Ketika Pangeran Minta Jabatan: Kajian Filologis terhadap Sepucuk Surat untuk Raffles (1811)

In this article, I discuss a letter from three high-ranking officials of the Cirebon Sultanate to Thomas Stamford Raffles. The letter written on 25 Syaban 1226 AH (September 11, 1811 AD) is a collection of the National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia and is coded ID-ANRI K66a, File 3584, Folio 683. Through the letter, they the letter, in essence, they asked for a position to Raffles. As the “old people” in the Cirebon Sultanate, they felt worthy and could occupy certain positions which they submitted themselves to Raffles. In this article, the letter firstly was studied by using the philology theory that contains the method of manuscript study (codicology) and the method of text study (textology). Furthermore, the manuscript content was dialogued to the historical fact in the Cirebon Sultanate, especially in the context of the British plan to occupy Java, so that we obtained a complete understanding of the context of writing the letter. The result shows that when the letter was written, the British had not fully controlled Java. The three high-ranking officials of the Cirebon Sultanate only took advantage of the situation because they knew that power in Java would soon transfer to the British hands. However, until the end of the British interregnum period in 1816, there is no evidence that the request was granted by Raffles.

How and Why to Do Things with Eighteenth-Century Manuscripts

This Element examines eighteenth-century manuscript forms, their functions in the literary landscape of their time, and the challenges and practices of manuscript study today. Drawing on both literary studies and book history, Levy and Schellenberg offer a guide to the principal forms of literary activity carried out in handwritten manuscripts produced in the first era of print dominance, 1730-1820. After an opening survey of sociable literary culture and its manuscript forms, numerous case studies explore what can be learned from three manuscript types: the verse miscellany, the familiar correspondence, and manuscripts of literary works that were printed. A final section considers issues of manuscript remediation up to the present, focusing particularly on digital remediation. The Element concludes with a brief case study of the movement of Phillis Wheatley's poems between manuscript and print. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

“To Have Done Again”

This essay is a genetic manuscript study of Beckett’s self-translation process. This study will examine how Beckett preserved the still-life attributes of Still in self-translation, and how he maintained the tension between motion and stillness in his translation of Pour finir encore. In Still, readers realise that the figure is not entirely still because of the rise and fall of its chest and the slow movement of its hand. Neither can Beckett impose stillness upon his world in Pour finir encore. By examining manuscripts, patterns of translation will emerge, giving readers a better understanding of the creative processes of self-translation.

Paratextual Analysis of “Majmu 'Al-Masa'il” Aceh Manuscript : Study of Philology

This article aims to analyze the paratext elements contained in the book Majmu 'Al-Masa'il. The term paratext is defined as a concept that helps readers interpret the main text of a book except for the body of the text, such as covers, pages, and marginal notes. Majmu 'Al-Masa'il is a book that contains the teachings of fiqh in paratextual analysis. However, this paper does not focus on discussing the teachings of fiqh but only focuses on the interpretation of the marginal notes on the pages of the book. Genette's paratext theory was used to analyze other material found in marginal notes on book pages. Paratext Genette is a theory used in analyzing main texts in philological studies.

Melville Incomplete

The final volume of Melville’s unfinished writings by the Northwestern-Newberry edition is a monumental achievement. Monumental but also vexed, and vexing. Melville’s unfinished poetry and especially his unfinished novella Billy Budd challenge traditional editorial theories of eclectic editing that have guided the NN editions for decades. The final volume remains beholden to a theory of critical editing that is less suited to the purpose of editing unfinished manuscripts than of works that exist solely in print versions. This dilemma makes the volume a fascinating instance of the choices editors must make in the era of digital editions. The edition, while mainly improving upon previous editions of Billy Budd and making available reliable texts of unpublished poems, also takes some perplexing liberties with Melville’s unfinished manuscripts. Aloof to new and enormously useful electronic resources, the edition’s diplomatic transcriptions also represent a huge amount of duplicated effort, and a lost opportunity for collaboration with existing digital projects. This edition is a valuable resource, but the debatable emendations of unfinished manuscripts, coupled with the dismissal of the currently available digital resources for manuscript study, shows that the reading texts should be consulted with some skepticism and with recourse to the surviving manuscripts.

Interpreting Manuscript Contexts

Chapter 1 introduces and explores the book’s central thesis through considering practices by Donne’s early readers, placing this study into recent critical conversations on Donne and manuscript culture, and establishing its contribution to such conversations. In addition to adding several discrete examples of manuscript investigations that suggest early interpretive responses to Donne’s texts, this chapter advances a methodological approach for examining literary works within original artifacts: it delineates manuscript elements to investigate in order to uncover clues regarding early modern literary interpretations. These components include provenance, papers and how they were constructed into books, scribes, marginalia, titles, ascriptions, paratexts, and contents and their sequences. Because one cannot anticipate which elements will prove most informative for any given manuscript, all components require attention. This pragmatic approach to manuscript study encourages scholars to embark on explorations traditionally relegated to bibliography and textual studies that actually prove essential to literary criticism.