THE ROLE OF THE ARTIFACT IN A FACSIMILE AGE

Abstract

I recall in graduate school one particular professor whom some of us suspected had spent most of his adult life in Park Hall engaged in an editorial project that seemed to have no end. One afternoon, he confessed to our class that he would not work from photocopies or microfilm but, rather, only from original manuscripts. For those of us in the class—all of us eager, “with it,” and drunk on the latest theory—the statement seemed to confirm the extent of his senility. The question the editors of RBM have put to us, however, brings to mind that afternoon seminar . . .