Frustrations and Musings on Tanselle’s Rationale of Textual Criticism

As I read Tanselle’s Rationale of Textual Criticism, I am filled with an increasing sense of unease. Although his concern with the reproduction of texts is obviously an intriguing and legitimate one, what preoccupies me is the “reproduction” of literature that I am performing each time I read. There is something about what Tanselle is getting at that strikes me as perhaps offensive to my own endeavors as an English graduate student (possibly some of this may be attributable to what Jenny is saying in her comment about McGann) and potentially just inaccurate in relation to what I feel that I have learned about reading. As soon as I say this I have of course come up against one of the main problems that is worrying me about Tanselle’s line of reasoning: apparently my reading of a text and/or work (his delineations here seem a little strained to me) may be illegitimate if I don’t have all of the “historical” knowledge and backing Tanselle considers vital to an experience of literature. Can someone please explain to me what the true and realistic end goal is here (perhaps the problem is that the notions of "true" and "realistic" are diametrically opposed here)? The most “authentic” reading of literature? Is the most desirable end result to have an experience of literature as close to that of the author’s in relation to his own work? In which case, does this not mean that we need to figure out exactly what the author did and did not know historically and otherwise before reading; and, wouldn’t the most “legitimate” experience of literature then be to somehow spontaneously write the exact same thing ourselves? And yet, even if we could magically do this, then it seems that the problem according to Tanselle is that, since we can never be exactly where the author was when he was creating, both physically and otherwise, we can never truly and faithfully experience his/her literature. Does anyone else find this incredibly irritating?

Tanselle prefaces his argument with defeatist statements and then tries to turn it around a little when he states, “And even though our principal guide to an intended text must be our interpretation of the intended meaning of the work, we can still aim for the establishment of an intended text without believing or implying that texts have single meanings” (36). Here, Tanselle admits that what we call the “intended meaning” of a text is actually our subjective view of what was intended, but the second part of this statement comes across garbled. It seems as though Tanselle is actually making multiple statements here and not parsing them out as he should. I may have misunderstood, but does he not mean that our aim is for AN intended text (singular) that within it may contain multiple meanings (obviously, plural)? I feel either a little talked down to here (of course a text would not have merely one meaning) or perhaps Tanselle recognizes himself that he has described the reproduction of literature in such a problematic manner up until this point that he needs to now figure out what he is saying himself. Either way, I feel as though I’m being led in circles.