Marginalia and footnotes are their own genres, but most editors concentrate on the main body of a text. Yet material outside that text body, whether as marginalia or footnotes, can have great bearing on the meaning of the main document.
Marginalia and footnotes raise a number of questions:
- What is the function of such material?
- Who made the marks, and when, where, and why?
- As editors, what do we do with them?
- Historically, how have copyists and editors treated these sometimes-troublesome forms of textual material?
- When should handwritten or printed marginalia and footnotes in a document be incorporated in a new scholarly edition, and
- How should it be done?
- Should we even bother?
For a guaranteed session at the Toronto MLA, the Association for Documentary Editing invites your 300-word abstract, half-page CV, and contact information to Carol DeBoer-Langworthy, CDBL@Brown.edu. Queries to same address. Deadline: 20 March 2020.
For more about the 2010 MLA Meeting from 7 to 10 January in Toronto, click this link.
Deadline: 20 March 2020
