Textual Continuity

While textual variation has long been understood as a defining element of the genetic process, and indeed of textuality itself, this essay considers textual continuity not as the absence of revision but as potential revision that does not occur. In the archival materials associated with Toni Morrison’s and Tim O’Brien’s novels, we find various instances of a text remaining meaningfully the “same” across different versions. This emphasis on continuity implies a further possible reorientation, toward a sense of works in development, with individual documents construed less as physical objects or containers and more as “temporal parts”.