Towards a Poetics of Titles

256 Pages·2013·8.46 MB·English

Towards a Poetics of Titles:
The Prehistory
Victoria Louise Gibbons
BA Hons. (Cardiff University), MA (Cardiff University)
A Thesis Submitted in Candidature for
The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Cardiff University
July 2010
UMI Number: U516664
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Abstract
This thesis initiates a diachronic reconsideration of the English literary title. Unlike previous
critical studies of titling practices, which focus almost exclusively on modem printed works,
the thesis turns to the titling practices of manuscripts, addressing the different forms,
functions and meanings of premodem titling. The overlapping of theoretical and material
concerns in this under-researched area of book history necessitates a new form of
multidisciplinary approach which combines critical theories of titology with codicological
and bibliographical modes of enquiry.
The introductory chapter contrasts and analyses the different titling practices of
contemporary and premodem literary cultures. Chapter two identifies a number of
shortcomings in current titological theories and goes on to explore previously overlooked
premodem attitudes to titling. The third chapter opens with a consideration of the meanings
and uses of the word title specific to the premodem era and the possible influences that
ancient and early medieval approaches to identifying and defining texts may have had on
later medieval titling. Chapter four considers the growth in external and internal forms of
vernacular titling practice evident in selected manuscripts of the eleventh, twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. The fifth chapter moves the discussion into the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries as witnessed by three important codices from this time: Oxford, Bodleian Library,
Digby 86; Scotland, National Library, Advocates 19. 2. 1 (Auchinleck); and Oxford,
Bodleian Library, Eng. poet. a. 1 (Vernon).
The conclusion affirms that titling practices did have currency in premodemity,
though the identification of texts was a practice that exhibits great diversity, and in that
feature, as well as in many others, what may appear superficially to be recognisable as titling
stands a significant distance apart from modem concepts of the title and involves many other
contemporary assumptions, about (para)texts, authors and readers, which are essential to an
understanding of what medieval authors and scribes meant when they identified texts.
Acknowledgements
This research has been made possible by a Doctoral Studentship from the Arts and
Humanities Research Council (2006-09) and a grant from the British Federation of Women
Graduates: Funds for Women Graduates (2009-10).
There are many people I need to thank for their help with this project. At the very top of the
list is my supervisor Helen Phillips who has helped me through over seven years of university
education with constant advice, encouragement and understanding. For this I am grateful
beyond words.
I would also like to thank Nicola Bassett, Martha W. Driver, A. S. G. Edwards, Susanna Fein,
Elizabeth Ford, Ruth Kennedy, Roberta Magnani, Anthony Mandal, Haley Miles, Catherine
Phelps, Carl Phelpstead, Wendy Scase, Alexandra Smith, Kara Tennant, Kate Watson,
Jessica Webb and Heather Worthington for their help, advice and encouragement at various
points during this project. I want to thank Martin Coyle and Stephen Knight in particular for
their help with the original proposal and with several other research proposals I have
submitted more recently. Rob Gossedge and Katie Gamer have proofread various parts of the
thesis: thanks to you both for seeing me through the final stages.
Throughout the PhD - during its various stages of research, pondering, extended pondering,
writing and eventual completion - I have had the constant love and patient support of my
friends and family. Boo, Wiz, and Nikkie deserve special thanks. Mum and Dad: you are my
inspiration. Steven Rogan: my a ’th kar.
I dedicate this research to the memory of my best friend Sarah Chinn, my friend and
colleague Alexandra Smith, and my grandmother Elsie Gibbons. Where words otherwise fail
me, this should stand instead.
We must rest content with the admission that the knowledge of things is not to be derived
from names [...] and no man will like to put himself or the education of his mind in the power
of names.
Plato, Cratylus, 439b-440c
Contents
Declarations
Abstract
Acknowledgements
1 Literary Titles: Now and Then 1
1.1 Now: Modem Titles 1
1.2 Then: Premodem Titling Practice 7
1.3 The Title’s Prehistory: Theory and Practice 12
2 Modern Titology and Its Premodern Gap 23
2.1 Modem Theories of Title 23
2.2 The Title in Premodem Literary Criticism 53
3 Early Titling: Meanings, Uses and Practices 74
3.1 Meanings and Uses 75
3.2 Early Practices 103
4 Medieval Titling: Post-Conquest into the Thirteenth Century 131
4.1 External Titling: Continuity and Disruption 134
4.2 Internal Titling: Early Textual Identities 148
5 Later Medieval Titling: Into the Fourteenth Century 179
5.1 Case Study I: Manuscripts of the Thirteenth Century 181
5.2 Case Study II: The Auchinleck Manuscript 198
5.3 Case Study III: The Vernon Manuscript 214
6 Afterword: Towards a Poetics of Literary Titles 229
Bibliography 231
1
1 Titles: Now and Then
1.1 Now: Modern Titles
We think we know what a title is, notably the title of a work. It is placed in a
specific position, highly determined and regulated by conventional laws: at the
beginning of and at a set distance above the body of the text, but in any case
before it. The title is generally chosen by the author or by his or her editorial
representatives whose property it is. The title names and guarantees the
identity, the unity and the boundaries of the original work which it entitles.
(Jacques Derrida)1
It is very difficult for us today to forget our preconceptions as to the necessity
or appropriateness of using a title in every instance.
(Lloyd Daly)2
In the last forty years, the titles attached to texts, literary or otherwise, have been the subject
of a small but sustained amount of critical attention.3 In spite of continuing academic interest,
the title is regularly overlooked as an aspect of general reading experiences. Twenty-first
century readers perhaps more than at any other time have come to expect and accept, without
question, the titles that identify the texts - whether these texts are novels, paintings, museum
exhibits, films, songs or other - they read or otherwise encounter. If asked to think about
literary titles specifically, it is likely that a list of favourite, memorable, and/or familiar titles
will spring readily to mind: Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, Wuthering Heights,
Gone with the Wind, or The Great Gatsby. But what exactly is meant or rather what is
understood by the noun title when used in its exclusively literary context? The Oxford
English Dictionary (OED) sets out the recognized definition of title in its literary sense as
1 Jacques Derrida, ‘Before the Law’, in Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge (London and New York:
Routledge, 1992), pp. 181-220 (p. 188).
2 Lloyd W. Daly, ‘The Entitulature of Pre-Ciceronian Writings’, in Classical Studies in Honor of William Abbott
Oldfather (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1943), pp. 20-38 (p. 30).
3 This introductory chapter expands research completed as part of the MA dissertation in English Literature at
Cardiff University and published after: see Victoria Louise Gibbons, ‘The Manuscript Titles of Truth: Titology
and the Medieval Gap’, Journal of the Early Book Society, 11 (2008), 197-206. Some sections of the discussion
are adapted from a recent publication, see Gibbons, ‘Reading Premodem Titles: Bridging the Premodem Gap in
Modem Titology’, Signs, Symbols & Words: Proceedings of the Cardiff University Reading Conference 2007
(2008), 1-13. Available at: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/chri/researchpapers/pgconference/Papers%201%20-
%207/l.Gibbons.html [accessed 21 October 2009].
2
‘the name of a book, a poem, or other (written) composition’.4 And there is nothing, of
course, fundamentally wrong with this explanation: a modem title will, by virtue of its very
existence, name the work that it entitles.
Titles do not, however, only name. Those who study the title in its modem context
dedicate much time to the question of its functions; Gerard Genette, perhaps the best known
of modem titologists, suggests that, as well as identifying a work, the title also fulfils
descriptive, connotative and temptation roles.5 In this respect, the title is much more than a
book’s name but, further still, it is much more than the sum of Genette’s functions. The word
title also evokes a complex of expectations, assumptions and ideals: titles should be relatively
short in length; they should be discrete and autonomous; they should occupy position(s), prior
to the text itself (the front cover, the spine, the half title-page, the title-page and the top of the
first page, for example); they should relate to and describe the work they entitle; they should
offer, as Umberto Eco’s suggests, ‘a key to interpretation’; they should securely identify the
work, by not changing from copy to copy and only occasionally from edition to edition; they
should derive from the author.6 Many, if not all, of these suppositions are borne out by the
favourite, memorable, or familiar titles listed above; indeed, a contemporary edition of Pride
and Prejudice will certainly adhere to these titular conventions (or at least give the
impression that it does).7
As Jacques Derrida intimates in the epigraph to this section, the literary title has
undergone gradual but increasing processes of codification and regulation in relation to the
4 See ‘title, n.’, The Oxford English Dictionary, ed. J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, 2nd edn. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1989), XVIII, 155-7 (p. 155).
5 Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), pp. 79-93. Building on the earlier formulations of Claude Duchet, Charles Grivel, and
Leo Hoek, Genette offers the clearest and most thorough consideration of the modem literary title’s function to
date.
6 Umberto Eco, ‘The Title and the Meaning’, in Reflections on ‘The Name of the Rose’, trans. William Weaver
(London: Seeker and Warburg, 1985), pp. 1-8 (p. 2).
7 Of course, the modem situation with regards to titles is not always so clear-cut; for instance, titular changes
can occur in later editions either as the result of the author, publisher, or sometimes even the reading public. For
discussions of modem titular complications, see Genette, Paratexts, pp. 68-72.
3
forms it should take, what it should say and how, and where and who should say it. Since the
seventeenth century literary, beginning with legislation of the Star Chamber Decree of 1637,
titles and the works they entitle have been governed by official copyright laws (the first of
which is generally held to be The Statute of Anne of 1710). The eventual outcome of these
early forms of titular regulation is seen in the mandatory legalese that is now found on both
sides of modem title-pages and in the unwavering link that now exists between author and
title. The legal control of modem authorial titles means that their presence in relation to
literary works can serve to confirm that work’s identity, legitimacy, authority, and thereby
verify its place within the literary canon.8 Modem titles, therefore, make a promise to the
reader; they form a contract; they reassure him/her because they are always there, even when
appearances suggest otherwise.
Regardless of its protestations to the contrary, the modem ‘untitled’ work is not
without a title. The adjective ‘untitled’ itself operates as a title in that it provides the work
with a denotative tag allowing it to be referred to and catalogued like any other titled work.
Furthermore, the label ‘untitled’ gives rise to connotative aspects, in that the refusal to entitle
a work is now a titling convention in its own right (albeit one of resistance).9 The presence of
some designative, descriptive, self-contained grammatical unit at the beginning of a work is
required: it is expected. As a consequence, the title is seen to be a conventional, integral and
indispensable feature of literary compositions and of the experiences of reading or
encountering them.
8 The legal links of the early printed title-page are discussed in Eleanor F. Shevlin, ‘“To Reconcile Book and
Title, and Make ’em Kin to One Another”: The Evolution of the Title’s Contractual Functions’, Book History, 2
(1999), 42-77.
9 For similar views on the titling capacity of‘Untitled’, see John Hollander, “‘Haddocks’ Eyes”: A Note on the
Theory of Titles’, in Vision and Resonance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 212-26 (p. 213);
Hazard Adams, ‘Titles, Titling, and Entitlement To’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 46 (1987), 7-21
(p. 13); Petersen, ‘Titles, Labels, Names: A House of Mirrors’, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 40 (2006), 29-43
(pp. 34-5).
4
The constant, reliable presence of the title in relation to a literary work inspires the
reader’s trust. It is now a vital part of the reading process, telling the reader what the work is
about, whether it is appealing to them and, ultimately, whether they want to read it, and, if
they decide that they do, the title also enables the identification and location of that particular
work. But this always-already there quality means that titles are rarely, if ever, questioned;
regardless of their necessariness, perhaps even because of it, these titles are not often
considered or analyzed in the same detail as are the texts themselves. It is this lack of
interrogation that leads many readers to assume, firstly, that titles have always existed in the
same forms, performed the same functions, and signified in the same ways as they do today,
and, secondly, that the practice of titling, of affixing a name to each and every text, has
always taken place. The title, in its modem form, is seen to be a necessary part of all literary
compositions: how else can a reader find, refer to, remember or discuss a work if it does not
have one? Titles, it would appear, are a practical necessity in the creation, production,
transmission and reception of literature. In view of its universal and timeless qualities, there
is no reason to look beyond the title in its modem form.
Having said this, the preconceptions, beliefs and standards outlined above together
constitute a specifically modem concept of what a title should be, and it is this idea of the
title which has come to dictate contemporary titular norms. Indeed, many of the standard
ideas about titles are based on the titling practices found in modem, printed, commercial
forms of the book.10 With its predominantly synchronic focus, the critical study of titles, now
widely known as titology, has done little to modify these assumptions, seeking as it does to
categorize and define the modem title exclusively, rather than to trace and elucidate its
developments across history. In many cases, therefore, the discipline of titology, and
particularly that of the Genettean variety, has only helped to consolidate the prevalence (both
10 The possible reasons for this privileging of modem ideas of the title are considered in the following chapter
(‘Modem Titology and Its Premodem Gap’).