Glossator

Glossator publishes original commentaries, editions and translations of commentaries, and essays and articles relating to the theory and history of commentary, glossing, and marginalia (catena, commentum, gemara, glossa, hypomnema, midrash, peser, pingdian, scholia, tafsir, talkhis, tika, vritti, zend, zhangju, et al). The journal aims to encourage the practice of commentary as a creative form of intellectual work and to provide a forum for dialogue and reflection on the past, present, and future of this ancient genre of writing. By aligning itself, not with any particular discipline, but with a particular mode of production, Glossator gives expression to the fact that praxis founds theory.

Glossator welcomes work from all disciplines, but especially from fields with strong affiliations with the commentary genre: philosophy, theology, literary theory and criticism, textual and manuscript studies, hermeneutics, exegesis.

What is commentary? While the distinction between commentary and other forms of writing is not an absolute one, the following may serve as guidelines for distinguishing between what is and is not a commentary:

1. FOCUS. A commentary focuses on, and magnifies, a single discrete object (text, image, event, etc.) or continuous portion thereof.

2. PRESENCE. A commentary does not displace but rather formally shapes itself to and preserves the integrity, structure, and presence of its object, even in the midst of hermeneutically fragmenting it.

3. DILATION. The relationship of a commentary to its object may be described as both parallel and perpendicular. Commentary is parallel to its object in that it moves with or runs alongside it, following the flow of reading it. Commentary is perpendicular to its object in that it pauses or breaks from reading it in order to comment on it. The combination of these dimensions gives commentary a structure of continuing discontinuity and a durable utility. Commentary paradoxically digresses from the object in order to open it from within.

4. COPIA. Commentary establishes and maintains a certain quantitative proportion and plenitude of itself vis-à-vis its object. This tendency corresponds to the practice of “filling up the margins” of a text.

5. PROLIFERATION. Commentary, as a form of discourse, tends to favor and allow multiplication and productive syntheses of meanings, ideas, and references. Commentary need not, and often does not, have an explicit central thesis or argument. This tendency gives commentary a ludic or auto-teleological potential.

6. ACCESS. Commentary provides interpretive and philological access into its object, serving as a handy and direct medium for understanding it anew. Commentary opens itself to consultation. This characteristic utility of commentary is related to the formal absence of requirement that its reader sequentially follow or commit to its entirety.

Glossator publishes themed and open issues.

Glossator also publishes special editions of book-length commentaries.

Please send submissions and queries to: glossatori AT gmail DOT com.

Mailing address: Glossator, c/o Nicola Masciandaro, Department of English, Brooklyn College, CUNY, 2900 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11210

Submission Guidelines

The editors welcome submissions of any length in the following forms (in order of priority): original commentaries, editions and translations of commentaries, and articles and essays on the theory and history of the commentary. Nota Bene: If you are submitting a commentary (rather than an article or essay on the subject of commentary), the commentarial form of your piece should be structurally evident.

Authors are advised to check the current publication schedule before submitting for open-topic issues (see Forthcoming). Submissions to themed issues should be made directly to the editors, as per instructions the Call for Papers.

Submissions to open-topic issues are subject to blind peer review.

Submissions to themed issues are reviewed by the volume editors, with ad hoc additional blind review by the editorial board.

Style Guidelines

1) File Format: MS-Word or RTF format.

2) Appearance: 1.5 line spacing throughout (including endnotes and references), 12-point Times New Roman, 1″ indentation for paragraphs and blockquotes, headings and subheadings in bold.

3) Illustrations/Graphics: placed within the text at the appropriate points.

4) Notes: Footnotes or endnotes numbered consecutively with Arabic numbers.

5) References: All references should follow the Chicago Manual of Style guidelines.

6) Articles should be submitted in blind-review format including a cover page with author’s name, institutional affiliation, and contact information, and an abstract of no more than 100 words.

Submissions with non-conventional typography and/or layout will also be considered.

The journal does not charge authors for article processing.

Authors retain full rights to their work.

The journal url is http://glossator.org

Copyright

Glossator is an Open Access journal. All volumes are published online and in hard copy print-on-demand volumes

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.