How Scholars Once Feared That the Book Index Would Destroy Reading
When I first began to teach English Literature at university, here is how a lesson would typically begin: Me: Can everyone please turn to page 128 of Mrs Dalloway ? Student A: What page is it in t…
Hasnain says:
This article was fascinating; though I don’t know if I would be able to read the full book the author is trying to drum up excitement for.
“One could hardly imagine a more comprehensive or devastating attack, and yet it is hard not to be amused by it—by its relentlessness, its obsessional intensity. It is difficult to see its scare quotes—”his ‘certain’ history . . . his ‘undoubted’ history . . . his ‘facts’”—without imagining Round speaking, delivering the index out loud, a livid sarcasm in his voice. This is the subject index in its most extreme form, as far from the concordance as it can get. Where Marbeck’s method was meticulously neutral, Round’s is the polar opposite, all personality, all interpretation. Where Marbeck’s concordance was thorough, Round’s index is partial. It would be fair to say that John Marbeck owed his life to the difference between a concordance and a subject index.”
Posted on 2022-02-21T05:40:40+0000