Tlic cstablisliment and explanation of texts, philology in thernold sense, is the oldest and most theoretically sophistieated arearnof literary studies. Its history goes baek to the royal lil)rarians ofrnPtolemaie Alexandria in the third eentury, B.C. Americans likernthe late Fredson Bowers and diseiples and critics from G.rnThomas Tansellc to Flershel Parker haye continued to explorernthe tlieory of editing and actually to edit texts. Literary theoristsrnwrite essas and collect those essays into books, but they dornnot edit texts or vyrite commentaries. Recently Josephine M.rnGu- and Ian Small, in Politics and Value in English Studies: ArnDiscipline in Crisis? (1993), have noticed that the theory andrnpractice of editing may provide for English studies, and the humanitiesrnas a whole, a way out of linguistic solipsism and theoreticalrnaporia and a return to that fruitful interaction of theoryrnand practice which is typical of creative periods in all disciplines.rnAs Norris has shown about Baudrillard and other importantrnpostmodcrns, theory has often been a way for the literarrnintellectual to talk his way out of matters he does not care tornconfront. One of the strong eases for textual studies as editingrnand commenting on texts is that, with all the theoretical disagreementsrnand practical problems, there is no wa to avoid realrnproblems. Chronicles’ Theodore Pappas has shown in excruciatingrndetail how the editors of the Papers of Martin LutherrnKing, Jr., tried to avoid the implications of King’s plagiarism, asrntheorists have avoided the implications of Dc Man’s Nazi pastrnand Foucault’s exploitation and virtual murder of his Americanrndisciples. There is one important difference. Editing forirrsrnpart of a millennia-long tradition, and the King editors e’entuallvrndid their job. Thc^ verified and confirmed the massie plagiarismrnof M.L. King, while their literary critical colleaguesrnwere covering up and avoiding the ethical reality that lies behindrnthe history of postmodernism.rnIt is said that one bright young theorist told his friends as hernlav d ing of AIDS, “I die happy, because I was infected b’rnMichel Poueault.” Those words could be, may yet be, the epitaphrnof the humanities in the United States. Unlike AIDS therernis a cure for postmodernism. It will not come from quoting arnfew paragraphs of Derrida, or Said, or Kristeva out of the contextrnof their entire careers. It must come from returning to thernrich and li’ely and essential traditions of editing and commentingrnon the texts that are the basis not onh of literary studies, butrnof our ci’ilization, from antiquity to the present. crnA Pregnant Teenrnb Harold McCurdvrnWhen Mary with Joseph entered BethlehemrnTo register for the tax, and drop betweenrnAn ox and ass what God had promised them.rnThe Queen of Heaven was a pregnant teen.rnEicrce moralists and politicians nowrnDecry teen pregnancy as a thing obscenern(And costly to the State), forgetting howrnThe Queen of Heaven was a pregnant teen.rnIf history were controlled bv governments.rnAnd goernmcnts alone, the’d keep it clean,rnDecree it was a capital offensernThe Queen of Heaven was a pregnant teen.rnNevertheless, despite the paradox,rnBefore stunned shepherds blundering on the scenernFound ery God between the ass and ox.rnThe Queen of Heaven was a pregnant teen.rnJANUARY 1996/19rnrnrn