"Avengers Assemble!": The Implications of Assembling an Edition of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on Textual Scholarship
| dc.contributor.advisor | Robinson, Peter | |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | White, Jerry | |
| dc.creator | Dela Pena, Miguel | |
| dc.creator.orcid | 0009-0004-9290-7079 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-05-08T15:46:23Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-05-08T15:46:23Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2023 | |
| dc.date.created | 2023-04 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-04-28 | |
| dc.date.submitted | April 2023 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2023-05-08T15:46:23Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | In the last couple of decades, the word “social” has become increasingly ubiquitous not just in everyday life with the advent of social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter but also in the field of textual scholarship with the increased attention paid to the construction of “social editions.” Concomitantly, in the film world, the format of the cinematic universe is becoming one of the main modes of storytelling with unprecedented success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). As film critics like Graeme McMillan claim that “whatever lightning Marvel captured in its onscreen bottle is not a trick that’s easily replicable,” tackling the cinematic universe might seem to be a daunting task for screenwriters and filmmakers. For textual scholars who have been struggling to create a truly “social” edition, however, the MCU’s success only presents an opportunity to achieve their goal and exponentially expand the field. Taking the MCU as a case study, this paper explores the implications of approaching a cinematic universe as a subject for textual editing and argues that because of its massively collaborative, transmedial, and inherently commercial nature as a work, the MCU invites reconsiderations of current practices in textual scholarship. In conversation with other attempts at social editing, this paper demonstrates that the collaboration and transmediality behind the MCU not only allows it to fit but also encourages the expansion of current definitions of the text. As well, it argues that attempting to edit the MCU keeps the creation of a truly “social” edition in the realm of possibility exactly because of its commerciality. Ultimately, in theorizing what an edition of the MCU would look like, this paper asserts that editing the MCU would also require a reconsideration of what “scholarly editing” means, both in terms of what constitutes “scholarly” work and what the duties of editors and editions are, and where and when they should look for meaning. | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10388/14660 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.subject | Textual Scholarship | |
| dc.subject | Textual Editing | |
| dc.subject | Social Edition | |
| dc.subject | Social Text | |
| dc.subject | Film | |
| dc.subject | Marvel | |
| dc.subject | Marvel Cinematic Universe | |
| dc.title | "Avengers Assemble!": The Implications of Assembling an Edition of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on Textual Scholarship | |
| dc.type | Thesis | |
| dc.type.material | text | |
| thesis.degree.department | English | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | English | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Saskatchewan | |
| thesis.degree.level | Masters | |
| thesis.degree.name | Master of Arts (M.A.) |