"The Monks and the Giants" Jerome McGann

Citing irreconcilable differences, twentieth century literary criticism divorced itself from philological traditions of the nineteenth century. As time went on, the distance between these two areas of inquiry increased. Following generations of scholars looked upon the two fields as forever separate--this chasm remains visible in present day graduate course offerings--reasoning that bibliographical facts were not integral to literary criticism, but were in fact, preliminary (78). Jerome McGann argues otherwise in, "The Monks and the Giants Textual and Bibliographical Studies and the Interpretation of Literary Works" (1984). McGann offers a historical insight into the non-integral biblio/text view, which stems from an erroneous interpretation of the parameters and goals of the study. This misinterpretation hinders literary criticism, by eliminating an array of valuable tools, argues McGann.

Instead, he shifts focus on to the viability of biblio/text criticism in literary studies, asserting that they are "fundamental rather than preliminary to the study of literature" (78) and offers a historical rationale to this contrary approach. McGann draws attention to the moment of radical change in the field, in which the advent of Alterthumswissenchaft, or modern philology makes the most sharply defined changes, due in great part to the influence of biblical and classical scholarship. McGann asserts "the textual problems that a scholar of ancient works has to face rarely find close analogues in modern national scriptures. Consequently, when textual critics of modern works assume an editorial function for their discipline, they also take over a methodology and structural focus that are normally not well adapted to the most pressing scholarly problems they should be facing" (81). It is in this larger context that McGann is able to illustrate why the issue at hand, is not contested, but simply ignored by literary critics.

The rise of philology coincides with a "phase of modern life" which leads textual criticism to be defined in more scientific terms, or as Thomas Kuhn described as an "ordinary science"(81). The specialization of the field and the increasing profile of the editorial function of textual criticism has estranged it from literary studies. But McGann insists that this is only a strain of textual criticism and avers that textual/bibliographical criticism and literary studies are not mutually exclusive, rather, "a thorough study of the textual history of any work does not cease to be a sine qua non of literary criticism when readers are provided with good editions, even good critical editions; the contrary, in fact. Furthermore, the analysis of the textual history is crucial for a more broadly considered act of literary criticism not merely because such an analysis may turn up textual mistakes or interesting verbal variants; the analysis establishes its justification at more primitive levels altogether." And McGann goes on to offer several examples of literary analysis that have come to light through the lens of textual criticism, for instance, Lord Byron.