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This original and authoritative book offers a first-ever attempt to define a poetics of the editing arts. It proposes a new field of editing studies, in which the 'ideal editor' can be understood in relation to the long-theorised author and reader. The book's premise is that editing, like other forms of 'making', is mostly invisible and can only be brought into full view through a comparative analysis that includes the insights of practitioners. The argument, laid down in careful layers, is supported by a panoramic historical narrative that tracks the shifts in textual authority from religious and secular institutions to the romanticised self of the digital present. The dangers posed by the anti-editing rhetoric of this hybrid romanticism are confronted head-on. To the traditional perception of editing as the imposition of closure, A Poetics of Editing adds a perspective on a dynamic process with a sense of the possible.
List of contents
1. The midwife and the janitor.- 2. Translations of the invisible.- 3. Editing and mind.- 4. An expectation of error.- 5. The digital present.- 6. Editing and the real.- 7. Editing in the academy.- 8.The digital romantics.- 9. A poetics of editing.
About the author
Susan L. Greenbergis Senior Lecturer in creative writing at the University of Roehampton, UK, and programme convener for the department’s MA Publishing, following a long career in journalism and media. She holds a PhD in Publishing from University College London and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Publications include Editors Talk About Editing (2015).
Summary
This original and authoritative book offers a first-ever attempt to define a poetics of the editing arts. It proposes a new field of editing studies, in which the ‘ideal editor’ can be understood in relation to the long-theorised author and reader. The book’s premise is that editing, like other forms of ‘making’, is mostly invisible and can only be brought into full view through a comparative analysis that includes the insights of practitioners. The argument, laid down in careful layers, is supported by a panoramic historical narrative that tracks the shifts in textual authority from religious and secular institutions to the romanticised self of the digital present. The dangers posed by the anti-editing rhetoric of this hybrid romanticism are confronted head-on. To the traditional perception of editing as the imposition of closure,
A Poetics of Editing adds a perspective on a dynamic process with a sense of the possible.
