Milli mála - 2021, Blaðsíða 193
192 Milli mála 13/2021
physical danger or insecurity.”26 It is in these latter senses that I
wish to adopt it here. To an extent, I follow Judith Butler’s use of
precarity to think through the ontological vulnerability of the sub-
ject in the face of the Other.27 But my interest is aesthetic rather
than ethical, material rather than political. I propose that the term
can be usefully applied to thinking about the problematic being of
early modern lyric poems which, put under pressure by conflicting
demands of technology and culture, thematise the unviability of
their existence as textual entities.
* * *
Elizabethan lyric unfolded at an intersection of several modalities of
material existence. Most obviously, it dwelt on the threshold of two
systems of textual production and transmission—manuscript and
print.28 The former was characterized by social embeddedness of
authorship driven by exchange and collaboration, occasional com-
position, restricted audience, and contingent, malleable textuality.
Written in various social contexts and disseminated in single
sheets, manuscript collections, and commonplace books, these lyr-
ics were often the product of several amateur co-authors or scribes.
Despite at times wide networks of circulation for these lyrics,
manuscript publication retained the aura of privacy and exclusivi-
ty.29
The advent of print, conversely, not only opened lyric poetry to
a wider readership and a book market,30 but also promoted a new
form of textuality characterized by “a sense of closure, a sense that
what is found in a text has been finalized, has reached a state of
completion.”31 The commodification of literary culture also prompt-
ed difficult questions about property, ownership, and alienation of
26 OED “precarious, n,” 1a, 2b, 2c.
27 Butler, Precarious Life, 128–52.
28 On the relationship of manuscript and print in early modern England, see Wall, Imprint of Gender,
23–110; Marotti, Manuscript; McKitterick, Print; Eckhardt, Manuscript Verse Collectors; and
Zarnowiecki, Fair Copies.
29 See Marotti, Circulation of Poetry, 1–34.
30 See Da Costa, Marketing English Books.
31 Ong, Orality and Literacy, 129. On print’s standardizing influence, see also Eisenstein, Printing
Revolution, 56–101.
“PEN, PAPER, INKE, YOU FEEBLE INSTRUMENTS”
10.33112/millimala.13.8