not yet" to...