T
Takagi (Masako)
Assistant Professor Faculty for Foreign Studies, Kyorin University, Tokyo, Japan
Caxton and the Chronicles of England : a creation of a printer's copy.
BL Add. 10099, a manuscript, is considered to be a unique copy which retains almost exactly Caxton's printed version of the _Chronicles of England_ yet was created before Caxton's publication years, 1480 and 1482. Watermark studies of Add. 10099 indicate that its paper most likely came from the continent. The fact suggests that Add. 10099 may well have belonged to Caxton, as his paperstock largely came from the continent. When Caxton intended to publish a volume, it was his common practice to put several texts together, as well as to add his own prose. In the _Chronicles of England_, too, there is a major addition towards the end, and Add. 10099 follows the addition closely. But Add. 10099 also has a part of the text which is excluded in Caxton's edition, and the fact suggests that the manuscript was at an intermediary stage before Caxton's final version appeared. The question in this paper is the purpose for which Add. 10099 was created. I would like to show some examples on how Add. 10099 could have been an exemplar used for printing.
Takagi (Masako) : 1999: Master's Degree from the Department of English and American Literature, Keio University Graduate School, Tokyo, Japan. 2002: Partial fulfillment of Ph-D course of the Department of English and American Literature, Keio University Graduate School, Tokyo, Japan. 2002-: Assistant Professor of the Faculty for Foreign Studies, Kyorin University, Tokyo, Japan. Major Bibiliography: MA Thesis:_The Two Texts of Le Morte Darther: The Winchester Manuscript in Caxton's Workshop and its Possible Alteration Process Particularly of Book V. Submitted to Keio Univ., Tokyo, 1999. Masako Takagi and Toshiyuki Takamiya. "Caxton Edits the Roman War Episode: The Chronicles of England and Caxton's Book v." The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur (Arthurian Studies, No 47). Eds. Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick, Michael Norman Salda Cambridge: DS Brewer, 2000.
Theron (J. C.)
Department of Information Science, Pretoria, Republic of South Africa
Afrikaans : from kitchen language to modern language to marginalisation again, perhaps?
During the reign of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) at the Cape Dutch was the official language of church and Afrikaans is the only language with European roots to develop on African soil. Based on 17th century Dutch and/or Flemish, with Portuguese, German and French influence as well as Malay and African (Khoi Khoi, San and Bantu) influence it government and Afrikaans the pidgin variant thereof, used chiefly by slaves and the lower classes.
In 1795 and from 1806 onwards the Cape Colony came under direct British rule and a deliberate policy of Anglicisation was followed. In 1822 and onwards only English was used in Government, in schools and in courts. The church, under control of the colonial government, imported Scottish pastors to anglicise the Afrikaners. The church also decided to use only Dutch in their services. Afrikaans was derogatorily referred to as a kitchen language. After the Anglo Boer war the English Governor, Lord Alfred Milner, followed the same policies in the colonies of Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In 1875, however, the First language movement (Eerste Taalbeweging) started and gained momentum after the Anglo Boer War. These movements encountered opposition from English speakers, the government and proponents of Dutch (the church, amongst others).
Together with the founding of the first language movement a printing press was established, a newspaper printed, Di Patriot, pamphlets and books published in Afrikaans. A start was also made with an Afrikaans bible translation.
This proved beyond any doubt the ability of Afrikaans to function on a higher level than as a kitchen language only.
The early Afrikaans speakers were Protestants and staunch Calvinists and in their lives the Bible played an influential role. To become a member of the congregation all youngsters had to be confirmed and as part of that had to prove their understanding of the churches’ teachings and the bible. In the paper the hypothesis is investigated that this contributed to the preservation of literacy amongst isolated settlers and the development of Afrikaans as language.
In 1925 Afrikaans was declared as one of the two official languages of the Union of South Africa, the other being English. Thus started the “golden era” of Afrikaans, creating its own literature, Andre Brink, for example, a science language, the language of government, of the courts, etc.
With the democratisation of South Africa in 1994 Afrikaans was recognised as one of eleven official languages but for all practical purposes English became the de facto official language. At present Afrikaans is fighting for its status but the possibility exist for it to become a kitchen language again.
In conclusion, the development of Afrikaans as an African language with European roots will be discussed. Its survival despite marginalisation attempts are high lighted as well as a critical look into its future in a democratic South Africa. Special attention will be paid to the role of reading and print culture in this process.
Mr JC Theron is a senior lecturer in Information Science at UNISA ( the University of South Africa). His teaching duties include book history and the theory and philosophy of information and information science on undergraduate and postgraduate level. He studied at the Universities of the Orange Free State, Stellenbosch and Unisa where he obtained a Masters degree in Information science.. He is the author of a number of articles and book reviews and a member of a number of scientific societies, including SHARP. At present he is Chairman of the Research and Education Interest group of the Library and Information Association of South Africa LIASA). He presented papers at national and international conferences including SHARP.
Tofanelli (John L.)
Columbia University Libraries
This huge mingled mass : John Wesley, a Christian library and the return of the repressed.
The most elaborate editorial project of John Wesley’s career was A Christian Library: Consisting of Extracts from and Abridgements of the Choicest Pieces of Practical Divinity, which have been published in the English Tongue, a fifty-volume set of books printed in Bristol by Felix Farley from 1749 to 1755. The history of this project is riddled with a variety of puzzles that have not been adequately explored in Wesley scholarship.
Wesley states the rationale for A Christian Library in his preface to it: the “very plenty” of books on religion available in English has created a difficulty. There is too much to read; the works are not consistent with one another; and, within any given work, Truth and Falsehood are frequently so intermixt . . . that it is not an easy thing to separate them. The reader who seeks to educate himself is confronted with “this huge mingled mass, this Fendless multiplicity of books, and is in danger of being quite bewildered. In compiling A Christian Library, Wesley sees himself answering the needs of that reader. He not only identified and included the most useful works of practical divinity; he also abridged these works and added to them as needed in order to enhance their readability and remove theological error. Although Wesley on the whole had a canny sense of his reading public and a successful record as editor and author, A Christian Library, his most ambitious project, cannot be counted overall as a success. Wesley lost money on it; and he also complained that its value was insufficiently recognized. Furthermore, in response to a controversy initiated by the Calvinist Richard Hill, Wesley would also admit (for the first time in print in 1772) that A Christian Library itself did not live up to his editorial ambitions. Due to the “inattention” of those attending the press a hundred passages were left in, which I had scratched out.
I will examine the troubled history of A Christian Library, showing how that history reflects the tensions inhabiting the Methodist Connection and sheds light on Wesley’s reliance on the printed word as a means of containing and reducing those tensions.
John L. Tofanelli is Anglo-American Bibliographer at Columbia University Libraries, where he develops and maintains library collections for British and American history and literature. He has a Ph.D. in English from Stanford University.
Turner (Catherine)
College Misericordia, Dallas, PA
A new era or changing women's fashions : the value of 1930's bestseller Anthony Adverse.
Many publishers in the 1930s credited Hervey Allen’s Anthony Adverse (Farrar and Rinehart, 1933) with saving the publishing industry from the Great Depression. Throughout the industry, publishers celebrated the book’s ability to get customers back into bookstores and applauded Farrar and Rinehart for creating a best seller out of a book of such length and serious intent. However, Allen had even higher ambitions for the book, hoping to create a new type of highbrow book to address what he saw as the menace of “Joyce & Co.” and modernism. He explained to John Farrar that he was deeply disappointed that only thing the book seemed to be changing was women’s fashions, since it was intended to be “something that initiated a new era.” At the very least, Allen wrote Farrar, “I had strong hopes that the story might really bring about a distinct change in men’s dress.” As Allen’s complaints indicate, his desire to create a highbrow novel that anyone could read resulted in financial success but did not result in a lasting sense of literary value. His hopes and disappointment indicate the complicated negotiations that occurred as publishers, authors, critics, and readers defined the lines that dived low, middle, and highbrow. Throughout the history of Anthony Adverse, controversies over its value—questions arose over its price, the gender of its audience, historical accuracy, and aggressive advertising—reflected discussions over the value of books and reading generally in the 1930s. Although the book is forgotten now, Anthony Adverse remains an important site for scholars to see how contemporary notions of literary taste and value have been shaped.
Catherine Turner is assistant professor of English and Co-director of the Honors Program at College Misericordia in Dallas, Pennsylvania, where she teaches American Literature and Cultural Studies. She is the author of Marketing Modernism between the Two Wars (University of Massachusetts Press, 2003) and several other articles, reviews, and encyclopedia articles.
Van der Walt (T. B.)
Department of Information Science, Unisa, Republic of South Africa
Children’s literature in the African languages of South Africa : marginalisation from within.
Until 1992 South Africa had two official languages, Afrikaans and English. Because of the policy of apartheid and the dominance of Afrikaans and English, the African culture and African languages have been neglected and marginalised. Up until this time there was little writing, reading or publishing in the African languages, and as far as books for children were concerned, publishing was largely confined to school textbooks. With the dawn of the new democracy in South Africa, the nine major indigenous African languages in the country were elevated to official status still including English and Afrikaans.
The South African constitution states that practical and positive measures should be taken to elevate the status and advance the use of all the South African languages. Language is seen as a right and a Language Board (PANSALB) was instituted by the government "to encourage the best use of the country's linguistic resources in order to enable South Africans to free themselves from all forms of linguistic discrimination, domination and division; and to enable them to exercise appropriate linguistic choices for their own well being as well as for national development" (Pansalb's position 1999).
However, one of the most remarkable ironies of the legacy of post‑apartheid South Africa is that the recognition of the African languages as official languages, is marked by a dramatic decline in the number of mother tongue students studying African languages; less books are bought in African languages by libraries and less books are published in the African languages. Black parents prefer their children to attend English‑medium schools and publishers cannot afford to publish small quantities of children's books in the African languages.
Ten years into democracy and the marginalised languages are still marginalised ‑ at this point, by their own mother tongue speakers. Extending the African language publishing should be seen as part of social reconstruction, of building a genuinely equitable and non‑racial society. This however should start with the children. This contribution will largely focus on the status quo of children's books in the indigenous African languages of South Africa and how this issue can be addressed for future generations. Attention will however also be paid to how the Afrikaans language, severely marginalised by English during the 1900s succeeded in creating a viable publishing industry, and a highly respected children’s literature. Parallels will be drawn between how the problem was addressed in Afrikaans and how the African languages could use that as an example.
Dr TB van der Walt is a senior lecturer in Information Science at Unisa where he teaches children’s literature and archival science and records management at undergraduate and postgraduate level. He studied at the Universities of Potchefstroom, Pretoria and the Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg where he obtained his doctorate. He has published a number of scientific articles, book reviews and is a member of , inter alia, the International Research Society for Children’s Literature and a founding member and current president of the African Society for Research in Children’s Literature. Dr van der Walt received numerous awards, especially for his role in the promotion of children’s literature and delivered papers at many international conferences, including SHARP.