Out of the Bread Box: Eleanor Melville Metcalf and the Melville Legacy
Late-twentieth-century digital archives of canonical authors have produced uncommonly expansive texts. Whereas once editors had to squeeze a book, with notes, glossaries, bibliographies, lists of variants, illustrations, critical introductions—a clanking hulk of editorial apparatus—between two clot...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Wiley Blackwell
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/86119 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0881-882X |
| _version_ | 1826208039161561088 |
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| author | Kelley, Wyn |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. Literature Section |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. Literature Section Kelley, Wyn |
| author_sort | Kelley, Wyn |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Late-twentieth-century digital archives of canonical authors have produced uncommonly expansive texts. Whereas once editors had to squeeze a book, with notes, glossaries, bibliographies, lists of variants, illustrations, critical introductions—a clanking hulk of editorial apparatus—between two cloth-covered boards, new media paradigms can create and sustain inconceivably immense bodies of work. With dazzling multimedia components, open-ended collaborations between readers connected by wikis and discussion forums, and armies of young scholars eager to play, the digital literary archive seems to represent the very latest, most promising, least contained, and in all ways biggest thing around. Yet as older media forms—print, film, video, sound recordings—evolve in new media landscapes, they have met (and collided) in what Henry Jenkins has identified as a “convergence culture,” where users may access these many forms through one portal. This utopian notion of a single “Black Box” suggests that, like Hamlet, one can be bounded in a technological nutshell and count oneself a king of infinite digital space. Whatever one’s “Box”—a laptop, cellphone, or other personal device—one can use it to travel freely within a “participatory culture” where people and texts migrate, merge, mix, and re-mix in endlessly proliferating combinations (Jenkins 1-24). And although in Convergence Culture Jenkins points to the “Black Box Fallacy” as an unachievable dream of the communications industry, it has remarkable staying power, as entrepreneurs search for the one device that can do and contain all. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:59:32Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/86119 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:59:32Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Wiley Blackwell |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/861192022-10-01T18:23:23Z Out of the Bread Box: Eleanor Melville Metcalf and the Melville Legacy Kelley, Wyn Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. Literature Section Kelley, Wyn Kelley, Wyn Late-twentieth-century digital archives of canonical authors have produced uncommonly expansive texts. Whereas once editors had to squeeze a book, with notes, glossaries, bibliographies, lists of variants, illustrations, critical introductions—a clanking hulk of editorial apparatus—between two cloth-covered boards, new media paradigms can create and sustain inconceivably immense bodies of work. With dazzling multimedia components, open-ended collaborations between readers connected by wikis and discussion forums, and armies of young scholars eager to play, the digital literary archive seems to represent the very latest, most promising, least contained, and in all ways biggest thing around. Yet as older media forms—print, film, video, sound recordings—evolve in new media landscapes, they have met (and collided) in what Henry Jenkins has identified as a “convergence culture,” where users may access these many forms through one portal. This utopian notion of a single “Black Box” suggests that, like Hamlet, one can be bounded in a technological nutshell and count oneself a king of infinite digital space. Whatever one’s “Box”—a laptop, cellphone, or other personal device—one can use it to travel freely within a “participatory culture” where people and texts migrate, merge, mix, and re-mix in endlessly proliferating combinations (Jenkins 1-24). And although in Convergence Culture Jenkins points to the “Black Box Fallacy” as an unachievable dream of the communications industry, it has remarkable staying power, as entrepreneurs search for the one device that can do and contain all. 2014-04-11T18:13:54Z 2014-04-11T18:13:54Z 2011-03 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 15256995 1750-1849 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/86119 Kelley, Wyn. “Out of the Bread Box: Eleanor Melville Metcalf and the Melville Legacy.” Leviathan 13, no. 1 (March 2011): 21–33. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0881-882X en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-1849.2010.01451.x Leviathan Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf Wiley Blackwell Kelley |
| spellingShingle | Kelley, Wyn Out of the Bread Box: Eleanor Melville Metcalf and the Melville Legacy |
| title | Out of the Bread Box: Eleanor Melville Metcalf and the Melville Legacy |
| title_full | Out of the Bread Box: Eleanor Melville Metcalf and the Melville Legacy |
| title_fullStr | Out of the Bread Box: Eleanor Melville Metcalf and the Melville Legacy |
| title_full_unstemmed | Out of the Bread Box: Eleanor Melville Metcalf and the Melville Legacy |
| title_short | Out of the Bread Box: Eleanor Melville Metcalf and the Melville Legacy |
| title_sort | out of the bread box eleanor melville metcalf and the melville legacy |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/86119 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0881-882X |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT kelleywyn outofthebreadboxeleanormelvillemetcalfandthemelvillelegacy |