by Contantia Munda
Introduction and Editing by Breanna Molaison
Breanna Molaison is an English MA student at the University of Central Arkansas
The Process
I chose to edit The Worming of a Mad Dogge because the title dragged me in, but the contents kept me. Munda unabashedly chastises Joseph Swetnam for his 1615 “Araignment of Women,” and she does so in really creative ways: my favorite being the colorful insults (like [spoiler] “barren-idle-donghill braine”). Beyond this element, though, the author really pries into Swetnam’s logic, or lack thereof, as she unravels some of the fallacious arguments that he makes about women. At the same time, though, she makes some similarly sweeping generalizations—like calling women “the second edition of the Epitome of the whole world.” Munda’s electric defense of women makes me inclined to answer Joan Kelly’s question, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?”, in the affirmative.
Munda’s piece totals about 20,000 words, so my first step in the editorial process was significantly slimming down the text. I wanted to keep something from each of the three sections to maintain the progression of the response; it also felt helpful to my hypothetical reader to keep the subtitled sections for their orientation. Once I narrowed down my text selections in their respective sections, I just read through the piece and noted the spots that made me pause—whether it was because of an archaic word, antiquated spelling, awkward punctuation, non-English quotes, or unfamiliar references. This is where I annotated by providing definitions, translations, or context. This is also where I somewhat modernized the text by altering antiquated spelling and comma use that might be distracting or unhelpful. In order to maintain some sense of the time period, though, I kept some of the less-distracting uses of non-standard English. These include the silent “e’s” on the ends of words, random capitalizations, and contractions like “th’intellect.” I put faith in my imaginary audience (The people I have in mind are relatively educated readers…maybe the type of crowd to read the New York Times. Especially the type that plays the games.) to read through these non-standard constructions. I may have been slightly biased by my favor for Early Modern writing styles, though, because they remind me of the centuries between myself and these texts. Through this process, I aimed for minimally-invasive adjustments that worked to lift the burden off the reader, so I only changed what felt necessary for clarity and ease of reading. Reading ease accounts for my use of columns and 1.15 line spacing; I feared that Munda’s prose mass in the last section may be visually overwhelming if it just filled pages with un-paragraphed text. I think this format makes annotation easier, as well, by providing a third margin space down the middle of the page.
Engaging in the editorial process with so much control over a text—something my editorial assistantship work lacks entirely—was both daunting and exciting. It was enlightening to the sort of outward-thinking that editorial work requires. I found myself thinking as much about reception and interpretation throughout the process as I did the piece itself. I also felt like an editorial imposter while working on this project. Interventions like Google Translate and the OED don’t feel very professional, but the work still felt rewarding. It requires a resourcefulness that feels like detective work even when the solutions are less-than-professional. I was surprised by how much the formatting and overall look of the piece ended up mattering to me. I started my edition by making the title page…which I think I spent a full hour on: flipping through font styles, sizes, line spacing, annotating, and translating in the effort to evoke an Early Modern feel visually while providing my audience with the necessary information to interpret the text. This project allowed me to flex an editorial muscle that I hadn’t before, and as such, I learned that my readerly self struggles with the line between over explanation and restraint because I’m used to explaining everything in my academic writing. I struggled not to give interpretations within some of my footnotes. In these moments I would remind myself that my goal is to make the text more easily interpretable for an audience, and that helped. Overall, creating this edition helped me understand a bit more about what goes into the editorial process for literary texts, and it also emphasized the importance of the editor when it comes to textual authority and meaning-making for an audience.