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A Comparative History of the Literary Draft in Europe
Edited by Olga Beloborodova and Dirk Van Hulle
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXV] 2024
► pp. 335–352

1.5.1
Textual fluidity

Biography, history, and adaptive revision

Grounding biography and literary history in the phenomena of writing requires a theory of textual fluidity that unifies authorised and adapted versions. Such theorizing should also account for the anxieties of historicism in matters of textual evolution (Henry Adams) and of source appropriation as “replay” (Claude Monet). Melville’s late “adaptive revision” of William James’s naval history and of his own recollected biographical events in his writing of Billy Budd constitutes constitute an alternative historicism that enhances his “inside narrative” voice. Tracing adaptive revision from these personal and literary appropriations in Billy Budd to adaptations in translation and film versions of Moby-Dick expands the biographical scope of Melville’s writing as a modern phenomenon. The full range of adaptive revision is best represented in digital editing with a highly atomised database such as OCHRE that can accommodate asymmetric collation, revision sequencing and narration, and the interoperability of online editions.
Keywords: adaptive revision, Billy Budd, biography, collation, fluid-text editing, historicism, Melville Electronic Library, race, replay, source appropriation, version
Article outline
  • Versions of the version: Replay
  • Replaying sources I: Versions of history
  • Interlude: Fluidity, language, race
  • Replaying sources II: Versions of biography
  • Editing Adaptive Revision: Digital versions
  • Notes
  • References
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References (29)
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