Matthias Bauer & Angelika Zirker
Scholarly
Communication & Open Access:
Connotations—A
Journal for Critical Debate
1>
When it comes to the meaning of literary texts, openness is the desired—and
inevitable—tenet. Without a multiplicity of meanings and without the discovery
of individual, personal meanings by each and every reader, poems, plays and
fiction would hardly be regarded as works of art. Paradoxically, however, this
is also the reason why literary texts should be considered objects of scholarly
analysis and, moreover, of a scholarly analysis which cannot be entirely left
to philosophy, history, religion, psychology, sociology, or other fields of
study. Literary texts have a mode of signification which includes but also goes
beyond their functions in those fields. Their meaning is open but it is not
haphazard; it is, in the first place, determined by the way in which language
is used so as to enable the reader to develop a specific personal response.
2>
This is the idea which, more than 20 years ago, in 1990, prompted the launch of Connotations:
A Journal for Critical Debate. It was founded by Inge Leimberg (Münster)
and Matthias Bauer (now Tübingen) with three basic principles in mind: (1)
Literary language demands being explored and unfolded; it is a field where
discoveries can be made. (2) Readings of literary texts may improve on each
other (in terms of plausibility, in making us see features others have not
noticed before, and showing their relevance). (3) Accordingly, literary
scholars should take into account, and critique, the readings of others. Connotations as
an international, refereed journal therefore focuses on the semantic and
stylistic energy of the language of literature in a historical perspective and
encourages scholarly communication in the field of English Literature (from the
Middle English period to the present). In practical terms, this means that each
issue consists of articles and a forum for discussion. In the forum, responses
to articles (published in Connotations or elsewhere) as well
as to recent books and answers by the authors of the original contributions are
assembled.
3>
This principle of encouraging academic discussion means that the work of the
editors includes the search for experts in the respective fields who write
responses to articles printed in Connotations. The search for
responses is based either on publications mentioned in the original articles or
on bibliographical research; a number of responses, however, are unsolicited,
instigated by the wish to discuss an issue raised by the original article. All
submissions—solicited and unsolicited—enter peer-review. When an article or
response is accepted, all contributors to the debate are notified and invited
to react to it in order to further critical debate on the topic, author, or
text in question. This debate may sometimes go on for several years.
Critical
Debate: An Example
4>
An example of how the forum works in practice and how the interpretation of a
text may be linked with critical debate over a longer period of time in order
to establish a “better” reading of the text in question is the discussion about
Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, initiated by Anthony Brian Taylor’s
article on “Lucius, the Severely Flawed Redeemer of Titus Andronicus”
in the second issue of volume 6 (1996/97). As a debate on literary character,
it is a very good example of the idea informing the Connotations project:
it shows in which way the language of the play influences our judgment of a
character and the meaning he or she has for the work as a whole. Taylor
questions the view of Lucius as the “man who emerges as the redeemer of Rome” at the end of the
play and, in particular, the work of Frances Yates that, in his view, has
decidedly “contributed […] to ensuring his favourable reception” (138) by
Jonathan Bate, Maurice Hunt and others. Taylor takes the evaluation of Lucius
back to the text of the play, pointing out, for example, that the “only textual
evidence produced to link Lucius with Astraea, the Goddess of Justice, […]
rests on an elementary misreading” (140), in fact a mixing up of characters by
Yates. Taylor shows that, rather in contrast to any ideas of justice, Lucius’s
language of “lopped” and “hewed” limbs from the first “sets a cycle of savagery
in motion” (142).
5> A response to Taylor by Jonathan Bate was published in the following issue. Bate,
the editor of the New Arden series, maintains that Taylor had misread his
comments: Bate stresses that, in his introduction and notes, he comes to a
quite similar conclusion as Taylor; he agrees with Taylor’s argument that
Lucius is “severely flawed” (330). He actually goes on to develop the reading
of the play’s ending as highly ambiguous, noting redeeming features in the
Goths (that may suggest a reference to the religious reformation of Northern
Europe) which correspond to the corruption of Roman virtues.
6>
Maurice Hunt, whose article on Titus Andronicus from 1988
Taylor had referred to, reacted with a response in volume 7. Hunt actually
comes to the defence of Lucius, arguing against Taylor that Lucius has to be
read “as
enlightened redeemer” (87), especially when one keeps in mind the “[p]ositive
features of Lucius’ piety” that “prepare for his apotheosis from pagan to
Christian and make it believable” (87). His main textual argument is Lucius’s
offer to Titus to give his blood for him (“My youth can better spare my blood
than you / And therefore mine shall save my brothers’ lives”; 3.1.165-66),
which, according to Hunt, “reflects a significant sensitivity never admitted by
Taylor” (88). To him, the play presents us with a “transition from pagan to Christian
religious values” (89). In particular, “Lucius’ preservation of [Aaron’s] child
providentially breaks a pattern of retributive son-killing that began with
Lucius’ and Titus’ determination to sacrifice Tamora’s son Alarbus to appease
the shades of the dead Andronici” (91).
7> In another response in the same volume, Philip
C. Kolin argues that Taylor’s analysis “is retrograde to the contemporary, and
welcome, criticism that privileges ambiguity, indeterminacy, and complexity in
the script” and that his “reading of the political events in Shakespeare
minimizes the subterfuges and pacts that are central to Titus” (95)
and thus questions the point made in the article, stressing the unorthodoxy of
Shakespearean “savior⁄order figures” (96) who may be quite different from
Richmond or Malcolm in that they are “savvy saviors” (96); they are neither to
be sanctified nor condemned but “shrewd student[s] of the realpolitik” (95).
8> In the
same volume appears Taylor’s answer to the three responses, taking up the
various strands of arguments provided by them. With regard to Bate’s response,
Taylor acknowledges the views they share but also points toward a remaining
difference related to his own “focus on the disastrous effect of Lucius’ flaws for his
family and Rome in the play” (97). His disagreement with Hunt is mostly based
on the “sudden Christianising of Lucius (and indeed, the Roman world)” that, in
his view, “involves all kinds of difficulties,” including his assumption that
“references to ‘god’ in the text are upper case” (98), which however is not
true for most editions and provokes a wide range of historical difficulties
(cf. 98-99). In his reply to Kolin he agrees with the latter’s objection to his
“limiting discussion of redeemers in Shakespeare to Malcolm and Richmond” (99)
and takes up this point in order to qualify and widen his earlier argument.
Against the views that regard the outcome of the play as representative of some
kind of change for the better (and thus enabling its reading as a religious and
historical allegory), Taylor sees Lucius as an example of the “flawed
Romanitas” (101): “Regrettably, all the signs are that Lucius will be as
powerless to help Rome at the end of the play as his aged father was at the
beginning” (99). But with Taylor’s answer the debate had not yet come to an
end.
9> A few
years later, in the 2000/2001 volume, a further response followed by Daniel
Kane on “The Virtue of Spectacle in Titus Andronicus” (volume 10),
who regarded the whole debate as symptomatic of the problems with
interpretation in this drama. To come to terms with these difficulties, Kane
suggested to approach the work with regard to its stage effects. In volume 15
(2005/2006) another reaction followed by Andreas K. Müller on
“Shakespeare’s Country Opposition: Titus Andronicus in the
Early Eighteenth Century,” which shows the play could be used for
different political purposes because of its interpretative difficulties in
the history of its performance.
10>
This example not only shows how needful and productive critical debate may be
but also the validity of the journal’s focus on close reading and specific
literary texts. In order to elucidate the meaning and cultural impact of
literary texts, it is crucial to instigate critical debate and the exchange of
ideas. Connotations thus makes the interpretative openness of
literary works fruitful for concrete textual analysis, without, however,
misunderstanding this openness as arbitrariness.
11>
The example furthermore illustrates how debate is an ongoing process that may
stretch over several years—sometimes more than a decade, as a response in Connotations 22.2
(2013) shows: here, Emma Cole responds to an article by Kenneth Muir, published
in volume 6. But this continuity of debate also poses a further challenge to
the editors that is intricately linked to the whole agenda of discussion: how
can this continuity be represented, i.e. how can readers access the original
article that was published 16 years ago and follow up on the debate that was
promoted by it?
Going
Online—Open Access
12>
From the first, Connotations has seen its domain in electronic
publishing. Back in 1990, this meant making the journal available on diskette
as well as in print. From 1996, a selection of articles and debates was made
available online free of charge: www.connotations.de. The journal then became
fully open access in 2010 after a three-year period of public funding by the
German National Research Foundation (DFG). It is still available as a printed
journal, but open access and online-based publication have proven to generate
various advantages.[i]
13>
The first and major benefit of electronic publishing is related to the format
of the journal as a medium of critical debate and helps solve the problem
mentioned above: all articles and responses can be linked to one another and
appear online as debates, even if there is a gap of sixteen or even more years
between the original article and its response. This could never be achieved in
a printed version.
14>
This linking of articles not only applies to the forum but it also allows for
pointers towards related topics. The debate on Titus Andronicus therefore
contains the link to a further article by Joan Fitzpatrick related to the play
and published in 2001, but not part of the discussion as such. The same applies
for linking topics: the journal hosts international symposia every other year.
The 2011 topic, for example, was “Poetic Economy: Ellipsis and Redundancy in Literature.”
Articles related to the conference have been published since volume 21, and
there are still contributions to be expected in forthcoming issues, let alone
responses to the original articles, http://www.connotations.uni-tuebingen.de/topics.htm#poeticeconomy.
It is thus possible to create virtual
anthologies of criticism that unite contributions connected to a particular
topic and do not suffer from the usual disadvantages of volumes coming out of
conferences, e.g. that articles sometimes gather dust for years on the editors’
desks.
15> Ever since going online Connotations has
experienced an increase in submissions by about 20-25% and, consequently, in
rejections: four out of five are currently rejected (with responses having a
slightly lower rejection rate), compared to three out of four earlier. While
Renaissance Literature and Early Modern studies are still a major focus of the
journal, the number of submissions on works by living authors has recently also
increased. Connotations has also become more global in the
wake of going fully online: earlier in the history of the journal, articles
would be submitted mainly by academics from Germany, the UK and the USA. For
three years now, the journal has experienced an increase in submissions from
all over the world, including Asia and Africa; this reflects the number of
accesses on the website from these continents.
Future
Perspectives for Editing an Open Access Journal for Critical Debate
17>
Open Access apparently has many virtues, but it has one decisive flaw that may
make things a bit difficult, especially for small journals. Many libraries only
include non-open access journals, i.e. journals that they have subscribed to,
in their catalogues and bibliographies. Their subscriptions usually entail huge
packages of journals that are administrated by large providers of digital
humanities—and that deliberately exclude open access journals from their
databases, even when they claim to be non-profit, because they cannot ask fees
for them.[iii] Open access journals remain invisible on the sites and,
accordingly, unused.
18>
This development makes it necessary for journals that would like to stay
independent to build on their unique features. In the case of Connotations this
is the appreciation of close reading and subsequent scholarly discussion of
analyses and interpretations of literary works. Open access and the electronic
format cater to this agenda in that they allow the introduction to a larger and
more global readership—and thus to potentially more contributors; but they also
make the linking of debates over several years and beyond the limitations of
the printed issue possible.
19> Connotations faces
a number of challenges: they concern, for one, the technical side of the
journal and especially of its website. The journal will need to install a
database in order to create a dynamic website and to improve its searchability.
It will furthermore, as an open access journal, contribute to making
up-to-date, high quality literary criticism available to generally accessible
websites such as Wikipedia. As far as the content of the journal is concerned,
our aim is to steer the attention of scholarly debate towards literary texts
and to show the use of interpretation and close reading. The “cultural turn” of
literary studies with its fruitful widening of texts, contexts and perspectives
has, in our view, shown all the more clearly the need for an understanding of
the texts on which larger arguments are based. Thus we would like to promote
the individual text as the basis of literary studies and as a source of
innovation. In our view, the language of literary texts is a key to the culture
in which they were produced, even, or especially when, the field of literary
studies is to be understood in terms of cultural studies.
20>
A second aim, immediately connected to this, is to go on with furthering
scholarly debate, especially in the field of early modern studies. In issue
22.1, two articles were published that are based on the close reading of
Renaissance texts and that promise an ongoing debate: Arthur F. Kinney’s
contribution on “John Lyly’s Poetic Economy” and Inge Leimberg’s thoughts on “If and It and
the Human Condition: Considerations Arising from a Reading of The Merchant
of Venice.” Issue 22.2—published in August 2013—contains further pieces on
the Renaissance and early modern texts: David Urban’s response to Margaret
Thickstun on Milton, which is an example of how a response may be instigated by
an article published elsewhere; and Maurice Hunt’s analysis of “Naming and
Unnaming in Spenser’s Colin Clouts Come Home Againe,” which serves
as an excellent example of how the close reading of a literary text may be
connected with its cultural context. We are quite convinced that the approach
chosen by Connotations will make literary studies continue to
thrive in the electronic age.
Notes:
[i]. On the “success story” of going online see, e.g.,
[ii]. See also the leading Shakespeare portal “Mr. William Shakespeare and the
Internet,”
[iii]. Gould in his article also addresses these issues.
Works
Cited:
Bate, Jonathan. “‘Lucius, the Severely Flawed Redeemer of Titus
Andronicus’: A Reply.” Connotations 6.3 (1996/97): 330-33,
Bauer,
Matthias. “Profiled Discussion: Connotations—A Journal for Critical Debate.” Workshop “Best Practices in Journal Transition” 13 May
2009 Bonn, Germany,
Fitzpatrick, Joan. “Foreign Appetites and Alterity: Is
There an Irish Context for Titus Andronicus?” Connotations 11.2-3
(2001/2002): 127-45,
Gould, Thomas H. P. “Scholar as E-Publisher: The Future
Role of [Anonymous] Peer Review within Online Publishing.” Journal of
Scholarly Publishing 41.4 (July 2010): 428-48.
Hunt, Maurice. “Compelling Art in Titus
Andronicus.” SEL 28 (1988): 197-218.
---. “Exonerating Lucius in Titus Andronicus:
A Response to Anthony Brian Taylor.” Connotations 7.1
(1997/98): 87-93,
Kane, Daniel. “The Vertue of Spectacle in Shakespeare’s Titus
Andronicus.” Connotations 10.1 (2000/2001): 1-17,
Kinney, Arthur F. “John
Lyly's Poetic Economy.” Connotations 22.1 (2012/2013): 1-12,
Kolin, Philip C. "'Lucius, the Severely Flawed
Redeemer of Titus Andronicus’: A Reply.” Connotations 7.1
(1997/98): 94-96,
Leimberg,
Inge. “If and It and the Human Condition:
Considerations Arising from a Reading of The Merchant of Venice.”
Connotations 22.1 (2012/13): 57-84,
Muir, Kenneth. “Edwin Muir’s Chorus of the Newly
Dead and its Analogues.” Connotations 6.2 (1996/97):
203-06,
Taylor, Anthony Brian. “Lucius, the Severely Flawed Redeemer of Titus
Andronicus.” Connotations 6.2 (1996/97): 138-57,
Taylor, Anthony Brian. “Lucius, Still Severely Flawed: A
Response to Jonathan Bate, Maurice Hunt, and Philip Kolin.” Connotations 7.1
(1997/98): 97-103,
Thickstun,
Margaret. “Resisting Patience in Milton’s Sonnet 19.” Milton Quarterly 44
(2010): 168-80.
_____
Matthias
Bauer is professor of English
Literature at Tübingen University, Germany. He is one of the co-founders and
editors of Connotations. His research interests are the
language/literature interface, ambiguity, Early Modern English literature
(Metaphysical Poetry) and Victorian literature (Dickens).
Angelika
Zirker is an assistant professor of
English Literature at Tübingen University, Germany. She is one of the
co-editors of Connotations. Her research interests are Early Modern
literature, especially John Donne and William Shakespeare, and the 19th
century, with a focus on Lewis Carroll and Charles Dickens.
_____
APPOSITIONS: Studies in Renaissance /
Early Modern Literature and Culture, http://appositions.blogspot.com/,
ISSN: 1946-1992, Volume Six (2013): Editions & Editing
