The Pleasures of Contamination: Evidence, Text, and Voice in Textual Studies

Through the concept of contamination, David Greetham highlights various ways that one text may invade another, carrying with it a residue of potential meaning. While the focus of this study is on written works, the scope ranges widely over music, politics, art, science, philosophy, religion, and social studies. Greetham argues that this sort of contamination is not only ubiquitous in contemporary culture, but may also be a necessary and beneficial circumstance. Tracing contamination from the Middle Ages onward, he takes up issues such as the placement of quote marks in Keats's "Ode to a Grecian Urn," the controversy over the use of evidence for "yellowcake" uranium in Niger, and the reconstitution of reality on YouTube, to illustrate that the basic questions of evidence, fact, and voice have always been slippery concepts.

Author: David Greetham
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 09/17/2010
Pages: 402
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.23lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780253222169

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2011

About the Author

David Greetham is Distinguished Professor of English, Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, and Medieval Studies at the CUNY Graduate School and founder of the interdisciplinary Society for Textual Scholarship. He is author of Theories of the Text and Textual Transgressions: Essays toward the Construction of a Biobibliography.