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001 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/36160
020 _aP3.0202.1.00
020 _a9781947447578
024 7 _a10.21983/P3.0202.1.00
_cdoi
041 0 _aEnglish
042 _adc
072 7 _aDSBB
_2bicssc
100 1 _aDane, Joseph A.
_4auth
245 1 0 _aMythodologies: Methods in Medieval Studies, Chaucer, and Book History
260 _aEarth, Milky Way
_bpunctum books
_c2018
300 _a1 electronic resource (292 p.)
506 0 _aOpen Access
_2star
_fUnrestricted online access
520 _aMythodologies challenges the implied methodology in contemporary studies in the humanities. We claim, at times, that we gather facts or what we will call evidence, and from that form hypotheses and conclusions. Of course, we recognize that the sum total of evidence for any argument is beyond comprehension; therefore, we construct, and we claim, preliminary hypotheses, perhaps to organize the chaos of evidence, or perhaps simply to find it; we might then see (we claim) whether that evidence challenges our tentative hypotheses. Ideally, we could work this way. Yet the history of scholarship and our own practices suggest we do nothing of the kind. Rather, we work the way we teach our composition students to write: choose or construct a thesis, then invent the evidence to support it. This book has three parts, examining such methods and pseudo-methods of invention in medieval studies, bibliography, and editing. Part One, “Noster Chaucer,” looks at examples in Chaucer studies, such as the notion that Chaucer wrote iambic pentameter, and the definition of a canon in Chaucer. “Our” Chaucer has, it seems, little to do with Chaucer himself, and in constructing this entity, Chaucerians are engaged largely in self-validation of their own tradition. Part Two, “Bibliography and Book History,” consists of three studies in the field of bibliography: the recent rise in studies of annotations; the implications of presumably neutral terminology in editing, a case-study in cataloguing. Part Three, “Cacophonies: A Bibliographical Rondo,” is a series of brief studies extending these critiques to other areas in the humanities. It seems not to matter what we talk about: meter, book history, the sex life of bonobos. In all of these discussions, we see the persistence of error, the intractability of uncritical assumptions, and the dominance of authority over evidence.
540 _aCreative Commons
_fhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
_2cc
_4https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
546 _aEnglish
650 7 _aLiterary studies: classical, early & medieval
_2bicssc
653 _amedieval studies
653 _aChaucer
653 _abook history
653 _aintellectual history
653 _abibliography
856 4 0 _awww.oapen.org
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_zDOAB: download the publication
856 4 0 _awww.oapen.org
_uhttps://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25427/1/1004668.pdf
_70
_zDOAB: download the publication
856 4 0 _awww.oapen.org
_uhttps://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25427/1/1004668.pdf
_70
_zDOAB: download the publication
856 4 0 _awww.oapen.org
_uhttps://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/36160
_70
_zDOAB: description of the publication
999 _c42736
_d42736