John L. Bryant

Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life was published in 1846 and was Melville's most popular work, offering Victorian readers startling and romantic glimpses of island people and practices. The Typee manuscript was discovered only in 1983, and is considered one of the most important literary manuscripts in nineteenth-century American studies. Melville Unfolding offers a new approach to literary analysis, focusing on how the "invisible text of revision" is made visible in the critical construction of the novel. This volume is linked to an electronic edition of Typee, providing a model for how critical analysis and textual editing work synergistically and how print and online technologies can complement one another.Melville Unfolding walks readers through the intriguing twists and turns of Melville's writing process, detailing the delights and frustrations of reading a writer in manuscript. In jargon-free prose, John Bryant introduces the scholarship of manuscript study, the use of the revision narrative, and the benefits of the fluid-text analysis---asking readers to consider what a text is, how it comes into being, how it evolves, and how the study of a fluid text enhances our understanding of writers, writing, and culture.John Bryant is Professor of English at Hofstra University and Editor of the Melville Society. His books include The Fluid Text: A Theory of Revision and Editing for Book and Screen and the Modern Library editions of Melville's Tales, Poems, and Other Writings and The Confidence-Man.

Theorists, scholars, and critics usually consider literary works to be fixed objects, assuming that any variations in the text of a work should be stabilized, reduced, eliminated. John Bryant urges that these variations create valuable records of the interactions between the artist and society. Preprint revisions, revised editions, adaptations for film, and expurgations for children are among the many forms of flux that shape literary works and position them relative to their audiences. Fully understanding the life of a literary work in its cultural situation requires recognizing the fluidity of text, and the present work makes the first coherent theoretical, critical, and editorial approach to the study of revision.The author develops his theory and its critical application drawing upon the example of Melville's "Typee, " using its various versions to present protocols for fluid text analysis. He shows how the mountain of scholarly material comprising the fluid text can be presented by a partnership of book and computer screen, in ways that offer new opportunities, insights, and pleasures for scholars and readers."The Fluid Text: A Theory of Revision and Editing for Book and Screen" is written in a clear and accessible style and will appeal to scholars and students in editorial theory, literary criticism and analysis, and anyone concerned with the information architecture of complex literary works in digital media.John Bryant is Professor of English, Hofstra University. His most recent book is an edition of "Melville's Tales, Poems, and Other Writings."

Theorists, scholars, and critics usually consider literary works to be fixed objects, assuming that any variations in the text of a work should be stabilized, reduced, eliminated. John Bryant urges that these variations create valuable records of the interactions between the artist and society. Preprint revisions, revised editions, adaptations for film, and expurgations for children are among the many forms of flux that shape literary works and position them relative to their audiences. Fully understanding the life of a literary work in its cultural situation requires recognizing the fluidity of text, and the present work makes the first coherent theoretical, critical, and editorial approach to the study of revision. The author develops his theory and its critical application drawing upon the example of Melville's Typee, using its various versions to present protocols for fluid text analysis. He shows how the mountain of scholarly material comprising the fluid text can be presented by a partnership of book and computer screen, in ways that offer new opportunities, insights,and pleasures for scholars and readers. The Fluid Text: A Theory of Revision and Editing for Book and Screen is written in a clear and accessible style and will appeal to scholars and students in editorial theory, literary criticism and analysis, and anyone concerned with the information architecture of complex literary works in digital media. John Bryant is Professor of English, Hofstra University. His most recent book is an edition of Melville's Tales, Poems, and Other Writings.