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The Visible Text: Textual Production and Reproduction from Beowulf to Maus
Oxford Textual Perspectives is a new series of informative and provocative studies focused upon literary texts (conceived of in the broadest sense of that term) and the technologies, cultures and communities that produce, inform, and receive them. It provides fresh interpretations of fundamental works and of the vital and challenging issues emerging in English literary studies. By engaging with the materiality of the literary text, its production, and reception history, and frequently testing and exploring the boundaries of the notion of text itself, the volumes in the series question familiar frameworks and provide innovative interpretations of both canonical and less well-known works.
Covering materials ranging from Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and inscribed objects to contemporary comics, The Visible Text rewrites the history of textual media and technologies. Arguing that media are not defined by technologies alone, but by a combination of technologies and the ideas that people hold about those technologies, Bredehoft identifies four distinct periods or domains in the history of English literature that correspond to four ways in which media ideologies interacted with the two basic defining technologies of manuscripts and printed books.
Examining two complementary ways of defining texts (as subject to a reproductive medium, on the one hand, and as surrounded and defined by paratexts, on the other), The Visible Text points out how Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and contemporary comics share a remarkable similarity in being structured as productions rather than reproductions.
Contrastingly, the late-medieval and print-era periods share a cultural investment in textual reproduction, but they differ both in their characteristic technologies and in how they conceptualize the object of reproduction itself. A final epilogue, briefly considering the nature of electronically-mediated textuality, highlights the importance of understanding the history addressed here, as electonic text both parallels and departs from typographic print in ways that earlier reproductive domains clarify and complicate.
Filled with concrete examples of both books and texts, The Visible Text will be of interest to readers in the fields of literature, book history, literary theory, media studies, and visual culture.
Covering materials ranging from Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and inscribed objects to contemporary comics, The Visible Text rewrites the history of textual media and technologies. Arguing that media are not defined by technologies alone, but by a combination of technologies and the ideas that people hold about those technologies, Bredehoft identifies four distinct periods or domains in the history of English literature that correspond to four ways in which media ideologies interacted with the two basic defining technologies of manuscripts and printed books.
Examining two complementary ways of defining texts (as subject to a reproductive medium, on the one hand, and as surrounded and defined by paratexts, on the other), The Visible Text points out how Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and contemporary comics share a remarkable similarity in being structured as productions rather than reproductions.
Contrastingly, the late-medieval and print-era periods share a cultural investment in textual reproduction, but they differ both in their characteristic technologies and in how they conceptualize the object of reproduction itself. A final epilogue, briefly considering the nature of electronically-mediated textuality, highlights the importance of understanding the history addressed here, as electonic text both parallels and departs from typographic print in ways that earlier reproductive domains clarify and complicate.
Filled with concrete examples of both books and texts, The Visible Text will be of interest to readers in the fields of literature, book history, literary theory, media studies, and visual culture.
182 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 2, 2026
read for dissertation-work, but got more out of it (broader textual theory & discussion of digital writing) than expected!
bredehoft is a critical theorist, which carries the undertones of some social science language that i’ve been getting a bit weary of. his argument seeks to argue against reading into older books the same way we do nowadays, arguing for a fundamental divide between ‘reading’ (i.e, engaging with the semantic/linguistic information represented in written text) and ‘seeing’ (i.e, engaging with the non-textual, material nature of a book in the way you’d engage with artifacts of other kinds).
other core ideas are an emphasis on ‘productive’ (i.e, the way in which a book is its own visible, material artifact, like a manuscript) vs ‘reproductive’ (a book as a reproduction, representation or referent to another form of the book) book-cultures, the latter of which is said to rely on ‘the logic of the copy’ (wherein a book is expected to perfectly reproduce a given ideal that, in being real and not ideal, it will nonetheless always fail at doing). plenty of derrida, undertones of plato and a sprinkle of foucault (which, for some reason, EVERY modern academic of this kind seems to have to mention…)
either way, the book certainly carries theses worth discussing, and makes very perceptive claims about the way we interact with books. while i am certainly worse at this, though, i feel many of these things could do with more conciseness - but, to be fair, i’m not the one getting published & lauded here!
there were many points about textual assumptions and the ‘nature’ of books (whether as texts, comics, or manuscripts) that i found profoundly useful, and i give particular credence to the point that works like Beowulf, just because they are one of the few remaining manuscripts of the time, should not be assumed to be known & distributed nationally the way we take it today, but be seen as products of their own *specific* places and times. i do find, however, some assumptions being made that i cannot agree with - for instance, it is true that The Canterbury Tales have no single authoritative form, and that we cannot entirely discount different scribes’ manuscripts for not conforming to our expectations of an ‘ideal’ form of the tales. however, there is clearly something that divides the Tales from other works (particularly, works inspired by them but not identified as such) besides pure nominalism. this is something bredehoft freely admits in discussing the ruthwell & brussels crosses and their distinction despite incorporating external literary material, but differs on in other places.
similar cases seem to happen with comparing across his ideological frameworks - while not likely intentional, it feels like he plays fast and loose with his understanding of ‘essence’ in a work, and what we cannot essentialise in one case must be applied as a framework in another. in several cases, he notes certain categories seem to overlap, but must be understood as different according to their ‘ideological’ framework that he ascribes to a broad age of writing and sees fragments in other places. for comics, he begins by building from a broad analysis of comics from which he can draw a definition, only to then, having made his argument, dismiss what is ordinarily understood as comics (e.g. webcomics) as not conforming to his newfound category of ‘comics’.
i should also add that i find his exclusivity between a work being both representational/referent and its own work a limit that worsens these problems, and his idea that an ‘ideal’ referent cannot be real because it is ideal (only to, in the end, discuss facsimiles as referring to a real work as its ideal model) a strange and unnecessary dichotomy. books can do both!!!
despite this, i find this book overall worth the few weeks i wrestled with it. it serves as a good introduction to tough arguments in textual theory, and as long as you’re willing to put up with the really weird social-sciencey style academics love to theorise in nowadays, it’s got plenty of points that help you consider how exactly you engage with the books you read and ‘see’!
bredehoft is a critical theorist, which carries the undertones of some social science language that i’ve been getting a bit weary of. his argument seeks to argue against reading into older books the same way we do nowadays, arguing for a fundamental divide between ‘reading’ (i.e, engaging with the semantic/linguistic information represented in written text) and ‘seeing’ (i.e, engaging with the non-textual, material nature of a book in the way you’d engage with artifacts of other kinds).
other core ideas are an emphasis on ‘productive’ (i.e, the way in which a book is its own visible, material artifact, like a manuscript) vs ‘reproductive’ (a book as a reproduction, representation or referent to another form of the book) book-cultures, the latter of which is said to rely on ‘the logic of the copy’ (wherein a book is expected to perfectly reproduce a given ideal that, in being real and not ideal, it will nonetheless always fail at doing). plenty of derrida, undertones of plato and a sprinkle of foucault (which, for some reason, EVERY modern academic of this kind seems to have to mention…)
either way, the book certainly carries theses worth discussing, and makes very perceptive claims about the way we interact with books. while i am certainly worse at this, though, i feel many of these things could do with more conciseness - but, to be fair, i’m not the one getting published & lauded here!
there were many points about textual assumptions and the ‘nature’ of books (whether as texts, comics, or manuscripts) that i found profoundly useful, and i give particular credence to the point that works like Beowulf, just because they are one of the few remaining manuscripts of the time, should not be assumed to be known & distributed nationally the way we take it today, but be seen as products of their own *specific* places and times. i do find, however, some assumptions being made that i cannot agree with - for instance, it is true that The Canterbury Tales have no single authoritative form, and that we cannot entirely discount different scribes’ manuscripts for not conforming to our expectations of an ‘ideal’ form of the tales. however, there is clearly something that divides the Tales from other works (particularly, works inspired by them but not identified as such) besides pure nominalism. this is something bredehoft freely admits in discussing the ruthwell & brussels crosses and their distinction despite incorporating external literary material, but differs on in other places.
similar cases seem to happen with comparing across his ideological frameworks - while not likely intentional, it feels like he plays fast and loose with his understanding of ‘essence’ in a work, and what we cannot essentialise in one case must be applied as a framework in another. in several cases, he notes certain categories seem to overlap, but must be understood as different according to their ‘ideological’ framework that he ascribes to a broad age of writing and sees fragments in other places. for comics, he begins by building from a broad analysis of comics from which he can draw a definition, only to then, having made his argument, dismiss what is ordinarily understood as comics (e.g. webcomics) as not conforming to his newfound category of ‘comics’.
i should also add that i find his exclusivity between a work being both representational/referent and its own work a limit that worsens these problems, and his idea that an ‘ideal’ referent cannot be real because it is ideal (only to, in the end, discuss facsimiles as referring to a real work as its ideal model) a strange and unnecessary dichotomy. books can do both!!!
despite this, i find this book overall worth the few weeks i wrestled with it. it serves as a good introduction to tough arguments in textual theory, and as long as you’re willing to put up with the really weird social-sciencey style academics love to theorise in nowadays, it’s got plenty of points that help you consider how exactly you engage with the books you read and ‘see’!
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April 21, 2017002 B831 2014
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews