|
Digital Designs on Blake
Golgonooza Text
Nelson Hilton, University of Georgia
|
|||||
Digital Designs on BlakeGolgonooza TextNelson Hilton, University of Georgia |
|||||
Notes
1 Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, Joseph Viscomi, Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, "Standards, Methods, and Objectives in the William Blake Archive: A Response" (The Wordsworth Circle 30,3 [Spring 1999], 135-44, p. 144, fn. 8). The complete sentence reads: "While we are on the subject of finances, Mary Lynn Johnson's optimism for tomorrow's electronic projects also raises warning flags."
2 As I suggested twenty years back in Literal Imagination: Blake's Vision of Words (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Universitiy of California Press, 1983), p. 236. Greek vowels being literally—quantitatively, in time—short and long, Blake would have understood that "The Greekes therefore haue wmikron standing for a short o: and wmega for this double or long o, oo" (OED, s.v. "omega," which quotes John Baret's An alvearie or triple (quadruple) dictionarie, 1573, 1580).
3 The editors note their "list of funders, sponsors, and project staff," their "all kinds of other expenses that are not directly tech-related, such as transparencies, travel, salaries, paperclips (technologies of a different sort), etc.," to support their moralizing conclusion that "humanists do themselves and their institutions no favors by cultivating frugal homespun virtue" ("Standards, Methods, and Objectives. . . ," p. 144, fn. 8).
4 As Stuart Curran notes, the Archive's "design is strongly hierarchical, so the user must descend four levels to get to the texts of the individual illuminated works. For the novice this involves a surprising number of false starts the editors might not have anticipated. This notion of penetrating to an inner sanctum is, of course, antithetical to Blake, as would be the paragraphs of hectoring admonition about copyright law on what is unfacetiously called the 'Welcome Page'" ("The William Blake Archive").
5 On the one hand, while editor Robert Essick hopes that "the ability to manipulate images on one's home computer" will stimulate "new ways to teach, research,and think about" Blake, and editor Morris Eaves finds it "unimaginable that the availability of so much matter for thought won't alter the scholarship of the next generation," editor Joe Viscomi warns that "Teachers and researchers, of course, will need to keep in mind the 'Fair Use' clause of copyright law." The concerns are to them, evidently, not entirely serious—unaware of a more than decade-old IBM software product, one jokes: "Editing in new media I think of as Xediting (I've copyrighted that). . . ." "Once Only Imagined" (section 1; section 12; section 11; section 13)
6 For assistance with Flash, I am grateful to John Lucas (John Lucas Interactive) and to Shannon Wilder, Office of Instructional Support and Development, University of Georgia.
|