HU 520: A Review of Rafaelle Simone's "The Body of The Text"
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Presuppositions regarding the term "text
Simmone highlights that present belief is that "the text should be considered a closed entity, or..it is a closed entity." (240) Reader has a right only to interpret. In Simones opinion, people who believe this idea, "takes on ipso facto a series of the following presuppositions:
Simone also emphasized the importance
of philology. According to him,"philology is the discipline which has
contributed the most to creating and spreading the idea that the text is
a body which cannot be penetrated except by interpretation."(240) "Philology
has explicit task to define the form, the author has given to the text or
closed the text.
Simone says that a wholly original book is treated differently by users than the book which is a result of compilation.(242) What do you think about this statement? Do you treat a wholly original book differently? "As a result of these presuppositions the text has a body, or rather a actual habeas corpus which prevents others(apart from the author) from touching it..." (242) The body of the text consists of: the title, the name of the author, the margins...and even quotation marks. Simone underlined the essential role of well-educated European class in the creation of the idea of the body of the text. Considering how the idea of the "text as a unified and closed body " was formed, Simone points out on the birth of writing. He says that "writing brought about a change in the intuitive idea of "text" and which resulted in the belief that the text, which was open, authorless, and devoid of originality, was really ...a stable, crystalized entity generated by a single author..."(243) Thought it was an interesting point that "the written discourse detaches itself from the the author who composed it and passes into the reader's hands. The author hands over to the reader a text which is stable.
Interesting point: "Writing a book is quite another thing from commenting, copying, or annotating it. However, in the near future it will be increasingly difficult to say...who is the author of a text." Simone concludes with the statement that "writing technology will bring about changes in the collective consciousness and sooner or the closed and protected text will be a thing of the past" (251). |