Lost in Publication: Epigenesis and the Identification of Relocated Text

Josefine Hilfling, The Society for Danish Language and Literature; University of Copenhagen

Writers (re)write. They delete, relocate, overwrite, add, and replace. Yet their method and the material traces they leave behind vary. Due to the characteristics of documents such as manuscripts, publications and digital files, our insight into the writing process depends on what has been kept. From revised manuscripts and keystroke logging data on born-digital creations, it is possible to follow the writer's creation in time. This information is lost in publications where only the consequences of the process are left. The limitation leaves (epi)genetic critics with a central question: How can we identify, describe, and define what the writer has done when we cannot see it? The question has become relevant in the current editorial work on the digital scholarly edition of the Danish Nobel Prize-winning author Henrik Pontoppidan's great novels. Pontoppidan burned his manuscripts but repeatedly published revised versions of his novels. His working method can be characterized as creating new works out of earlier published works by relocating or transposing phrases, paragraphs, scenes, motifs, plots, and events. In this lecture, I will discuss what we can tell about a writing process where only published versions are preserved; and how we identify and distinguish passages created for the specific context from transposed passages (transpositions) that originates from other versions or works within the oeuvre.