Modern Manuscripts: The Extended Mind and Creative Undoing from Darwin to Beckett and Beyond

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The twentieth century has been called 'the golden age of the modern manuscript,' a time when the historical value of early manuscripts as a record of a writer's thought processes came to be fully recognized. Drawing on the critical tools of French genetic criticism, Modern Manuscripts explores the development of early 20th century literary texts, from source texts and early notes, through successive draft manuscripts to publication and successive editions. Historicizing these modernist processes of writing, Dirk Van Hulle contrasts these twentieth century manuscripts with the development of Charles Darwin's text for On the Origin of Species, itself a formative intellectual influence on modern writing. Exploring the writings of such writers as Joyce, Woolf and Beckett, this is an important study that will open up new avenues of thought for scholars of Modernist literature, material culture and book history.

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Dirk van Hulle proves with admirable clarity that textual genesis has become the new science of literature, and that it works both ways, from scrutinized manuscripts to original re-readings of canonical works, and from their authors progression in language to the laws of evolution governing creativity. His convincing remapping of modernism, from Darwin to Beckett via Conrad, Proust, Woolf, Joyce, Kafka and Flann OBrien, definitely splices textual genetics with cognitive studies, thus rendering an invaluable service to literary studies in general. * Jean-Michel Rabat, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania, USA *
This learned, detailed and fascinating study of 'creative undoing' mines the works of Darwin, Joyce, Woolf, and Beckett to explore the processes by which revisions, deletions and substitutions shape the work of art. It will be of interest to a broad range of readers, specialist and non-specialist alike. * Dame Gillian Beer, DBE, King Edward VII Professor of English Literature and President, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, UK *

Author Bio

Dirk Van Hulle is Professor of English Literature at the Centre for Manuscript Genetics, University of Antwerp, Belgium. He is President of the European Society for Textual Scholarship and his previous books include Textual Awareness (2004).