Processing Modernism: The Textual Politics of Nightwood

Abstract

Alex Christie advances a two-pronged argument about the state of electronic scholarly editing, considering (1) the use of electronic scholarly editing to reveal the social, cultural, and political nature of editorial changes made to a work and (2) ways in which the electronic tools used actively influence and reframe such issues. The result is a palimpsestual understanding of electronic scholarly editing that sees contemporary networks of digital production reactivating historical networks of literary production through scholarship. Focusing on the genesis of Djuna Barnes’s 1936 Nightwood, Christie reveals controversial material cut from the first edition by T. S. Eliot, Frank Morley, and Barnes herself. The novel is considered one of the earliest instances of lesbian literature, and the changes made radically alter the novel’s portrayal of queerness.