Means and Ends: Textual Scholarship and Literary Understanding

The author, reviewing his encounters with great literature since he was young-especially with the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley-concludes that he was unable to unlock the secrets of such great artistry until he applied himself to textual analysis of the poet's manuscripts. By following the poet's drafts and revisions letter by letter and word by word and questioning the reasons for textual anomalies and changes in the text, he first came to understand many aspects of the poetry that had gone over his head or that he had misread while reading for content alone. Reiman has, therefore, come to the conclusion that although critical, aesthetic understanding is the ultimate goal of literary study, textual analysis is one of the most direct means to such enlightenment.