David Greetham (October 21, 1941 – March 24, 2020) was an American literary critic and the founder of the Society for Textual Scholarship.

Career

Greetham received his undergraduate degree from the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

in 1963 and completed his Ph.D. in English at the

City University of New York The City University of New York (CUNY, pronounced , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven ...

. Marta Werner of D'Youville College describes Greetham as "drawn to texts that spill over the boundaries of genre, that exist in multiple versions, that explore intertextuality, and that complicate in various other ways the notion of text as fixed or stable." In his works, Greetham has sought to co-opt "the terminology and practice of literary theory in re-designating textual operations in the guise of ... literature, anthropology, sociology, gender studies, history, political science, linguistics, psychology, ndphilosophy." As a theorist of scholarly editing, Greetham has taken up a middle ground between intentionalist positions like that of

G. Thomas Tanselle George Thomas Tanselle (born January 29, 1934) is an American textual critic, bibliographer, and book collector, especially known for his work on Herman Melville. He was Vice President of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation from 1978 to 2006. Bi ...

and the social textual criticism of Jerome McGann, maintaining the goal of establishing an authoritative text while allowing the possibility that multiple authorized versions can exist. In his later work, Greetham has moved away from the idea that an editor can establish a "psychic" connection with the author through which he or she can determine the author's true intentions, instead seeing editing as an occasion for reflections on the ideology underlying scholarly practice. Greetham died on March 24, 2020, from a long-illness at the age of 78.

Society for Textual Scholarship

Greetham was one of the founders of the Society for Textual Scholarship and served as the Society's President from 1999 to 2001. Founded in 1979, the Society provides an interdisciplinary forum for presentation of research in a number of textual disciplines. Notable past members have included

Paul Oskar Kristeller Paul Oskar Kristeller (May 22, 1905 in Berlin – June 7, 1999 in New York, United States) was a scholar of Renaissance humanism. He was awarded the Haskins Medal in 1992. He was last active as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia Uni ...

Fredson Bowers Fredson Thayer Bowers (1905–1991) was an American Bibliography, bibliographer and scholar of Textual criticism, textual editing. Career Bowers was a graduate of Brown University and Harvard University (Ph.D.). He taught at Princeton University ...

, and Jerome McGann.

Selected works

* ''The Pleasures of Contamination'' (2010) * ''Theories of the Text'' (1999) * ''Textual Transgressions: Essays Toward the Construction of a Biobibliography'' (1998) * ''The Margins of the Text: Editorial Theory and Literary Criticism'' (1997) * ''Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research'' (1995) * ''Textual Scholarship: An Introduction'' (1992) * ''TEXT: An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textual Studies'' (1984)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Greetham, David Textual scholarship 1941 births 2020 deaths People from Lenox, Massachusetts