LOG OF THE 10/18/97 VIRTUAL CONFERENCE ON PERCY SHELLEY'S
THE DEVIL'S WALK.

In attendance:

Adriana Craciun (AdrianaC)
Stuart Curran (guest)
Chris Foss (ChrisF)
Neil Fraistat (NeilF)
Michael Gamer (pink guest)
Bruce Graver (BruceG)
Robert Griffin (RobertG)
Terence Hoagwood (TerenceH)
Mark Ledden (Mark)
Carole Meyers (Carole)
Morton Paley (MortonP)
Liz Rackley (Liz)
Alan Richardson (AlanR)
Michael Scrivener (MichaelS)
Andrew Stauffer (AndrewS)



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The Dining Room
A richly decorated room dominated by a long
dining table adorned by two brass candelabras.  Heavy mahogany
chairs with red velvet upholstry surround the table. This is a
moderated discussion area.  Here, only a limited number of people
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the moderator can force you to yield using {yield }.
To see who is currently speaking, use {speakers}.  To see who is
waiting to speak, use {waiting}.  You can whisper or page without
requesting permission.  To the [north] you see the Villa's
entrance."

You see a Lord Byron here. RobertG, mark, a blue guest, MortonP,
BruceG, and ChrisF are here.  Carole, a guest, AdrianaC, AlanR, a
pink guest, Liz, and SteveJ are distracted.  TerenceH and NeilF
are daydreaming.  MichaelS is dozing.

You have arrived.

[DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, WE WERE ONLY ABLE TO RECORD PART
OF THE CONVERSATION, AS FOLLOWS.]


AdrianaC says, "And as Terence Hoagwood argued, authorial intent
and control is thrown to the winds in this mode of circulation,
hypertext, bottles, balloons etc.

Liz says, "If it is all about audiences and multiple media, then
what to do about the degeneration of texts into what Hoagwood
calls the sales pitch and readers only reading what gives them
personal pleasure."

MortonP says, "Is it because this text isn't rich enough that we
haven't subjected it to close verbal analysis?"

AlanR says, "I think it could bear a lot more analysis than it
got--not that I'm about to supply it!"

NeilF says, "Michael O'Neill did in fact give it a close
reading."

SteveJ says, "In response to Morton: 'rich' and 'close verbal
analysis' are usefully called into questions by balladic
broadsides, no? They expose our preconceptions."

RobertG says, "It is true that texts are susceptible to
dissemination, but I'm not sure I agree with Terence's view that
opposes reception completely to scholarship; my view is that
reception is encoded in scholarship; the text comes to us as
something that has been produced out of a tradition.  As far as
what people will do with it, that can't be controlled."

AdrianaC says, "To add to Liz's point, I found the distinction
between truth and pleasure in Terence's essay most interesting
and persuasive. But shouldn't we distinguigh between pleasure in
consumption and another sort of pleasure? I'm thinking of
Coleridge's distinction re: Wordsworth, that Wordsworth wrote for
truth not pleasure."

AndrewS arrives from the Villa Diodati.

AndrewS says, "Hello everyone - sorry I'm late."

mark says, "Here's a simple question--authorship and editing
issues aside (if they can be put aside), how many of us found
pleasure in the text, and where did that pleasure come from?"

NeilF says, "I guess we get back to the issue of what kind of
value do we and can we locate in the ephemeral."

BruceG says, "What's wrong with reading for personal pleasure?
More seriously, there are  a number of issues implicit in what's
already been said.  First, the suspicion of satire on the part of
Romanticists, which Bob has written about at length, and I guess
I'll stop there before things get ahead of themselves."

RobertG says, "Part of my point was that our view of DW is
already conditioned by our prior knowledge and appreciation of
Shelley"

AndrewS [to BruceG]: Satire disrupts author-reader sympathy.

Liz says, "It is time to move to Robert Griffin's paper and
Hoagwood's response. Robert..."

SteveJ says, "On pleasures: PBS's term 'fond of the devil' is
helpful, in its admission and its ironies: attracted to
diabolical power, but also aware of the adolescent motives for
that attraction (among other motives)."

The pink guest goes north.

The guest says, "Adolescence is part of the point. What do you
think (all of you) would have been Coleridge's and Southey's
response to this poem, to its outrageousness?""

RobertG says, "Well, I have already made a few remarks in
response.  First, I want to thank Terence for such a careful
reading.  I guess I would want to extend the notion of reception
to include the institutional context, rather than focus on the
narcissism of any particular reader"

MortonP says, "Robert made some interesting points about the
text's materiality.  Does anyone know whether broadsides were
printed using that typeface?"

AndrewS [to MortonP]: Which typeface are you referring to?

MortonP says, "The "Gothic" one of the original DW."

AndrewS [to the guest]: We might wonder whether the poem is
outrageously adolescent on purpose, or whether Shelley was just
an outrageous adolescent....

BruceG says, "I am extremely suspicious of Wellek's ideas about
the transcendental nature of literature, that it somehow exists
outside of its material incarnations; and one of the things that
electronic media afford us is the possibility of engaging
ourselves in discussions of, for instance, typeface, without
scrambling all around the world looking for the right libraries."

mark says, "To Bruce's point--Wellek's attempt to give all texts
the kind of non-material, ontological life frequently attributed
to the British Constitution makes me suspicious as well--smacks
of reaction."

AdrianaC says, "Why is the Gothic necessarily adolescent? (in
PBS's case, because it formed such a large part of his adolescent
reading, perhaps). But why in general?)"

SteveJ says, "It's wanting to scare your elders (Southey) that's
adolescent, Adriana, not the gothic."

AndrewS says, "Under the Bowers/Tanselle editorial dispensation,
we do assume that works are made of language, not pen and ink.
But it may be that the digital medium offers a a way to pay
closer attention to the origianl documents"

mark says, "I don't think the Gothic is necessarily adolescent,
but I think DW is, not so much because of its content as because
of the lack of control I think we see in PBS. Perhaps also
because he can't seem to decide if he loathes power or craves"

SteveJ says, "I mean adolescent in a good way :)--that is, as a
kind of rebellion via style."


BruceG says, "Morton, of course, meant Gothic typeface, O thou
defensive Gothicists."

AndrewS says, "I agree with mark and SteveJ--I'm not trying to
dismiss the young PBS, only question our terms and assumptions of
intentionality here."

Liz says, "Can we please move on to Michael O'Neill's paper and
Andrew Stauffer's response at this point.  Michael..."

Liz says, "I'm sorry.  Andrew..."

RobertG says, "Perhaps a last point--on the material nature of
hypertext, I liked Neil's notion of 'fluid time.'  But I also
think we have to take Bruce's criticisms seriously.  One can also
download text and carry it around and read it like a book."

MichaelS says, "With Adriana, I don't know about the adolescent
category.  It seems dismissive, like "Juvenelia."  The Oxford
Shelley makes DW easy to dismiss, and I didn't think were doing
that.  The first time I really took the poem seriously was after
reading Steve Jones's chapter on DW. Now I think it's a real
poem."

AndrewS says, "I think we should take the poem 'seriously' as it
offers us a picture of Shelley's political imagination that will
find clearer echoes in later works, as Michael O'Neill's essay
pointed out."

MortonP says, "Thanks, Bruce. I'm tring to think of what else we
can say was printed in a "Gothic" font. The title of the 1817
ROME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER, for one.  But ballads?"

AndrewS says, "In fact, the work does make us confront our own
assumptions about what we expect from a Shelley poem."

SteveJ says, "Like Dick Hebdige's punks, this adolescent PBS can
do serious cultural work. So the term works in that sense."

SteveJ says, "(sorry to step on the typeface talk)"

mark says, "my reaction to the poem is pretty mixed. I think the
shifting relationships of Shelley to society and the devil aren't
comparable to Hogg's crafty doublings"

RobertG says, "I want to ask a question about the nature of
'romantic' devils and satire.  Tory satire (Drdyden, Pope, etc.)
almost alwys demonized its object of attack, usually by allusions
to Milton's Satan.  Whig satire (Addison) represented its targets
as fools not knaves.  How is Shelley's satire different from Tory
satire of the 18th c.?  I am assuming it is...."

NeilF says, "To MichaelS: what makes something a "real poem"?"

mark says, "It looks to me that Shelley is still playing dress
up--playing at being both revolutionary and poet."

mark says, "In that respect, I think his intentionality is
similar to his means of distribution--ballons and bottles--
somewhat serious but decidedly frivolous as well."

BruceG says, "The form, at least, is different.  But I'm
increasingly suspicious of passing judgements of "good" and "bad"
on "minor" poems.  The question that's more interesting is what
we can learn from them, what resonances they have, etc.  And Neil
and Don have shown that we can learn a lot, and that the
resonances are interesting."

AndrewS says, "In response to RobertG's query, I think the
difference in Shelley's satire is its refusal to accept the
demonic as a permanent feature of the world, and an almost
inevitable turn toward Utopian imaginings as his satires
proceed."

MichaelS says, "If adolescent merely describes an age, then okay,
it's not dismissive.  Andrew's point, about the poem pointing to
later and clearer work:  yes, in some ways, as the poem points to
Prom. Unbd and Mask of Anarchy in some ways. But it's also a
thing itself.  And parts of it are quite good. (A real poem:
read in its own terms, just not within a developmental
narrative.)  (Shelley wasn't pretending to be a revolutionary; he
was doing it in an aristocratic way, though.)"

AdrianaC says, "Morton Paley's question about the gothic font of
Gothic ballads is an excellent one. And I can't think of others
that use the font, partly because our collective knowledge of
gothic poetry, with very canonical exceptions, is quite poor,
largely due to the ephemeral nature of gothic poetry and its low
cultural value then and now. Which makes this edition of DW so
important."

AndrewS says, "Yes, I agree with mark and RobertG that this poem
shows Shelley trying to disocver a way to write about evil that
was both personally satisfying and morally responsible."

MortonP[to AdrianaC]: "Do we have popular broadsides of Shelley's
time printed in Gothic?"

SteveJ says, "As Curran and Craciun suggest, the diabolism is
more ambivalent, along the lines of the reconstruction of
Milton's Satan."

SteveJ says, "As said before, PBS's meliorism is at times simply
at odds with his diabolism."

Liz says, "I hate to interrupt the flow of conversation but at
this point I would like to offer Morton Paley a chance to speak
about his paper or Bruce Graver's response."

MichaelS says, "About satire and the millennial.  So many
political satires in the 1790s were also revolutionary and
millennial.  We tend to treat the mix as a contradiction, but
maybe it's another kind of genre, apropos highly politicized
moments, and it doesn't necessarily entail a facile view of
"evil."

BruceG says, "which was not a response to Morton."

MichaelS says, "sorry."

AlanR says, "Re: Romantic devils and satire, what's the relation
between the devils in the popular-style ballads and what used to
be discussed (by Curran among others) as Romantic satanism--in
works like Manfred, Cain, P Unbound, etc?  Is there one?"

A silver guest arrives from the Villa Diodati.

A pink guest arrives from the Villa Diodati.


AndrewS says, "It's not that Shelley had a naive view of evil,
but that he had a prophetic one: it is a force to be reckoned
with, and revealed, and disposed of -- not something we will
always have with us (unlike, say, Byron's view)."

AndrewS says, "Byron's sympathy for the devil is always more
comfortable than Shelley's."

mark says, "Just to be impish, I want to disagree with Andrew
about Shelley's view of evil. At this early stage, anyway, I
think it is naive. And I think this poem shows how."

MortonP says, "I'd like to raise a further question.  Is the
Shelley DW apocalyptic in any useful sense of the word?"

AdrianaC says, "Andrew, that's a more optimistic reading of PBS
than mine."

AndrewS says, "Mark, you think Shelley is being naiive here."

AndrewS says, "AdrianaC, tell me more -- "

mark says "Shelley is pretty close to Milton's take on Milton's
Satan (If I can claim a pretty old fashioned position on Milton's
take on his Satan). That is, he is splendid, brilliant, but
foolish and excessively ambitious."

SteveJ says, "I'd like to hear more from you Morton--that was
devilish of you to introduce apocalypse so succinctly."

AndrewS says, "The poem offers a glimpse at an apocalyptic
transformation, and the poem does seem interested in unveilings
of various kind,."

AdrianaC says, "Mark's point about shelley's evil naivete here is
a good one. but the for the later shelley despair seems
underestimated  by many of his readers. But perhaps I'm too
pessimistic."

AndrewS says, "But Shelley always imagines a Millenium beyond
apocalypse."

NeilF says, "Yes, Morton. I'd like to hear from you."

AndrewS says, "Yes, Adriana, by the time of The Trimumph of Life,
things have changed for PBS -- the dark side has become more
pronounced, the hopefulness for change has dimmed."

MortonP says, ""Well, I can see that the Coleridge/Southey poem
keeps to the apocalyptic paradigm, introducing general
Conflagration at the end.  But I wonder about Shelley's.  At the
same time I agree that there are unveilings."

mark says, "I think the later (deeper) dispair is legit. But
here, in DW, I see an young enthusiast running around with a
cape. To be needlessly derisive, we're right next door to Bottom
from Midsummer giving his greatest hits of pathos sound bite."

AndrewS says, "O Wall, O Vile Wall, O Wicked Wall!"

mark says, "Quite"

The guest says, "(Curran): I didn't mean to go ahead of Morton,
but let me go back to my own and Michael O'Neill's sense of
ambiguity here.  PBS's devil is an anarchist as well as a total
skeptic.  (So is Goethe's).  The problem here is with PBS's own
latent skepticism.  So you blow up the world: what will be there
in ?"

MortonP[to mark]: "Yes, and it makes me think of some of the
stuff about PBS's early performances at Field Place as
reconstructed by Richard Holmes."

AndrewS says, "Yes, I think Shelley wants to preserve a space (as
does Byron in fact, despite reports to the contrary) that is
beyond skepticism."

RobertG says, "Perhaps, even if not represented, the vision of
evil controlling the world implies an apocalyptic end?"

BruceG says, "With or without a millennium?"

AndrewS says, "Shelley doesn't want to bring just a torch for
burning (irony, satire), but no hammer for building (hope)."

NeilF says, "Morton: does naming names as objects of satire work
against apocalypse?"

AndrewS says, "In other words, apocalypse ain't enough -- what
comes after is, or will be."

BruceG says, "As Morton and others make clear, the political
situation makes it difficult to name names: Gilbert Wakefield
died of typhus, caught, in all likelihood, in Dorchester gaol."

MortonP says, ""Well, we do have THE DUNCIAD's apocalypse after a
lot of names are named.  But I suspect that there's something
anti-individual about the whole idea of apocalypse."

BruceG says, "And Wakefield named names."

AndrewS says, "Apocalypse cares nothing for history (and names.).
But satire does.  At the intersection, it seems to me, is the
prophetic stance that Shelley is working towards here."

mark says, "Could someone say more about the Devil-blanching
apocalypse in DW? What does that mean? I think it was Michael who
pointed out how odd a shift that concluding move represents"

AlanR goes north.

Liz says, "Feel free to wrap up this thread, though I would like
to give Michael Scrivener a chance to make any remarks he would
like on his response to Don Reiman.  I plan to return to Bruce
Graver's response after Curran and Craciun have gone."

RobertG says, "Yes, I agree with Morton.  Individuals become
allegorial types.  Is it too obvious to say that a vision of
apocalypse implies a profound alienation?"

The guest says, "I don't want us to lose the implication of the
Wakefield reference. Although Shelley is being outrageous, he
(also the other bedevilers here) is well aware of what cannot be
said in print. All the actual names are shifted to avoid
incrimination (or else there are consequences)."

TerenceH says, "Does everybody agree that "apocalypse cares
nothing for history"?"

The pink guest says, "Gamer": NO."

BruceG says, "Emphatically, NO."

AndrewS says, "Yeah!  Fight me on this -- we all agree too much."

MortonP says, "I guess the archetypal gesture is Stephen
Dedalus's breaking of the lamp."

The silver guest says, "I also disagree"

mark arrives from the Villa Diodati.

The pink guest says, "I'm wondering to what extent that this
space beyond skepticism is a historical one--not just generally,
but also tied to the specific date of the poem's composition.
After all, most people become apocalyptic at the moment where
they are most in need of keeping their faith, at the moment where
history"

The guest says, "The person who should be in on this thread is
Steve Goldsmith, who thinks that Shelley's urge toward the
apocalyptic has no real connection with history."

MichaelS says, "Liz, I'd like to say that I'm sorry Don is not
here. Does any one have questions about my response?"

BruceG says, "I wonder if the guests would identify themselves,
so I can keep their positions straight."

The pink guest goes north.

MichaelS says, "No questions?  Let's move on."

SteveJ says, "Apocalypse is one vector for chiliasm, the sense
that one can build jerusalem IN history. To MichaelS: your
qualification of popular seems to me very important."

AndrewS says, "It's really a Blakean idea about the
apocalyptic....But I meant to say that insofar as one is
dispensing an apocalyptic vision, one ignores history.
Apocalypse comes as a break, an interruption, which no amount of
strving in the historical world can effect."

MortonP [to MichaelS]: "How well known (if at all) was the
Spencean Songbook in the Shelley circle?"

A red guest arrives from the Villa Diodati.

NeilF says, "yes, Michael: could you talk a bit about popular
culture and apocalypse?"

RobertG says, "We need to define more precisely 'history'.  If it
means something like sequence, then Terence's point holds,
doesn't it?"

MichaelS says, "To Morton.  I'm not sure.  By 1815 Shelley surely
knew about it. Otherwise, I'm not sure."

The silver guest says, "to Andrew S: Now I agree"

BruceG says, "May I refer people again to
http://www.providence.edu/eng/graver/gillray4.jpg"

BruceG says, "I mean, regarding popular culture and the
apocalypse."

MichaelS says, "To Neil:  Popular culture used  apocalypse:  it
appeared at the time in both secular and religious radical
literary representations.  The knowledge of the Bible was so
widespread that it was a truly popular form.  There was a lot of
mixing of religious belief and revolutionary desire, so much so
that the secular/religious divide is hard to tell.  But clearly
human agency is more central in one than in the other. "

mark says, "Thinking of the highly emotional 2 year revival in
Florida that has been getting much press here of late, I think
(to look back to an earlier thread) that one can't really talk
about apocalypse in popular culture without connecting it to."

MortonP says, "Do we wish to discriminate between consciously
fictive apocalypses (Gillray, DW) and apocalypses the
author/artist really meant (say, Blake's MILTON)?"

MichaelS says, "Yes.  Important distinction."

BruceG says, "Morton, of course, is right."

AndrewS says, "Did PBS mean his work to usher in the apocalypse
(whether individual or local) like Blake did?"

SteveJ says, "I fully agree with the distinction. But also think
the fictive ones made use of the tropes and expressions
established by the believers, no?"

AndrewS says, "I mean, individual or global..."

MichaelS says, "Although it's not always easy to tell is it?  In
DW, doesn't Shelley seem to believe in the "Reason" that is the
force of counter-violence?"

TerenceH says, "Is it clear what "the author/artist really meant"
in Blake's MILTON?  Is that poem inconsistent, really, with a
totally earthly and social frame of reference?"

mark says, "I was going to say the reception of both fictive and
sincere apocalyptic writing has a lot to do with pleasure and
marketing plesure."

RobertG says, "I guess we would have to focus on the nature of
the last lines...do they imply any kind of belief?"

MortonP says, "I sense in PBS a radical (in both senses)
ambiguity toward the idea of apocalypse ushering in millennium.
I don't think of it as a fault but rather as some of the
basically contradictory material out of which some of his major
poetry is made."

mark says, "Robert, I'd like to hear your answer to the question
you just poised"

MichaelS says, "To Robert:  I'd say yes, that Reason has the
power to reverse tyranny eventually, that tyranny is a
contradiction doomed to destruction."

RobertG says, "Well, I asked it to try to avoid answering it;
but, when he refers to 'sons of reason' and to 'fate' it doesn't
seem to invoke biblical terrors; nonetheless, my sense is that
his emotion is real."

AdrianaC says, "Horkheimer and Sade and Foucault say reason IS
tyranny, and so did the Romantic aspect of these poets

mark says, "could you elaborate on that, Adriana?"

NeilF says, "I wonder how much of our debate is about whether
apocalypse can stand as a trope for revolution and where exactly
we're looking at religious expression and where its purely
figurative."

MortonP says, "to TerenceH, Yes, Blake is operating with the
materials of history in MILTON. But his sense of urgency about
apocalypse is manifest.  Maybe the point is that the urge to the
apocalyptic grows out of an historical situation of which the
poet is intensely aware but that apocalypse itself abolishes
history -- unless there's going to be a millennium!"

MichaelS says, "To Adriana, good point.

Liz says, "Perhaps we should move on to allow Stuart Curran and
Adriana Craciun an opportunity to comment on their papers.  Any
questions for either?  We will afterwords move on to Bruce
Graver's response and Chris Foss's essay."

AdrianaC says, "I was referring to Horkheimer's essay "The End of
Reason" and Adorno and H's brilliant Dialectic of Enlightenment,
where they argue that Sade demonstrates that reason is equivalent
to domination. Something i think PBS agreed with."

AndrewS says, "But Adriana, why then are the Sons of the Reasons
the ones who will remove evil from the world in DW?"

The guest says, "This is Stuart.  My sense is that the PBS of
1812 believes very much in Reason's Godwinian function."

BruceG says, "In fact, belief in the power of reason is essential
to most of the reformers, and this is as true for Unitarian
liberals as it is for the Godwinian."

AdrianaC says, "I agree completely, Andrew, the sons of reason
will unveil the devil as evil at the end of the poem. but there
is more to the poem of course, than the ending, the supposedly
final message , the thesis (the reason)."

MichaelS says, "I agree with Stuart.  But also PBS eventually
comes to question the wisdom of that kind of Reason."

MortonP says, "Isn't there a mixture of reason and the
non-rational in Unitarian radicalism?  If the present state of
Europe can be explained by Isaiah, mustn't there be a basis in
something other than reason for revolutionary faith?"

TerenceH says, "Adriana raises an important isue.  Godwin's
version of rationality, like that of THE DIALECTIC OF
ENLIGHTENMENT, is temporal, context-specific, and mutable; the
dialectical character of rationality precludes the fixities
against which the skeptics mobilize their vocabularies, including
the metaphors of apocalypse."

AdrianaC says, "to Terence, yes, and Horkheimer says that only
reason can combat reason's tyranny--it is dialectical as in
Shelley."

AndrewS says, "Yes, MortonP; is there a place for anger?"

mark says, "But in DW apocalypse isn't mobilized against
reason--it is mobilized BY reason. Seems as if the sons of reason
will dissipate the entire good/evil opposition that allows the
devil to be the loyal opposition in a false dialectic, a fixed "

AndrewS says, "Or that reason will reveal evil as simply
falsehood, a contradiction in terms."

MortonP says, "Remember in The Four Zoas IX where "he [a victim]
dash'd him [a tyrant] with his foot"? There seems to be a lot of
bottled up violence (here expressed inadequately) in apocalypse."

AndrewS says, "No question in Blake: all those wine-presses full
of bodies!"

mark says, "So, if only reason can mobilize against reason's
tyranny, are we suggesting that the good-evil complex the sons or
reason appocalypticaly overthrow is another mask of reason?"

TerenceH says, "In response to mark's point:  apocalyptical
vocabulary is mobilized in DW (as in much writing of the period)
against particular fixities--church and state, for example, and
the inherited hierarchy of power."

AndrewS says, "Or that our imaginations of what constitutes good
and evil are too clogged with tropes given us by the church and
state..."

AdrianaC says, "I think I oversimplified Horkheimer's claims on
reason here. His argument is invaluable because it shows how
reason has been reduced to instrumental reason, which must be
opposed, through other kinds of reason, and through unreason
(excess, in Blakean and Bataillean terms). So perhaps we (I that
is) need to discriminate between kinds of reason in PBS."

NNeilF says, "Might PBS be calling for a literal apocalypse of
figures, a new kind of vocabulary?"

BruceG says, "Liz has asked me to talk about the technical issues
of SGML encoding, which I raised in my paper.  So here goes.
After two hours of watching text fly by on our screens, I think
all would agree that reading extensive amounts of material on a
computer screen is not that much fun.  So, if we are going to
edit and publish our texts electronically, we need to strive for
products that exploit what computers do well: i.e. texts that
exploit the analytical possibilities of computers, rather than
ones that could be more pleasurably read in books."

SteveJ says, "I think that makes sense...except I'm not so sure,
Bruce, we know exactly what computers can do well (with
texts)--at least not before trying some things. And 'analytical'
open to some debate too, no?"

NeilF says, "I agree with Bruce, but I wonder if computers can't
do more than just provide us with analytical possibilities."

MichaelS says, "So what is SGML exactly?  Also, I don't mind
looking at the screen for a few hours."

RobertG says, "There are points Bruce makes in his remarks I
agree with.  But let's remember that the DW hypertext is a
stunning example of how information can be made available across
vast oceans of time and space."

BruceG says, "I didn't mean to send that yet.  Anyway, the
problem with THE WEB, at least for most of us, is that it
necessitates encoding our texts in tags that don't mean anything
in relationship to their content.  That is, we call things
paragraphs 
 or tables or whatever, in order to produce a
layout that mimics books, and end up with things that we'd rather
print out (thus making the computer merely a means of
dissemination).  Pardon me, I've lost me train of thought, so
I'll send this to see what I've written."

Carole says, "I agree with RobertG.  And I agree with Bruce on
the limitations of current HTML.  The thing to keep in mind is
that HTML is not stable and will continue to change.  At the big
Web conference this year, a variation on style sheets was on
everyone's mind, which would bring HTML back to being an SGML."

The guest says, "BruceG is using shorthand that distinguishes
between HTML (formatting only) and SGML (analytical encoding for
multiple later uses)."

Carole says, "The limitations of reading from a screen v. the
advantages of widespread delivery will continue with us, I
believe."

BruceG says, "The point I wanted to make, is that using tags that
actually describe the structure of what we are disseminating
allows us to search those structures in ways that make books seem
rather dull.  We can learn things about our texts that literally
would have taken years otherwise: see, for instance, the OED that
most of us have, or the edition of Johnson's Dictionary that
Cambridge has published."

SteveJ says, "Yes, analytical or structural tagging is the goal,
but as Neil's paper says and Carole is pointing out, XML and
other initiatves are bringing HTML in that direction anyway. I'm
not sure the old binary is still in effect at quite such
strength."

NeilF says, "I akso think that texts and hypertexts can be made
for a host of different and experimental purposes. That there is
no one best way to make them."

BruceG says, "I didn't mean it as a binary.  I meant that HTML is
a very dumb application of the SGML standard, and was meant to be
 so that people could use it.  And of course the standard will
develop: it already has.  But it still doesn't give a damn about
stanzas and verse lines, etc.  Which is not to discourage
experimentation, of course."

SteveJ says, "I can't help  asking with Neil: why not work on
both fronts, as far as resources and time allow? (And both are
made more extensible by collaboration)."

AndrewS says, "It may be that our task will become the continual
updating of our editions, and the markup language changes.  That
could be a good thing, but it also might consume us in acts of
programming."

BruceG says, "No kidding.  Deep sigh."

SteveJ says, "I say again: the work of updating/grading can be
conceived more positively if we collaborate--AND if we're on a
public network with our experiments."

NeilF "The opportunity to reformat and upgrade is wonderful, but
the work it imposes on us is a burden.

Carole says, "I've always thought the editing older texts using
HTML provided students (both grad and advanced undergrads) with a
wonderful experience solely because of the limitations of
HTML--they learn what needs to be present when they are
confronted with what is and isn't there in HTML."

NeilF says, "A good example of what I meant to say. Upgrading and
revising is wonderful, but it is also burdensome."

BruceG says, "Heck with older texts.  Just try teaching a
colleague how to do a syllabus."

The guest says, "(Curran) I have a sense that Trotsky would roll
over in his grave to think of continuous revolution being the
action of scholars sitting all day in their offices revising
their editions."

AndrewS says, "As electronic publication becomes more accepted,
we may be willing to invest that time, which is now spent in more
traditional scholarly tasks...?"

BruceG says, "Traditional?"

MichaelS chuckles to Stuart

NeilF chuckles with Michael

Carole says, "I think there will be new authoring tools that will
help with revision.  There seems to be a convergence of
technologies to a Web front end.  Meaning that you can use an
authoring tool, like Hypercard, which might have sophisticated
search and replace functions, to produce a Web document."

BruceG says, "What is more traditional than editing?
Interpretation is a late 20th century aberration in scholarship"
A

SteveJ says, "Carole makes a good point . We continually judge
this kind of work from a limited perspective, forgetting how fast
things change (BTW, an argument for doing SGML!)"

BruceG says, "Also, web servers like Dynaweb provide dummy Web
documents for ones encoded in richer SGML applications, and can
be searched in the original codes."

SteveJ says, "Dynaweb's a monster, tho!"

BruceG says, "A Green one?"

SteveJ chuckles.

BruceG says, "To bring things full circle."

Liz says, "As time is swiftly running out, I would like to give
Chris Foss a few moments to comment on his contribution, or for
others to ask questions of him."

RobertG says, "We seem to be winding down; but I didn't want to
go away without saying how much I appreciated ChrisF's
intertextual reading"

ChrisF has disconnected. [NOTE: Chris experienced extreme
connectivity problems, unfortunately at the moment we got to
discussing his fine paper.]

Liz says, "Oops."

MortonP says, "I must log off, and I want to thank you all for a
very interesting conference."

AdrianaC says, "Same here, I enjoyed this very much."

[At this point, everyone moved to an unmoderated room for closing
goodbyes.]