 | |  |
Notes
Robert R. Bolgar evocatively describes the situation in the last decades of the nineteenth century: "Textual criticism was the branch of Latin studies that enjoyed most esteem. . . . Successful editors, critics whose conjectures appeared in learned journals or in their adversaria critica were regarded as the leading scholars of their day. They had the stature of paladins in the eyes of their colleagues." See "Latin Literature: A Century of Interpretation," in Les Études classiques aux XIXe et XXe siècles: leur place dans l'historie des idèes, ed. Willem den Boer (1979), pp. 91-126 (quotation from p. 99).
W. W. Greg, "The Rationale of Copy-Text," Studies in Bibliography, 3 (1950-51), 19-36; reprinted in his Collected Papers, ed. J. C. Maxwell (1966), pp. 374-391.
I have attempted to provide a critical survey of these developments in "Greg's Theory of Copy-Text and the Editing of American Literature," SB, 28 (1975), 167-229 (reprinted in Selected Studies in Bibliography [1979], pp. 245-307), and in "Recent Editorial Discussion and the Central Questions of Editing," SB, 34 (1981), 23-65. Four publications of the Modern Language Association of America contain basic statements about editing that derive from Greg's rationale: The Aims and Methods of Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures, ed. James Thorpe (1963; rev. ed., 1970), which contains Fredson Bowers's "Textual Criticism" (pp. 29-54); Center for Editions of American Authors, Statement of Editorial Principles and Procedures (1967; rev. ed., 1972); The Center for Scholarly Editions: An Introductory Statement (1977; also printed in PMLA, 92 [1977], 586-597); Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures, ed. Joseph Gibaldi (1981), which contains G. T. Tanselle's "Textual Scholarship" (pp. 29-52). (In the latter three I have suggested further related reading.) Two other general treatments in this tradition are Fredson Bowers, "Scholarship and Editing," PBSA, 70 (1976), 161-188, and G. T. Tanselle, "Literary Editing," in Literary & Historical Editing, ed. George L. Vogt and John Bush Jones (1981), pp. 35-56.
Excellent accounts of the history of classical and biblical textual criticism can be found in Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (1964; 2nd ed., 1968); L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature (1968; 2nd ed., 1974); and E. J. Kenney, The Classical Text: Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book (1974). For the Renaissance humanists, see also M. D. Feld, "The Early Evolution of the Authoritative Text," Harvard Library Bulletin, 26 (1978), 81-111. Some further studies of nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments are listed below in note 38.
When I speak of "ancient" (or "early") texts, I include medieval texts, which also normally depend on scribal copies a number of removes from the original (though generally not as many steps removed).
The term "textual analysis" has been used—particularly by Vinton A. Dearing (see note 11 below) and James Thorpe (note 39 below)—to refer specifically to the process of establishing the relationships among texts, which is only one of the operations that make up the larger undertaking of "textual criticism." Dearing's use of the term helps him to emphasize that what he is concerned with is the relationship of "messages," not their "transmitters"; but "textual criticism," in which one applies the abstractions of "textual analysis" to the specific instance of verbal texts, can also draw on "bibliographical analysis," the analysis of the physical documents transmitting the texts. I use these terms here with this distinction in mind, though I often employ the more general term where some might prefer the more specific. Whether "analysis" can be wholly objective and can be kept entirely distinct from the larger process of "criticism," in which subjective judgment plays a role, is a debatable question, and is taken up at several points later in this essay.
Paul Maas, in his celebrated essay "Textkritik" (note 44 below), as well as many other writers, specifies a step called examinatio between recensio and emendatio (or divinatio). But examining the recension to determine whether or not it can be regarded as furnishing what the author intended is a necessary first step in the process of deciding when to emend; it is simply a matter of definition whether or not one takes emendatio to comprehend the examination that leads to emendation, and in any case the two are intimately related. As E. J. Kenney concisely notes in his article on "Textual Criticism" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed. (1974), the two activities are "in practice performed simultaneously." (He also recognizes that even recension "entails the application of criteria theoretically appropriate" to examination and emendation.) Maas in fact takes up divinatio in his section entitled "Examinatio." A similar point is implied by Robert Renehan, in Greek Textual Criticism (1969), which aims "to show the textual critic actually at work on a number of specific passages," when he says that his book deals with "examinatio, including both selectio between variants and divinatio" (p. 2).
Wayne Cutler, "The 'Authentic' Witness: The Editor Speaks for the Document," Newsletter of the Association for Documentary Editing, 4, no. 1 (February 1982), 8-9. A notorious example of this view, arguing that historical editions exhibit a "respect for historical fact" lacking in literary editions, is Peter Shaw's "The American Heritage and Its Guardians," American Scholar, 45 (1975-76), 733-751 [i.e., 37-55]; his position has been commented on by G. T. Tanselle in "The Editing of Historical Documents," SB, 31 (1978), 1-56 (Selected Studies, pp. 451-506)— cf. SB, 32 (1979), 31-34 (Selected Studies, pp. 385-388).
For an authoritative statement on eclecticism in the editing of modern works, see Fredson Bowers, "Remarks on Eclectic Texts," Proof, 4 (1975), 13-58 (reprinted in his Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing [1975], pp. 488-528).
See G. T. Tanselle, "Problems and Accomplishments in the Editing of the Novel," Studies in the Novel, 7 (1975), 323-360 (esp. 329-331); see also SB, 34 (1981), 30-31, 55 n.65.
An earlier, and much briefer, version of Dearing's book, entitled A Manual of Textual Analysis, appeared in 1959. Two manuals on medieval literature, which appeared later in the 1970s, are Charles Moorman's Editing the Middle English Manuscript (1975), a slight and very elementary book, and Alfred Foulet and Mary Blakely Speer's On Editing Old French Texts (1979), a much more useful and sophisticated treatment. A thorough and learned manual dealing with Italian literature of all periods is Franca Brambilla Ageno's L'edizione critica dei testi volgare (1975). A somewhat earlier manual that is full of common sense and wise observations is Ludwig Bieler's "The Grammarian's Craft: A Professional Talk," Folia, 2 (1947), 94-105; 3 (1948), 23-32, 47-58; 2nd ed., Folia, 10, no. 2 (1956), 3-42 (and as a separate).
He specifically mentions its use by "historians, cartographers, musicologists, iconographers, and so on," who will have to "translate from the more literary terminology and examples into their own" (pp. 1-2).
For an account of the development of analytical bibliography, see F. P. Wilson, "Shakespeare and the 'New Bibliography,'" in The Bibliographical Society 1892-1942: Studies in Retrospect (1945), pp. 76-135; it has been reprinted as a separate volume (1970), revised and edited by Helen Gardner. See also my "Physical Bibliography in the Twentieth Century," in Books, Manuscripts, and the History of Medicine: Essays on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Osler Library, ed. Philip M. Teigen (1982). The central statements of the field are R. B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1927); Charlton Hinman, The Printing and Proof-Reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare (1963); and Fredson Bowers, Bibliography and Textual Criticism (1964).
He immediately proceeds to say that the goal of textual analysis is not "merely to provide a genealogy of the states of a text" but, if the state from which all the others descended is not known to be extant, "to reconstruct the latest state from which all the extant states have descended." This goal is proper, but one must remember that reconstructing a text is a very different activity from analyzing the relationships of those that exist.
In the 1959 Manual (note 11 above) he considers himself to be introducing this idea: "My method for the first time distinguishes the text conveyed by the manuscript— a mental phenomenon—from the manuscript conveying the text—a physical phenomenon" (p. ix).
He does later show his awareness of some of them, as when he cautions against using reproductions, which are "subject to all sorts of unexpected failures to perform their function" (p. 148). In his article on "Textual Criticism" in Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger et al. (1965), he properly points out that "early books preserved in only a few copies may differ in every copy."
Even if no changes are introduced (a theoretical possibility), the text is still new —though this possibility illustrates what Dearing means by bibliographical thinking, since there is no difference between the two "messages" but only between their "records." Nevertheless, the fact that separately produced texts may happen at times to be identical does not alter the general point that physical details are relevant to textual analysis.
Willis neglects the same fact, in his much less sophisticated way, when he claims that, whereas a paleographer is concerned with a manuscript as "a physical entity," to a textual critic "a manuscript is of interest only as a vehicle of readings" (p. 5).
Among the many other treatments of scribal error are Willis's (pp. 51-161) and Vinaver's (note 50 below); and Louis Havet, Manuel de critique verbale appliquée aux textes latins (1911). Two classic psychological studies of scribal alterations are Jakob Stoll, "Zur Psychologie der Schreibfehler," Fortschritte der Psychologie und ihrer Anwendungen, 2 (1913-14), 1-133; and Sebastiano Timpanaro, Il lapsus freudiano: psicanalisi e critica testuale (1974; translated into English by Kate Soper, 1976). In the latter, textual study is the basis for a criticism of Freud's theory in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
James Douglas Farquhar, 'The Manuscript as a Book," in Sandra Hindman and J. D. Farquhar, Pen to Press: Illustrated Manuscripts and Printed Books in the First Century of Printing (1977), pp. 11-99; John Van Sickle, "The Book-Roll and Some Conventions of the Poetic Book," Arethusa, 13 (1980), 5-42, 115-127; Ernest C. Colwell, "Scribal Habits in Early Papyri: A Study in the Corruption of the Text," in The Bible in Modern Scholarship, ed. J. Philip Hyatt (1965), pp. 370-389 (reprinted as "Method in Evaluating Scribal Habits . . ." in Colwell's Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament [1969], pp. 106-124). See also C. H. Roberts, "The Codex," Proceedings of the British Academy, 40 (1954), 169-204; and G. S. Ivy, "The Bibliography of the Manuscript-Book," in The English Library before 1700: Studies in Its History, ed. Francis Wormald and C. E. Wright (1958), pp. 32-65. (An example of an inept effort to base textual decisions on physical evidence is Albert C. Clark's argument, in The Descent of Manuscripts [1918] and other works, that many omissions result from scribes' skipping whole lines, since the lengths of omissions, he believed, often corresponded to multiples of the number of letters in a characteristic manuscript line.)
Of course, knowledge of each compositor's habits and reliability is useful in evaluating substantive readings in the part of the text he set, not just in dealing with the spelling and punctuation.
For information about ancient punctuation, see the interesting discussions cited in Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars (note 4 above), pp. 214-215, 216.
"Paradosis" is "a rather imprecise but convenient term meaning 'the data furnished by the transmission, reduced to essentials'" (p. 53). Willis calls it "a pedantic synonym for 'transmitted reading' or for 'reading best attested'" (p. 228).
Greg, in his "Rationale" (note 2 above), says that the distinction is not "theoretical" or "philosophic" but "practical," separating two categories toward which scribes or compositors reacted differently; thus even if punctuation affects meaning, "still it remains properly a matter of presentation" (p. 376), for it would normally have been perceived so by scribes and compositors.
For further discussion of the accidentals of manuscript texts, see Bieler (note 11 above), who is sensible on this subject as on much else: his basic point is that "we should always try even in externals [i.e., accidentals] to keep to the original as nearly as evidence warrants and the reader may be reasonably expected to follow" (p. 28), for "the editor should prefer to make his readers think rather than to save them the trouble" (pp. 29-30); it is not proper for editors to insert "the standard punctuation of their mothertongue," and an editor must never "wish to be more consistent than his author" (p. 29). Similarly, S. Harrison Thompson on the classicizing of medieval Latin: "Medieval Latin writers had a right to spell as they wanted to, and we may not change their orthography and put it out under their names" ("Editing of Medieval Latin Texts in America," Progress of Medieval and Renaissance Studies in the United States and Canada Bulletin, 16 (1941), 37-49 (quotation from p. 47).
West's phrase "at least for portions of the text," however, indicates that the listing is being thought of more as a suggestive indication of the nature of the spelling variants than as a record of the evidence that was available to the editor and that may be relevant in understanding a particular passage or evaluating the editor's treatment of it. Years earlier MacEdward Leach had made a plea for constructing apparatus so that "the state of the manuscript in the smallest particular can be ascertained" (p. 150); regardless of the editorial alterations made in the text, these details should be available to the reader, because medieval capitalization may not have been haphazard and medieval punctuation "may be important and significant" (p. 147). See "Some Problems in Editing Middle English Manuscripts," English Institute Annual, 1939, pp. 130-151.
Most manuals on manuscript editing of course discuss the form of apparatus; the treatment in the Foulet-Speer manual (note 11 above) emerges from a long tradition of published rules for the medieval French field (and aims to supersede those set forth by Mario Roques in Romania, 52 [1926], 243-249). The Leiden system—Emploi des signes critiques: disposition de l'apparat dans les éditions savantes de textes grecs et latins (1932, 1938)—is an official publication of the Union Académique Internationale and is intended to apply to all kinds of editions, not only those of epigraphical and papyrological interest; O. Stahlin's Editionstechnik (2nd ed., 1914) has long been regarded as standard for classical texts. Two treatments concerned with later materials, but raising some general considerations, are G. T. Tanselle, "Some Principles for Editorial Apparatus," SB, 25 (1972), 41-88 (reprinted in Selected Studies, pp. 403-450); and Fredson Bowers, "Transcription of Manuscripts: The Record of Variants," SB, 29 (1976), 212-264.
Part of this preface is conveniently reprinted in Housman's Selected Prose, ed. John Carter (1961), pp. 23-44 (quotation from p. 36).
See Fredson Bowers, "McKerrow's Editorial Principles for Shakespeare Reconsidered," Shakespeare Quarterly, 6 (1955), 309-324.
Greg's own evolution from a position similar to McKerrow's can in part be seen in "McKerrow's Prolegomena Reconsidered," Review of English Studies, 17 (1941), 139-149, and in the prefaces to the first two printings of his The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare (1942, 1951), as well as in what he sees as the relation of his own "Prolegomena" (pp. viilv) to McKerrow's Prolegomena for the Oxford Shakespeare (1939).
He attributes the term to Paul Maas, who used it—somewhat differently—in a review of Greg's The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare, in Review of English Studies, 19 (1943), 410-413; 20 (1944), 73-77. After praising the book as "a decisive step forward from McKerrow's orthodoxy towards the eclecticism which the character of the transmission requires" (p. 410) and congratulating Greg on his "courageous vindication of eclecticism" (p. 75), Maas objects to the idea of copy-text and expresses the hope that the "bibliographical school . . . will continue to move towards emancipation from the tyranny of the copy-text" (p. 76). Greg replied (20 [1944] 159-160) that a classicist would naturally object to copy-text, claiming that the concept "has no place in the editing of classical texts," where one is not concerned with preserving documentary accidentals. Cf. note 45 below.
Housman (in the Manilius) ridiculed the equation of conservatism with a thoughtless adherence to a single text: "assuredly there is no trade on earth, excepting textual criticism, in which the name of prudence would be given to that habit of mind which in ordinary human life is called credulity" (p. 43).
Of course, it is possible to set some other goal for a critical edition; e.g., one could attempt to reconstruct the text of any particular document presumed to have existed but no longer extant. More often, however, the goal of critical editing is the restoration of what the author wished. This goal is still historical, even though the resulting text is not that of any surviving document, and the evidence from all those documents can be reported in the apparatus.
One cannot simply say "written by the author," since the author's manuscript may have contained slips of the pen, and the critical editor is aiming for an ideal that may not ever have been realized in any document, even the author's own manuscript.
That they should in some cases be more concerned with it than they have been is a separate issue. Even when there is legitimately no question of retaining the accidentals of the manuscript tradition, documentary accidentals may be significant (as I suggested earlier) in assessing the presence of certain substantives and may play a role in the thinking that leads to the choice of a copy-text.
In addition to the splendid surveys in Metzger, Reynolds-Wilson, and Kenney (mentioned in note 4 above), other helpful discussions are by Bieler (note 11 above); Edward B. Ham, "Textual Criticism and Common Sense," Romance Philology, 12 (1958-59), 198-215; E. J. Kenney in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (note 7 above); Pasquali (note 45 below); and Robert Marichal, "La Critique des textes," in L'Histoire et ses méthodes, ed. Charles Samaran (Encyclopédie de la Pleiade 11, 1961), pp. 1247-1366. A convenient survey, making particular reference to the Old French field, appears in the Foulet-Speer manual (note 11 above); two useful collections emphasizing medieval texts are Christopher Kleinhenz (ed.), Medieval Manuscripts and Textual Criticism (1976), containing reprinted essays (some translated for the first time), and A. G. Rigg (ed.), Editing Medieval Texts, English, French, and Latin, Written in England (1977), bringing together the papers from the 1976 Toronto editorial conference. For the biblical field, see also Bruce M. Metzger, Chapters in the History of New Testament Textual Criticism (1963), and "Recent Developments in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament," in his Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian (1968), pp. 145-162; Eldon Jay Epp, "The Twentieth Century Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism," Journal of Biblical Literature, 93 (1974), 386-414; Frederic G. Kenyon, The Text of the Greek Bible: A Students Handbook (1937; 3rd ed., rev. A. W. Adams, 1975); D. Winton Thomas, "The Textual Criticism of the Old Testament," in The Old Testament and Modern Study, ed. H. H. Rowley (1951), pp. 238-263; and Harry M. Orlinsky, "The Textual Criticism of the Old Testament," in The Bible and the Ancient Near East, ed. G. Ernest Wright (1961), pp. 113-132.
One book that does look at the traditions of the textual criticism of early manuscript materials in the context of the study of post-medieval English and American literature is James Thorpe's Principles of Textual Criticism (1972; see "Textual Analysis," pp. 105-130). Thorpe says in his preface, "I believe that the same textual principles are true for all periods and for all literatures" (p. viii).
The fullest and most impressive treatment of this point is Sebastiano Timpanaro, La genesi del metodo del Lachmann (1963)—revised from its earlier appearance in Studi italiani di filologia classica, 31 (1959), 182-228; 32 (1960), 38-63. Particularly important forerunners of Lachmann in developing a genealogical approach were the eighteenth-century scholars J. A. Bengel and J. J. Griesbach.
E.g., briefly in Reynolds-Wilson (note 4 above), pp. 192-194, and more thoroughly by Ernest C. Colwell, "Genealogical Method: Its Achievements and Limitations,' Journal of Biblical Literature, 66 (1947), 109-133 (reprinted in his Studies in Methodology [note 20 above], pp. 63-83). See also Vinton A. Dearing, "Some Notes on Genealogical Methods in Textual Criticism," Novum Testamentum, 9 (1967), 278-297. E. Talbot Donaldson makes a strong plea for abandoning the Lachmann approach in "The Psychology of Editors of Middle English Texts," in Speaking of Chaucer (1970), pp. 102-118 (see also his complaint about the amount of energy that has been devoted to trying to devise a "scientific system," p. 129). Most of the older standard introductions contain an exposition of Lachmann's method and some criticism of it; among them are Kirsopp Lake, The Text of the New Testament (1900; 6th ed., 1928); R. C. Jebb in A Companion to Greek Studies, ed. Leonard Whibley (1905); 4th ed., 1931); J. P. Postgate in A Companion to Latin Studies, ed. J. E. Sandys (1910, 1913, 1921), and in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (1911); F. W. Hall, A Companion to Classical Texts (1913); and Hermann Kantorowicz, Einführung in die Textkritik (1921).
Colwell, after saying that Westcott and Hort did not actually apply the genealogical method to New Testament manuscripts, adds, "Moreover, sixty years of study since Westcott and Hort indicate that it is doubtful if it can be applied to New Testament manuscripts in such a way as to advance our knowledge of the original text of the New Testament" (Studies in Methodology [note 20 above], p. 63). Colwell believes that the method is useful only for closely related families of manuscripts "narrowly limited in time and space" (p. 82).
Einleitung in die Altertumswissenschaft, 1 (3rd ed.), part 7 (1927), 18 pp.; separate editions appeared in 1950 and 1957. The 1958 English edition (Textual Criticism) includes a translation of Maas's "Leitfehler und stemmatische Typen," Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 37 (1937), 289-294. (For the Italian translation, Critica del testo, see note 49 below. Some comments on the influence of Maas in Italy and France appear in Luciano Canfora, "Critica textualis in caelum revocata," Belfagor, 23 [1968], 361-364.)
It is likely, of course, that a scribe would depart from his exemplar, but not that his departures would be such that no other scribe might hit on them independently. Maas, because his name is linked with the abstract and theoretical statement of stemmatics, is sometimes—but wrongly—thought to represent rigidity and an opposition to individual judgment. The truth is altogether different, as illustrated by his review of Greg (note 33 above), which includes the remark, "Misuse of conjecture is not more probable than misuse of conservatism, and is perhaps less dangerous" (p. 76). Giorgio Pasquali's long review of Maas in Gnomon, 5 (1929), 417-435, 498-521, was the predecessor of his great book, Storia della tradizione e critica del testo (1934; 2nd ed., with a new preface and appendixes, 1952). Pasquali's position (along with that of Michele Barbi, La Nuova Filologia e l'edizione dei nostri scrittori da Dante al Manzoni, 1938) in the Italian school of "new philology" is concisely described by Mary B. Speer in a review of two other books in Romance Philology, 32 (1978-79), 335-344; she notes their reaction against the rigidity of Maas's stemmatics and their emphasis on critical judgment as a scholarly and responsible procedure.
Sometimes it begins sooner, if one has difficulty determining some of the readings present in a particular document.
Bédier extended his discussion in "La Tradition manuscrite du Lai de l'Ombre: reflexions sur l'art d'editer les anciens textes," Romania, 54 (1928), 161-196, 321-356; and in "De l'Édition princeps de la Chanson de Roland aux éditions les plus récentes: nouvelles remarques sur l'art d'établir les anciens textes," Romania, 63 (1937), 433-469; 64 (1938), 145-244, 489-521. For an example of the voluminous later commentary on Bédier, see Frederick Whitehead and Cedric E. Pickford, "The Introduction to the Lai de l'Ombre: Sixty Years Later," Romania, 94 (1973), 145-156 (also published in Kleinhenz [note 38 above], pp. 103-116). Whitehead and Pickford find that textual criticism in the Old French field has "moved decisively away from the phase of extreme conservatism" (p. 156) associated with Bédier and has returned "to procedures familiar to textual critics in the classical field but completely lost to sight by editors of French medieval texts at the turn of the century" (p. 155).
"Principles of Textual Emendation," in Studies in French Language and Mediaeval Literature Presented to Professor Mildred K. Pope (1939), pp. 351-369 (reprinted in Kleinhenz [note 38 above], pp. 139-159).
Vinaver argues ineffectually with Housman later in the essay, twisting Housman's point in order to claim that it "is right to preserve a reading as long as it is possible that it comes from the original" (p. 368).
Vinaver is criticized by Henry John Chaytor, in "The Medieval Reader and Textual Criticism," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 26 (1941-42), 49-56, for assuming that scribes had "visual memory" rather than "auditory memory"—a difference that would affect the kinds of errors they made. Another effective criticism of Vinaver is provided by T. B. W. Reid, in "On the Text of the Tristran of Béroul," in Medieval Miscellany Presented to Eugène Vinaver by Pupils, Colleagues and Friends, ed. Frederick Whitehead, A. H. Diverres, and F. E. Sutcliffe (1965), pp. 263-288 (esp. pp. 269-272); reprinted in Kleinhenz (note 38 above) pp. 245-271 (esp. pp. 252-254). (On scribal errors, see note 19 above.) See also George Kane's defense of emendation, in opposition to Vinaver and Bédier, in "Conjectural Emendation," in Medieval Literature and Civilization: Studies in Memory of G. N. Garmonsway, ed. D. A. Pearsall and R. A. Waldron (1969), pp. 155-169 (reprinted in Kleinhenz [note 38 above], pp. 211-225); and in his editions of the A and B versions of Piers Plowman (1960, 1975, the latter with E. Talbot Donaldson).
What it really does, however, is to provide the editor with information that may be of assistance in making a critical judgment. Knowing that a category of error exists may help the editor to recognize an instance of it, but one cannot assume that all possible instances of it are in fact errors. The editor must still decide whether a particular reading, in a particular context, is best explained as falling into one of those categories, or whether it need not be regarded as an error at all.
See Frederick Whitehead and Cedric E. Pickford, "The Two-Branch Stemma," Bulletin bibliographique de la Société internationale arthurienne, 3 (1951), 83-90. Cf. Jean Fourquet, "Le Paradoxe de Bédier," Mélanges 1945 (Strasbourg, 1946), 2:1-16; and "Fautes communes ou innovations communes," Romania, 70 (1948-49), 85-95.
For more detailed criticism of Quentin, see E. K. Rand, "Dom Quentin's Memoir on the Text of the Vulgate," Harvard Theological Review, 17 (1924), 197-264; and J. Burke Severs, "Quentin's Theory of Textual Criticism," English Institute Annual, 1941, pp. 65-93. Bédier's 1928 criticism is cited above (note 47). The Quentin-Bédier controversy is treated in a number of well-known books, such as Paul Collomp, La Critique des textes (1931) and Arrigo Castellani, Bédier avait-il raison? (1957).
The importance of the Calculus as a starting point for further thinking about objective methods of analysis, however, is recognized in the work of Dearing and Hrubý, commented on briefly below, and in F. M. Salter's critical but balanced review of Greg's edition (1935) of The Play of Antichrist in Review of English Studies, 13 (1937), 341-352 (to which Greg replied at 13 [1937], 352-354, and 14 [1938], 79-80).
"Recent Theories of Textual Criticism," Modern Philology, 28 (1930-31), 129-141. Greg replied to Shepard's criticisms (28 [1930-31], 401-404), emphasizing the distinction between the "mechanism of transmission," with which he was dealing, and the reconstruction of texts, which he acknowledges cannot be mechanical.
Hill, "Some Postulates for Distributional Study of Texts," SB, 3 (1950-51), 63-95; Hrubý, "Statistical Methods in Textual Criticism," General Linguistics, 5 (1961-62), 77-138; Hrubý, "A Quantitative Solution of the Ambiguity of Three Texts," SB, 18 (1965), 147-182 (the opening pages of which offer a good survey of the statistical tradition); Dearing, Principles and Practice of Textual Analysis (1974; see part I above and note 11). Other quantitative approaches involving the tabulation of agreements are represented by Ernest C. Colwell (e.g., several of the papers collected in his Studies in Methodology [see note 20 above]), Paul R. McReynolds (e.g., "The Value and Limitation of the Claremont Profile Method," in the 1972 volume of the Society of Biblical Literature seminar papers), and John G. Griffith (e.g., papers on "numerical taxonomy" in Museum Helveticum, 25 [1968], 101-138, and Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 20 [1969], 389-406); brief comments on Colwell appear in Metzger (see note 4 above), pp. 180-181, and Dearing, pp. 120-121, and on Griffith in West, pp. 46-47 (West's own approach, pp. 38-39, though simpler, is related). For comments on the use of computers in textual analysis, see Dearing, pp. 215-236; Jacques Froger, La Critique des textes et son automatisation (1968); and the works listed in the Center for Scholarly Editions statement (note 3 above), p. 9.
Sometimes "contamination" is distinguished from "conflation," the former resulting from the use of now one and now another manuscript, the latter from the combining of elements from two or more manuscripts. In a looser usage, they can be employed interchangeably to refer to the results of a scribe's use of two or more manuscripts.
The considerable amount of labor entailed by all these systems, often cited as a criticism, would not be a serious objection, of course, if the results were conclusive.
More detailed criticism of Dearing can be found in M. P. Weitzman's trenchant review in Vetus Testamentum, 27 (1977), 225-235. Dearing makes some comments on this review in "Textual Analysis: A Consideration of Some Questions Raised by M. P. Weitzman," Vetus Testamentum, 29 (1979), 355-359. His 1959 book is discussed by David M. Vieth in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 59 (1960), 553-559 (cf. Harvard Library Bulletin, 24 [1976], 210 n. 14).
Among the notable features of Bieler's essay (note 11 above) is his discussion suggesting situations in which various of these approaches might be appropriate.
Dearing says, "In fact, Greg's rule implies that scribes and compositors tend to follow copy in accidentals. If the evidence is clear that they did not, then any extant text may be the most like the author in the matter of accidentals, and the bibliographical tree does not limit the editor's choice of copy-text" (p. 155). It would be more accurate to say that Greg assumes deterioration as one text is copied from another and believes, when no other evidence is available, that more of the author's practices are likely to show through in the earliest copy. As Dearing implies, it would be possible for a later copyist, being unfaithful to the deteriorated text he is copying from, to happen to reintroduce a number of authorial practices. But they would carry no more authority than the editor's own decision to introduce them—unless, of course, there were reason to believe that the copyist had drawn on a more authoritative document, in which case the editor would have good cause to select the text containing them as copy-text. Greg would agree that "the bibliographical tree does not limit the editor's choice of copy-text," for he never argued for following a mechanical rule if the evidence, as one sees it, points another way.
"Multiple Authority: New Problems and Concepts of Copy-Text," Library, 5th ser., 27 (1972), 81-115; reprinted in his Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing (1975), pp. 447-487.
Bowers also speaks of carbon copies from typewriting—another modern phenomenon that can produce radiating texts.
I have explored this point, and its implications for the recording of variants, in "Editorial Apparatus for Radiating Texts," Library, 5th ser., 29 (1974), 330-337. Dearing —both in Principles and Practice of Textual Analysis (p. 154) and in "Concepts of Copy-Text Old and New," Library, 5th ser., 28 (1973), 281-293 (p. 291)—continues (as does Bowers) to use the term "copy-text" in these situations, but he confuses the concepts of "copy-text" and "printer's copy," as when he says (in the article) that "if we can completely reconstruct the archetype, any copy-text is as good as any other and we need only choose the one we must change the least to bring it into conformity with the archetype." What is being chosen in such a case is not a copy-text but a text that can conveniently serve as the basis for printer's copy; indeed, at the beginning of the article Dearing defines "copy-text" as "what a scholar-editor sends to the press." The necessity for maintaining a distinction between "copy-text" and "printer's copy" is shown, I hope, in my "The Meaning of Copy-Text: A Further Note," SB, 23 (1970), 191-196.
Another point that should perhaps be repeated to avoid misunderstanding: what I have said here does not purport to summarize Greg and Bowers but tries to extend their ideas in a direction suggested by their essays.
Chapters (see note 38 above), pp. ix and 142 respectively. This statement would in fact serve well as the motto for the Society for Textual Scholarship, founded by David Greetham in 1979; some remarks of mine along the same lines appear at the beginning of the first volume of Text (1981), the Society's publication. Forty years ago R. W. Chapman indicated some connections between the editing of ancient and of modern works, in "A Problem in Editorial Method," Essays and Studies, 27 (1941), 41-51.
| | |